Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) wants to save his father Will (Orlando Bloom in a cameo) from his curse of being the captain of The Flying Dutchman. To do this he needs the aid of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to find the Trident of Poseidon. Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), who is always being accused of witchcraft because sheâs smart, wants to find the Trident in honor of her missing and unknown father. Jack needs the Trident to stop a ship full of ghosts, lead by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), who want him dead. And Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is around because this is a Pirates movie.
The fifth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is both enjoyable and unnecessary. It beats the previous entry, the unfocused On Stranger Tides by moving Jack back into the elaborate sidekick position and making the story once again about two appealing young lovers. Yes, that makes it a retread of the first trilogy, but as that structure works it was the best choice Disney could make short of doing something original, and that wasnât going to happen. Since it is three films compressed into one thatâs shorter than each of the others, it suffers from too much material. There are whole subplots of the nasty British empire and witches that go nowhere and are tossed away. Thereâs at least one major character too many (Barbossa was the obvious one to drop, even if he is the only one that develops) and everyone, except Jack, could use a touch more screen time.
But, for a CliffsNotes version of the earlier films, it isnât bad. We get lots of ships blowing up, sword fightes, CGI ghosts, and wacky hijinks. Jack Sparrow is still fun, if a bit less fun with each outing and now more of the oaf he appears to be rather than the brilliant pirate hidden by his eccentricities. Brenton is more charming than Will and Carina is stunning, giving the film core characters worth rooting for. Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg lack the flair of original Pirates director Gore Verbinski, and his understanding of physical comedy as some bitsâlike Jack stepping off of a crashing building onto a bridgeâshould have been hysterical but instead elicit smiles at best. Still, a smile is a smile. It doesnât measure up to The Curse of the Black Pearl, but that was something new and clever and is asking too much of a sequel. In a summer of franchise entries like Alien: Covenant, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Mummy, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and The Fate of the Furious, Dead Men Tell No Tales stands tall for not being an embarrassment.
But I canât help nitpicking its place in the Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise. Will and Elizabethâs story was done. They had their love, though they could only see each other infrequently. But sacrifices had to be made as The Flying Dutchmanâs mission of ferrying the drowned to the afterlife was vital and Will had taken on that sacred mission. He wasnât âcursed.â So why does he start this film with a touch of the infection that had infested Davy Jones in the earlier films? It was clearly stated that the deformities only came from diverting The Dutchman from its duty. And if Will is de-cursed, doesnât that screw things up for everyone who dies at sea? OK, so the films are inconsistent. I can live with that. However a sequel shouldnât mess up the ending of a story from a previous film (See Alien 3) and thatâs what Dead Men Tell No Tales does. That would be more of a problem if this was a better film. But it is candy flossâenjoyable enough and easily forgotten.