The BRWC Review – Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge

22nd May 2017

It’s safe to say expectations weren’t optimistic when Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl launched in 2003. However, it won over audiences with its fun, frothy, swashbuckling antics, a couple stellar performances and a rousing score. Then, going the way of The Matrix sequels, Gore Verbinski shot Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End back to back, releasing them a year apart. Bigger, louder, swashbuckle’ier and way more convoluted, these sequels made for a fitting end to a franchise burning twice as bright for half as long. Jump ahead four years and On Stranger Tides failed to live up to expectations, wasting a marvellous Ian McShane as Blackbeard and Penelope Cruz, who played his daughter. But On Stranger Tides broke $1Bn at the Box Office, ensuring the further adventures of Jack Sparrow and his crew.

Six years on and another shift in directors has led us to what is the least remarkable Pirates entry to date. The narrative rehashes elements from the first film, with plot-holes a mile wide. Emotional beats are bereft of build-up, franchise mythologies are swept aside and we’re left with a big, dumb, spectacle akin to the Transformers movies. Newcomers to the series Brendan Thwaites and Kaya Scoldelario are as inoffensively handsome as Sam Claflin and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey from the previous instalment. It astounds me that Disney continue to find actors blander than Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley circa 2003, but here we are. As deliciously sinister as Javier Bardem can be when he’s working with the likes of Sam Mendes or The Coen Brothers, here the titular Salazar is yet another shameful waste of a superb talent, and the less said about poor David Wenham the better.

But make no mistake, it doesn’t matter how many handsome, young faces or respected actors they place in villainous roles, most people are buying the ticket for Captain Jack Sparrow. It’s amusing to think that his performance in the first instalment was considered such a risk by studio execs, but his (now) iconic look, his Keith Richards’esque drawl and penchant for rum have made the character as recognisable as any Disney princess. In the early 90s, before taking on the role of Batman a second time, Michael Keaton said he would only portray the role if he was satisfied he wasn’t just doing an “impression of Michael Keaton as Batman”. It’s taken me nearly 30 years to understand what he meant by that, but sure enough, Salazar’s Revenge features Johnny Depp doing an impression of Johnny Depp playing Captain Jack Sparrow. It’s peculiar, as if he’s just going through the motions. Elsewhere, Geoffrey Rush is practically sleepwalking as Barbosa, but Depp’s performance gives the impression that he’s forgotten how to embody the role.

It’s almost a redundancy to say the visual effects are incredible. The first two Pirates sequels marked a huge leap in CGI and it really has become impossible to notice the seams. The de-ageing of Depp (as seen in the trailer) is eerily-good but overall, I found the IMAX 3D experience to be lacking when compared to the recent Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 or Kong: Skull Island.

A couple kinetic and giddily frantic sequences aside, the pacing is oddly languid, losing much of the spirit and energy of its predecessors. Despite being wholly critic-proof and likely to break $1Bn at the Box Office, Pirate5 of the Caribbean feels like a franchise farewell as returning characters receive closure but there’s a definite sense of everybody “going through the motions” in this dull, repetitive sequel.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge is out May 25th

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