What do we want from a movie franchise? Simply more of what we liked about the first one, with some new settings and dialog? Or do we want to watch a fictional world grow and expand, using familiar characters to take us in new directions?
If your answer is the former, then Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is going to satisfy. If the latter is more your to your liking, there are going to be issues—despite all of the changes, this movie is, at its core, still very much a part of the Pirates franchise.
The loss of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley goes entirely without comment by the movie, and only two of the secondary cast from the earlier movies are present (Gibbs and a certain monkey). Even the Black Pearl barely shows up. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) are the only characters retained. And yet On Stranger Tides is very much made from the same stuff as the original trilogy.
Since the events of At World’s End, Captain Barbossa has lost a leg and has hired himself out as a privateer in service to the king of England. When the king learns that the Spanish have learned the location of the Fountain of Youth, Barbossa is put in charge of getting there first.
©Walt Disney Studios
The movie begins in London, where Sparrow is working to break Gibbs (Kevin McNally) out of prison. And when Sparrow learns that someone has stolen his identity to hire a crew, he decides he’ll take that boat for himself. This is how he meets Angelica (Penelope Cruz), a love from his past, and ends up dragooned into the crew of the feared Captain Blackbeard (Ian McShane), who controls his ship through magic.
Of course, Blackbeard is also seeking the fountain for his own reasons and so, three groups are all headed for the same place. Perhaps there’ll be some conflict along the way?
Considering that all of the people involved are pirates, suprisingly little time is actually spent on boats. After dealing with some violent mermaids (in my view, the best action set piece in the movie) it is a land-based trek through the mountains of Hawaii (standing in for something more Caribbean).
Other than the over-long, ultimately needless escape sequence at the beginning of the movie, there isn’t actually anything bad about On Stranger Tides. If this were the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, I suspect I’d have reacted much more enthusiastically. But it isn’t—it’s the fourth movie, and there was instead a strong sense of, “I’ve seen this before… yeah, yeah, a drunken effeminate pirate.”
Fortunately, Johnny Depp does not just phone it in to cash another check. The character also handles the migration of second lead to sole lead with integrity. Where before he could flit in an out as a clown while Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann advanced the story, he is now the one in almost every frame. It took a while for new-to-the-franchise veteran director Rob Marshall and the writers Ted Elliot and the screenwriters (Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio) to catch the right tone with him, but by the second act it starts to click.
Geoffrey Rush, however, is almost buffoonish in his performance and scenery chewing. I must admit that I was disappointed Barbossa didn’t meet a painful end. Penelope Cruz looks good in a bodice and does fine, while Ian McShane is a great addition. Listening to him deliver lines and make speeches, one is tempted to believe that the English language developed simply so that one day he could speak it.
©Walt Disney Studios
At 128 minutes, On Stranger Tides is a bit bloated and could easily have shed an action set piece and a few expository scenes, but isn’t painfully long. You may, however, need a bathroom break before sitting through all the end credits to see the obligatory post-credits scene.
I don’t regret seeing the movie, and I think it will live on in my memory much better than did At World’s End (which I reviewed positively but have since soured on), but it did not leave me eagerly awaiting the next two films already planned.
