Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Has the wind gone out of its sails?

Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell
No Tales

Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales has ran
into stormy waters with the critics. While some are impressed,
others say it’s time for the franchise to walk the plank.
 

The film, which is also known as Salazar’s Revenge, brings
together Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, along with regulars
Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush, with Javier Bardem, Brenton
Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario.

Home and Away star Thwaites plays Bloom’s son, who joins
forces with a mysterious orphan (Scodelario) and Jack Sparrow to
find the Trident of Poseidon and defeat a band of evil ghost
pirates.

The use of the young characters – Twaites is 27 years old;
Scodelario is 25 – prompted the Hollywood Reporter‘s John DeFore to dub
the new film “Pirates: The Next Generation”.  

But unlike the Star Trek franchise-extender,
he says, Pirates isn’t bold enough to dispense with its aging
protagonist, the “cartoonishly louche Keith Richards-meets-Hunter
Thompson pirate Jack Sparrow”, who seems more like “a theme-park
mascot than a Hollywood swashbuckler”.

Sparrow remains the focus of the film, although his “loopy
novelty has faded” and Depp gives a “phoned in
performance”.

Mike McCahill in The Guardian says Pirates has “always been
about delivering pantomimic nonsense”, so Depp duly does what Depp
does in the films.

Younger actors see the series enter it “Muppet Babies or
Scrappy-Doo phase”, he adds, but the “fresher blood” behind the
camera is “not unwelcome” and while Dead Men Tell No Tales moves at
a faster pace than any Pirates film, “nothing has really been
added”.

However, Ian Sandwell on Digital Spy, says the film is “one of the
surprises of the summer blockbuster season so far”.

It is unburdened by the convoluted plots that weighed down
the previous sequels, he says, and the “streamlined approach”, with
its “good old-fashioned quest for buried treasure”, results in “the
best Pirates of the Caribbean sequel yet”.

The “biggest and best thing the film remembers to do is have
fun, which it achieves with aplomb”, Caroline Preece on Den of Geek says, adding that Dead Men is
“violent and genuinely scary again”.

The film is “a lovely surprise”, she continues, and should
“remind fans what was so refreshing and entertaining about the
Pirates series in the first place”.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales opens in
the UK today.