Climbing Higher Pictures

You wanted more? You’ll get more. Jack Sparrow is back, in his own adventure this time, with a bunch of new characters and a budget that feels a little light on its feet for a major studio tentpole. Shot in native 3D, and directed by Chicago and Nine director Rob Marshall, this one was bound to have a different flavor to it. Is it a promising opening act for a new trilogy, or does it forget the things that made the franchise so entertaining in the past?

Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: C-

It’s almost like you can hear the producers sitting in a room and discussing their options. On the one hand, they have a powerhouse trilogy, one of the more entertaining and consistently successful in recent memory, with a cast of characters who have risen to iconic status. On the other hand, you have a potential franchise, a cash cow that could easily sustain Disney’s theatrical film arm for the next decade. Do you let it die? Of course not, but where do you go from here? Sure the Fountain of Youth seems like the kind of quest that is befitting of the Jack Sparrow legacy… but can you pull it off on a diminished budget, loss of principle cast, and with a director who’s never worked on a film with this kind of scale before? Apparently they thought they could, and so here we are once more. Maestro, the trumpets please!

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is purportedly based on (they use the phrase “Suggested By” in the credits) a novel whose name serves as this film’s tagline. With the exception of both of them involving Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, it doesn’t appear like they have anything in common. In reality, this is just the stripped down B-movie equivalent of the franchise you once knew and loved, and easily the worst installment of the series. It doesn’t hold a candle to the energy and soul of the original, or either of its dense sequels, preferring to wallow in the shallows of double crosses and shifting loyalties for no better reason that to eat up screen time.

Johnny Depp is still just as enjoyable to watch as ever, and that’s a big part of why the film is not a total failure. However, the protagonists of the “original trilogy” (as I will now take to calling it) were William Turner and Elizabeth Swan. Jack Sparrow, as with many iconic supporting roles, is just that, a supporting player. There’s really not enough dynamic or room for development to warrant his own movie, and that is evident from the first frame of Pirates 4. There’s literally no reason to care about anyone or anything that’s going on at the start the film, and we’re not really drawn in along the way either. It falls victim to a major issue of mediocre Hollywood tentpoles, the lack of a first act, and a desire to just fast-forward into the action without any foundation for an audience to lay their empathy upon. The script suffers from a major telling-instead-of-showing problem, which, while inspired by the shrinking budget, just feels like lackluster writing. We hear about a whole slew of events that bridge the gap between At World’s End and On Stranger Tides, and most of them sound far more compelling than anything which happens in the chronology of the film itself. Perhaps they should set the 5^th one two months earlier.

Visually, the film is very pretty. The production used RED cameras in conjunction with James Cameron’s Fusion 3D rig, making for quite the image, and despite a little bit more of a digital feel, it fits right in with the aesthetics of the original three. On the audio side, I’m sorry to report that this one is just not really up to snuff. Hanz Zimmer truly phones in the score here, using recycled cue after recycled cue until his paycheck arrives in the mail. “Uninspired” would be the best word for it, and it certainly does little to elevate the rest of the film. The sound effects and other auditory components are handled competently enough, but don’t come in looking to be wowed like you were for the finale of At World’s End.

The reason I haven’t commented on any of the new cast, is because they really didn’t make much of an impression at all. With the exception of a badass introduction, Blackbeard just comes off as a worried old man, and his daughter, played by Penelope Cruz, evokes very little in the way of believable emotion. Instead of the undead or fish people, we get “zombies” who are basically just guys with makeup. They’re explained by a single throwaway line that pretty much sums up the storytelling style of the movie: Focus on the quest, no matter how boring it is, and under-develop or ignore everything else. I really wish I could report that this was a great new addition to the franchise and a welcome opener to a new trilogy… but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you choose to see it, just brace yourself for the disappointment. If you steer clear, your ship and crew will be all the better for it.