‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ Is the Splashiest, Summeriest ‘Pirates’ Of All

Like papa, like son, Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) turns his blade on Jack

It's A Pirates Life 5ever in 'Dead Men' !

Or in other words, a solid 'B'.

Thar be plot holes on the horizon in this latest swashbuckling Pirates adventure. And plenty plenty plenty of swordplay. Huzzah! Dead Men Tell No Tales has a back-to-basics, relatively streamlined plot, and a charming new lead, Henry Turner, which makes this installment much better than World’s End and Stranger Tides. In some ways this plays tribute to Curse of the Black Pearl.

The core group of characters is one way Dead Men Tell No Tales reflects Curse of the Black Pearl: we’ve got a plucky young man and  bold young woman in their early twenties who join up with a roguish pirate to break a curse. Close enough to the original premise where Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) was abducted by the skeletal undead Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to return the last Aztec gold coin to a cursed loot.

This time our band of seafarers takes to the ocean to try to find the mythical Trident of Poseidon.
It’s a very special diary that has the key to finding the location (more on that later) and Jack’s compass, once again, is a crucial part of the plot. Hasn’t this happened before? It’s linked to just about everything. In just about every Pirates. And this time, it has the ability to return Dead Man Tell No Tales big baddie, Salazar, to his mortal form. Pretty impressive for a compass that can’t point north. Do I detect a hint of lazy storytelling on the breeze? *sniffs*

Our new lead, Henry Turner (played by Aussie heartthrob Brenton Thwaites) has been determined to rescue his father Will (Orlando Bloom) from his cursed stint as captain of the Flying Dutchman, and to reunite him with his mother Elizabeth ( Knightley) since he was a young boy. Obsessed with learning everything he can about legends and lore and myths he sets his sights on the finding the fabled Trident of Poseidon. Not only can it just break curses, but whoever possesses this magic-imbued glorified fork also gains complete control over the seas.

Unlike Flynn Rider in Tangled, Jack's nose is not all wrong.

Naturally, the British Navy (again) set their sights on snatching this artifact up for themselves. So some of Dead Men Tell No Tales is split between their futile efforts to reach the trident, but really, they’re never truly in the game (again) or the running and their entire plotline could’ve been trimmed from the film. (aaand again *sigh*)  

An avid sailor, Henry has been a part of many British merchant ships but has a knack for getting into trouble. Not because of any attitude issues, but because he’s a hopeless dreamer who’s head is often in the clouds and neglects to tend to his current responsibilities. Thwaites performance combines plenty of heart with grit. He’s like a young Captain America of the seven seas, with his can-do attitude, lofty morals and sweet guy next door vibe. While sailing through the ominous Devil’s Triangle Henry urges the merchant crew to turn round at once. Irking one of his captains, Henry  and his “superstitions” is dismissed and tossed into the belowdecks jail. His instincts prove to be right on point as an undead crew of sailors descends on the ship.

The Dead Men Tell No Tales lead antagonist Captain Salazar comes face to face with him while he’s locked behind bars, and discovers that Henry is looking for Jack. Finding the “Sparrow” is Henry’s get out of jail free card and he’s released, the lone survivor of his slaughtered crew, to “tell the tale” of what happened.

Salazar (Javier Bardem) sicks his crew on whatever ships cross his path.

Salazar (not Slytherin, not Slytherin!) is the best Pirates baddie to date after Davy Jones. This Spaniard (Javier Bardem) has been doggedly hunting pirates his whole life, until he was turned into some half-live, half-dead, captain after sailing into the malevolent Devil’s Triangle after defeating one of the last fleets of pirates.  His brief victory is all for naught when he sees there’s a survivor. Young Jack Sparrow. Decades have passed as Salazar continues to roam the sea with his mutilated crew, trapped in a limbo between life and death, seething and raging and waiting to exact his revenge on Sparrow, the one that got away.

While recuperating from his injuries on a British-occupied island  Henry finally finds his pirate. Jack Sparrow, the once smouldering, scalliwag, is rather down on his luck in Dead Men Tell No Tales. His latest bank heist was a bust. He doesn’t have a seaworthy ship, he’s not raking in any doubloons or loot, and his first mate Gibbs and the rest of his crew see no reason to stick around and wait for this wasted pirate captain  has-been to get back to his senses. Oh and he’s marked for an execution. Henry also meets the third main protagonist, Carina Smyth. More than just the token female Carina (Kaya Scodelario, emoting far more successfully than she did in The Maze Runner) is an astronomer and an horologist. Her prized possession is a ruby-encrusted journal left to her by her father. It’s the key to reading a map that no man can read….which leads to… the Trident! She’s not another incarnation of Elizabeth Swan. Carina is not a privileged, pampered, governor’s daughter*, instead she’s a resourceful and scrappy gal who’s been getting around on her own through her wiles. She’s branded as a witch over and over again by the Brits because she’s so science-minded and forward-thinking.

Carina (Kaya Scodelario) and Henry are first captives, then endgame BAEs.

It’s at Carina’s hanging, a big public spectacle where multiple executions are set to happen within moments of one another, that she collides with Henry and Jack. Johnny Depp is back as the sassy, swaggering, rum-swigging Captain Jack Sparrow. Fueled by his trademark arrogance and charisma Cap’n Jack’s madcap escapades are in full form for the entire duration of Dead Men Tell No Tales. In a hysterical scene where he’s at the mercy of a guillotine, it’s only Henry’s rescue that allows both Carina and Jack (once again) to evade death’s grip. Jack Sparrow hasn’t changed one whit. But Depp’s over the top acting, and character continuity is still a success if not at moments, tiring. It’s the dynamic between Henry, the third generation of Turner’s that Jack has sailed with, Jack and Carina, as a trio, that makes Dead Men Tell No Tales palatable and float onwards.

Visual effects have always been a strength of the Pirates movies and that’s very true here as well. The designs of the Salazar’s undead crew leaves a big impact and unlike quite anything else we’ve seen. They’re decaying and cracking, with black blood that oozes from their mouths and crevices; they’re gruesome, eye catching and disturbing enough to shiver all the timbers. There are moments though when the special effects do bomb. One is when Salazar releases zombie sharks to attack Jack and Henry. It’s a ridiculous concept and the graphics are so weak  that the sharks could’ve been yanked right out from a SyFy original movie (Love ya SyFy, really I do! But Sharknado...) and it has an entirely different tone than the rest of the movie.

A horologist and a pirate walk into a bar . . .

As far as side characters go Paul McCartney has a funny cameo as Jack’s jailed songbird uncle. A little touched in the head he fires off dorky puns and is delightful in his very short scene. But there were also some characters in Dead Men Tell No Tales who are the definition of deus ex machina.

One especially contrived and nameless mystic lady’s (who is covered in tattoos that look like Sally’s stitches in The Nightmare Before Christmas) sole role is to conjure Jack’s compass, to give it to Barbossa who made a deal with Salazar: his life, for Sparrow’s. Because yup. He’s back in this movie again and more meh than ever before. It begs the question of continuity after all, wasn’t he on the Brits side in Stranger Tides? Well he’s still living is new charmed life. BUT he’s returned back to pirating...while wearing insanely grand wigs and dining in his lavish quarters while being serenaded by a personal quartet of musicians while he eats his meals. Oh and decorating his entire ship with row after row of gilded skulls laid into the walls. The big, bad, Barbossa from Curse of the Black Pearl has been neutered. He’s now got a fancy gold peg leg and eighteen pound balls. Erm, cannon balls. Nothing like some good dick humor to really bring the laughs. Especially when it’s at the expense of a character like Barbossa, the former much feared  living-dead skeleton first mate that usurped Jack’s reign of The Black Pearl and marooned him on an island, who was once scary but is now just superfluous. His big reveal at the end felt unnecessary and forced. There was more than enough going on in Dead Men Tell No Tales that we didn’t need screenwriters slapping his shock value arc at us last minute. I’m not going to spoil it here for potential viewers, but it’s lame with a capital L.  

Ultimately though, Dead Men Tell No Tales exceeds expectations for its fifth go around. This installment is full of curses and legends and lore, more energy than the anemic Stranger Tides with it’s over complicated and muddled plot lines. Dead Men Tell No Tales trims down the story and gives us  a splashy summer film that’s taken a turn away from the drama and seriousness of the earlier films.

One compass to rule them all.

There’s always been humor in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise but it’s never been more potent than it is here. Dead Men Tell No Tales dives headlong into comedy and has as many laughs and riotously funny scenes as the action scenes. It’s a giant leap up from the disastrous World’s End and Stranger Tides, but still only bears very slight resemblance to the original Black Pearl and hauntingly thrilling follow up, Dead Man’s Chest. This installment doesn’t have the same darkness and edginess that was such a huge part of the tone of Pirates. Those two films had strong horror elements and a twisty, turny, plot that kept us guessing a gasping. And has us genuinely fearing that the main characters could actually die. This Pirates is not an edge of the seat thriller or an entirely novel tale. Instead it’s a comedic, action-heavy beachy movie that dives right into the bombastic, fist-flying, franchise-following, guilty pleasure flicks that rule the cinemas during the Summer. Forgettable? Sure. But it’s also as fun and splashy as running barefoot through the grass with some spastic friends, hurling water balloons at each other and laughing all the while.

Jack and Will, Back in (the) Black (Pearl)!  Father/son resemblance at its finest.

*Don’t get me wrong. Elizabeth is my second favourite character after Will. I find it refreshing that Carina wasn’t presented to us as a Elizabeth 2.0, or a reboot of her which occasionally happens in franchises that go on as long as Pirates.

*All images from IMDB