Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

[prodigy]

I guess it could have been a lot worse. Cut for spoilers, but it's not that long on account of I don't have that many feelings about this particular movie.

The Good: PotC is a pretty-to-look-at franchise in general. Playing up Jack and Gibbs' bromance was actually kind of adorable (nosebeep) and sort of long-overdue given how much shit Gibbs puts up with from him. Philip/Syrena storyline was genre-appropriate and I hope they bring both of them back if they do a PotC 5. Skeleton prow of Queen Anne's Revenge. Use of the Queen Anne's Revenge in general. Geoffrey Rush makes everything entertaining. Monkey in bottle. Movie actually steadily got better as it progressed, not worse, unlike a Moffat episode. Inclusion of Gillette and the dude who's not Gillette but is more attractive.

The Bad: The crappiness of the beginning: incoherency, Jack Sparrow overpowered stunt after Jack Sparrow overpowered stunt, gratuitous fat joke, how long it took to get to the plot. All the fridge logic. So much fridge logic. Why would a privateer vessel be staffed by navy officers? Why did Blackbeard's ship have a flame cannon? Why did he have all the powers ever? Why did Jack have to jump off that cliff? Why was Angelica dressing up as Jack? Why were everyone's motivations so impossible to keep track of? Why did this movie have as little connection to the previous three as 2 and 3 did to 1? Why were Blackbeard and Angelica's personalities so messy and confused? Why did he put ships in bottles? Why didn't Barbossa just cut the ropes holding him? Why would a privateer vessel be staffed by navy officers?? Deaths of Gillette and not-Gillette. Existence of a PotC 4 at all. Expecting us to believe Penelope Cruz is both agemates with Johnny Depp and Ian McShane's daughter.

The Miscellaneous: I don't think "On Stranger Tides" is a good name for a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, personally. Like, "The Curse of the Black Pearl" had the right idea -- kind of campy swashbuckler-retro-sounding and does exactly what it says on the tin. Should've been something like, "The Quest for the Fountain of Youth."

Ah, back when there was just one movie and it had some concept of narrative economy and it was good! When everything was skeletons and nothing hurt.

Comments

[relia]

THIS MOVIE NEEDED MORE MINIONS.

[thez]

Ah, back when there was just one movie and it had some concept of narrative economy and it was good! When everything was skeletons and nothing hurt.

I loved the first movie. I loved it a lot. Why could they not make that happen three more times?

[prodigy]

I know, right? It's gotten awkward to be a fan of the first movie -- PotC: Curse of the Black Pearl is literally one of my favorite movies (as opposed to "one of my favorite movies to list on a bio or in a job interview") due to its solid high-adventure swashbuckling fun factor. But now if I mention that I have to go out of my way to mention I don't love the others, which will just make me sound like the kind of tool who has to mention that they don't like the sequels. Which... I am. But I don't want it to be obvious, okay.

[metonymy]

I think I'm just going to rewatch the Jack Davenport/Keira Knightley commentary on the first one instead of going to see OST. It'll save me eight bucks I could use to watch Thor again.

And I figured they used "On Stranger Tides" to refer back to the book by Tim Powers, but it sounds like they didn't use much of the book beyond "Blackbeard searches for Fountain of Youth," so.... why keep that as the subtitle? HOLLYWOOD, YOU MAKE NO SENSE.

[prodigy]

Probably a good choice. I'm kind of a completionist and couldn't bear not knowing, but the absence of Will or Elizabeth was... glaring, and made the whole thing jarring and more like someone's weird PotC fanfic than an entry in the PotC franchise. Still, Will and Elizabeth did not really improve the quality of the last two movies either, so it's not really downhill per se.

Seriously, I wish they'd just give the whole thing a rest. They now live in a world of so many cluttered fucking magical elements that I don't know how everyone doesn't know about magic at this point.