Don't slam the door on your hot pirate girlfriend

BPot #143:

Seeing a movie with a friend.

It's always nice to go see a midnight premiere with a big group and have masses of people, some of which are other groups you know, but sometimes it's nice just to go see a movie on Thursday night with one good friend and laugh really loudly in the near empty theatre. Extra points if it's totally empty and you can do whatever you want.

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and were pleasantly surprised. It was a great improvement over the last two, which were loose stepping stones on a slippery slope down to awful. It took a couple leaves out of Curse of the Black Pearl, which was better, but noticeably similar in at least two scenes. Still, a definite improvement.

One place this movie succeeded where the last two failed was that it was more of a standalone story, much like the first one. Unlike Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, it did not try to continue a drawn out storyline eked from loose ends of the first film in order to make a trilogy. It leaves you with just enough little details that another more-or-less new storyline could be developed (evidence that a "Pirates 5" is forthcoming).

Strangely, I did not once find myself wondering where Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann and all those characters from the past three films were, a fact I find surprising in retrospect. Indeed, the only three consistent characters from the previous films were Captain Jack Sparrow, of course, along with Captain Barbossa and the portly, mutton chopped Mr. Gibbs. Standing in for Orlando Bloom in the post of muscular heartthrob was Sam Claflin, who has nothing else but looks in common with the swashbuckling Turner as his character, Philip Swift, a young missionary captured by Blackbeard.

While, on the whole, good, (a B+ I would say) there were a few points of the film's colorful fabric that varied from improbable to downright unnecessary. For one, Blackbeard, who has someone undefined magic powers, has a couple of undead crewman that serve no purpose whatsoever but to give the makeup artists something to do. The most attention they get is during one of the many sword battles of the movie; a soldier stabs one through the chest and watches in horror as the zombie pirate gruesomely draws out the blade and uses it to kill its former owner. Like I said, it hearkens back to the cursed and invulnerable pirate crew from the first film. There were a few plot points that made no significant addition except a few lines of witty banter, but this was not overwhelming, as it was in the third movie, which was entirely ruled by unnecessary explosions and witless banter.

One hopes that some of the occurrences left unexplained were done so intentionally, and will be attended to in the apparent next film. Hopefully Bruckheimer and his team have learned from their mistakes and will follow up with a new installment to the series that is at least as good as On Stranger Tides was.

Image from here (it's a good laugh).