I got so bored that I gave up on my first viewing. Dead Men Tell No Tales (also known as Salazar's Revenge) is the latest instalment in the franchise, released in 2017 (six years after On Stranger Tides). And I can tell they're out of ideas.
The film takes place 22 years after the events of At World's End, introducing a new protagonist in the form of Brenton Thwaites as Henry Turner. The son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, Henry seeks The Trident of Poseidon, which he believes will free his father from his service as captain of the Flying Dutchman. To that end, he seeks the aid of Jack Sparrow, who is looking to recover the Black Pearl after finding it in a bottle from Blackbeard's magic. Unfortunately, Jack has been abandoned by his crew after a failed robbery in Saint Martin. When he barters his magic compass for a drink, he unwittingly frees Captain Salazar - an undead Spanish pirate hunter played by Javier Bardem - from the "Devil's Triangle" he'd been imprisoned in many years earlier. Salazar begins attacking Captain Barbossa's privateer fleet and enlists his aid in hunting Jack down. Meanwhile, Jack and Henry also team up with Carina Smyth, an astronomer and horologist played by Kaya Scodelario.
A lot of this film seems to be a re-hash of the previous films: Jack is trying to recover the Black Pearl; Henry trying to save his father from being Davy Jones is pretty much the same thing as Will trying to save his father; David Wenham plays a carbon copy of Norrington without the sense of honour an sympathy; and even Salazar's undead crew has pretty much been done before. I do quite like Salazar's backstory though, and it even serves as an interesting origin to Jack Sparrow. So why didn't they just make the film about that? I'd love to see an origin story story for Jack Sparrow. It just doesn't make sense that Salazar would escape from the Devil's Triangle if Jack ever relinquished his compass. He's done it before, in the previous films.
They also reveal that Carina is actually Barbossa's long-lost daughter, but he's reluctant to acknowledge it. I think they could have done more with that as well. I also like Jack's introduction: when the new Bank of Saint Martin is being unveiled, they find Jack asleep in the vault. With the governor's wife. His crew attempt to pull the vault away on horses, and end up taking the whole bank with them. I do quite like the action sequence, but I think it's gotten way too cartoonish at this point.
All in all, I think this one can be passed.
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