The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are prime examples of each subsequent film becoming more and more ridiculous and subsequently dumber as they go on.
The films themselves are inspired by the Disneyland ride of the same name.
The first movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, was released in 2003 and was directed by Gore Verbinski.
The film is about Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom), a blacksmith’s apprentice, working with Captain Jack Sparrow (famously played Johnny Depp), notorious pirate, to rescue Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley), the governor’s daughter and the woman of Turner’s affections. She has been taken by Captain Hector Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush), the infamous pirate captain of the Black Pearl, a pirate ship that used to be under Jack’s command until the crew mutinied, and have since turned into undead skeletons who can’t feel anything because of cursed Aztec gold.
The film is a prime example of a swashbuckling adventure that isn’t trying to answer the questions of the universe or have some big profound message. It’s simply there for fun, and at that it succeeds.
Johnny Depp really helps make the film as memorable as it is, with his Keith Richards impression and the funny looking walk he does when doing anything. It’s no wonder audiences really took to Captain Jack Sparrow as much as they did.
Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa is another highlight. While it’s hard to call him redeemable, Rush’s performance really helps make him memorable and weirdly likable. And the character is given a backstory in which you understand why he does what he does, and isn’t just evil for evil’s sake.
Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan might not be as charismatic or over the top, but it works to the film’s benefit, as they keep the film grounded in reality and keep the story from going completely off the rails.
The movie’s action, while over the top and defiant of the laws of physics, is still fun. What helps is that the action isn’t just two guys standing and swinging their swords, they’re jumping around, using the environment, and using slapstick to keep it engaging.
If there are any problems with the film, it is that the CGI skeletons haven’t aged the greatest. But it was made in 2003, so it’s excusable.
The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a fun, if not so serious watch that’s still worth checking out.
The first film was such a big hit that Disney greenlit a sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (directed by Gore Vibinski once again and released in 2006).
Things have started to go pear shaped for our heroes since last we saw them. Will Turner is forced to track down Captain Jack Sparrow by Lord Cutler Becket (Tom Hollander) of the East India trading company, who’s holding Elizabeth in jail because of events that transpired at the end of the previous film. What Becket wants is simple: Jack’s compass, which doesn’t point north, but instead points to wherever the user wants most. With it, Beckett plans to find the heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and control the seas.
Jack is having trouble of his own, as apparently he had made a deal with Jones years back and now he’s come to collect, with Jones sending the infamous Kraken after Jack until he complies and joins his cursed crew for the next 100 years. After learning this, Jack decides to try to track down the heart for himself to hold it hostage over Davy Jones and hopefully get out of their arrangement.
The film, while not as good and taking itself more seriously than the first, is still a fun movie. It still has what the first film offered, fun action and memorable characters.
The first characters are thankfully given justice, and are loyal to their previous incarnations. Jack is still the wacky pirate who makes things up as he goes along, Will is still the straight man, and Elizabeth is always trying to keep up.
None of the new characters, with the exception of Davy Jones and his crew, are particularly memorable.
Jones, while not as good as Barbossa, is still memorable and intimidating, with a design that’s unforgettable, made with CGI that was revolutionary at the time, and still looks OK. A special shout out has to go to the kraken. The film expertly shows why it is feared and how powerful it is.
The film’s action still has that stamp of quality the first had along with the disregarding of physics. A particularly memorable action scene is the three way sword fight at the end, a clever upping of the scales from the previous movie’s climax.
The movie still has some problems however. Lord Beckett’s plan is just ridiculous. He wants the heart of Davy Jones to control the sea, not to rule the world or anything, but to expand trade routes. This is the same series that has undead skeletons, people with aquatic creatures stuck to their faces, zombies, and ghost pirates, but somehow that is one of the most ridiculous things in the series.
This film also was where the franchise thought it was a good idea to start complicating things with all this lore and minutia. A great example of this is Davy Jones. Not only does he have control over the kraken, can only be killed if his heart is stabbed, is supposed ferry the dead to the afterlife, and can curse people to work for his crew for the next 100 years – on top of all of that, he can only step on land for a day every 10 years.
The curse in the first film was simple and understandable. The pirates were cursed with undeath and couldn’t become human until all the gold – along with the blood of whoever took the gold first – was given back to the treasure chest.
Another problem the film has is that it doesn’t feel like it ends, more like it just stops half way through in order to set up a sequel.
But despite its flaws, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is still a fun watch.
The third film, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007), is where things start to go downhill.
Since Lord Becket managed to successfully get the heart in the last film, he’s managed to use Davy Jones to almost completely wipe out pirates. Because of this, a meeting between the nine pirate lords has been called. Unfortunately Jack Sparrow is one of them, and he was eaten by the kraken in the last film. So Will, Elizabeth, a resurrected Barbossa, and the rest of the crew decide to try to rescue Jack from Davy Jones’s locker.
Before going into the negatives, let’s go into the few positives the film has.
The action is still well done and over the top, and a big enough spectacle to keep one entertained. Barbossa is just as great as he was in the first film, with great moments with Jack as they argue who’s in charge of the Black Pearl. And there are some funny, and cute references that actually get a chuckle out of me, like Keith Richard playing Jack’s father, and the sounds from the actual Pirates of the Caribbean ride playing when first arriving in Davy Jones’s Locker.
The first problem the film has is that it’s three hours long, with most of the running time not being taken up by exciting action, or witty dialogue, but a whole lot about the pirate politics and the code. Because if it’s anything people know about pirates, it’s how much they love following the rules of complex political systems.
Davy Jones is not nearly as cool as he was in the previous film.
Firstly, his kraken, his ace in the hole, and highlight of the previous movie, is killed off screen with no explanation. Secondly, throughout the entirety of the film he’s being told what to do by a bureaucrat which makes him look pitiful. It’s as if Sauron from Lord of the Rings had to answer to middle management. And thirdly they try to give him this sympathetic backstory but it doesn’t work and it boils down to his girlfriend literally stole his heart, and he’s been hung up on it.
The third film in this franchise, while definitely shaky could’ve been a decent place to stop the franchise, but the mouse had other plans
The fourth Pirates film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011, this time directed by Rob Marshall), is the most forgettable of the franchise.
Jack Sparrow is captured by Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his daughter Angelica (Penelope Cruz) to help them find the fountain of youth. And while that is going on Barbossa, who now works for the crown, is going after Blackbeard, because he cut his leg off and stole the Black Pearl.
This movie feels like a series of checklists that were made into a movie, with no actual thought put into actually making the audience care.
Despite being well acted and an entertaining enough villain, Blackbeard isn’t as cool or memorable as Barbossa or Davy Jones. He also knows voodoo for some reason, it’s never explained how or when he got his magical powers: he just has them.
The movie also has too much Jack Sparrow. Most of the film is just from his perspective, which is fine in moderation, but when it’s mostly him, it can get grating fast.
The film also tries to recreate the Will and Elizabeth romance with missionary named Philip (Sam Claflin) and a mermaid named Syrena (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), but it fails to get the audience invested and feels like it was thrown in there because the previous films did something similar.
The fifth movie in this franchise – which really should have stopped at No. 3 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (directed by 2017, and directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg).
Jack is once again roped into fighting a cursed crew. This time they’re ghosts led by a pirate hunter named Captain Salazar, (played by Jarvier Bardem), with the help of a young couple, consisting of Henry Turner (Will and Elizabeth’s son, played Brenton Thwaites) and Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), and Barbossa is there because the plot said so.
I could summarize this whole movie by saying, “It’s another Pirates of the Caribbean movie.”
Once again there’s a cursed crew, a young couple, action that disobeys the laws of physics, and Jack Sparrow is being wacky. But the film does some things to suck on its own.
The film does a Solo: A Star Wars Story, where they needlessly explain everything about the title character. In this case it’s Jack.
The magical macguffins and steps to use them feel like they were made up as the script writers went along.
While they do explain why Salazar and his crew are cursed, this time around the explanation leaves something to be desired. Basically they crashed in between two rocks. That’s it.
There’s this annoying subplot where Carina doesn’t believe in the magical or mystical and that makes no sense, seeing how the past four movies had magical elements all over the place.
The pirates’ movies are prime examples of diminishing returns. Each time they did the same thing over and over and each time they got worse and worse.
Patrick’s smile has been nominated for a Golden Globe award for its appearance in the forthcoming film: The Pirate Dentist: Curse of the Pearly Whites.