Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Yes, they’ve made 4 of them now, and chances are you’ve probably already decided if you want to go see it or not. WE all like these movies in some shape or form. We all have our favorites and have our reasons for liking them. Personally, my favorite is the second one, because I liked the complex villain and I felt it had all the best action, not to mention the best Captain Jack Sparrow moments. However, with popularity this big, it means there’s only one thing for me to really do in this review, tell you whether it’s good or not. The answer to that is a little complicated though.
At a glance “On Stranger Tides” seems like it should be a pretty solid flick. It’s got Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush back as Jack and Barbossa, Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom aren’t in it, Jack has a love interest in the form of Penelope Cruz, and it has more mythical sea creatures, mermaids this time around. That’s all well and good, but this movie suffers the same thing most movies that make it this far in sequels tend to suffer from, predictability. Come on, you all know it, there have been three of these movies and they all basically had the same plot: Go here, action scene, find magical MacGuffin, action scene, go there, fight the bad guy (BIG ACTION SCENE!), dénouement where Johnny Depp does something funny or crazy. There you go.
The big prize this time is the fountain of youth, the villain dug up from pirate lore this time is Blackbeard played by the crazy good Ian McShane, and the quest is to collect four items (MacGuffins) to make the fountain actually work. Barbossa is in hot pursuit of Blackbeard who has Jack for a guide, and some how the Spanish are involved but the movie seems to keep forgetting they’re part of it, and then it suddenly remembers and finds a way to crowbar them back in. I’d even go so far as to suggest that the Spanish are only in this movie because of Ponce De Leone having gone to find the fountain in real life.
I digress, the plot isn’t really what the pirate movies have been about anyway, it’s the characters mixed with vaguely pirate folk lore sounding things that have kept it going. Yes, Captain Jack is still very funny, and yes Barbossa is still really cool as a grey area kind of guy, and Blackbeard steals the whole show by being self knowingly evil. That being said the movie does have a couple characters that are pretty interesting in theory, but end up basically getting pushed aside. Cruz’s Angelica is one such instance, being both a former lover of Jack’s and Blackbeard’s daughter is interesting, but they never really do much with it until the end. And then there is the priest character that, for some reason isn’t just killed by Blackbeard, despite refusing to kill anything and constantly talking about how the pirates are evil and that they can still be saved in God’s eyes if they just repent. He is pretty much completely useless and only exists to craft a stupid, not to mention COMPLETELY USELESS, romance plot with him and a mermaid.
On top of this, the action scenes that are supposed to keep most people interested are all boring. There aren’t nearly as many as in the second, third, or even the first one, and the ones we get really aren’t that good. Director Rob Marshall is most famous for directing “Chicago”, and lesser know for movies like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Nine” (NOT the animated movie about the living sock puppets.), and his lack of action experience really shows in these scenes. Most of them are either dull or anticlimactic, and when that’s not the case they’re just rehashing things from the previous movies. But what actually angers me most thinking back, is that the movie has NO ship battles. No broad sides of cannon fire, no ship tactics that turn the tide of battle, no man the guns, nothing. That was always what I liked about these movies! Sword fights? I can see that anywhere. Crazy stunts? That’s why God gave us Jackie Chan movies. But this movie just doesn’t do it. Hell, even in the last movie, which most people acknowledge wasn’t all that good, had several of those and it made the movie actually feel like a pirate movie. This just feels more like a bad Indiana Jones knock off than a pirate movie. In fact, most everything from the original movies is gone, most notably the Black Pearl. They could have called it anything and it would have made just as much sense.
When all is said and done, I really didn’t care for this movie. That said, if all you want from the movie is to have Jack Sparrow have more screen time than he has in the other movies, or you really just want to see all of the “Pirates” movies in theaters, then you probably won’t be disappointed. I however, was thoroughly disappointed by this movie, it was dull, long and I really just wanted it to end. It didn’t win any points with me other than having Jack in it, something we know they wouldn’t be stupid enough not to do anyway. I’d say skip it.

I give Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

1 magical MacGuffin out of 5