Six years since its last showing -- On Stranger Tides -- was released in 2011, the Pirates Of The Caribbean is back yet again this week in Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth instalment of Disney's whimsical pirate adventure franchise.
While undoubtedly better than its universally criticised predecessor -- with a very clear attempt to return to all the things that once made the series great -- Dead Men feels like the last gasps of a desperate has-been, reminding its audience of its former glory by rehashing old characters and story beats without any of the charm and energy that made it so special all those years ago. Like all of its undead pirate antagonists, cursed to roam the seas for eternity, Dead Men actually kind of lives up to its name, feeling like a soulless husk of the surprisingly beloved swashbuckling fantasy it used to be.
Dead Men Tell No Tales reunites us with the eccentric captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), as he tries to find an ancient sea relic to break a curse surrounding the undead pirate-hunter Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) in order to save himself from said undead pirate-hunter's wrath, as well as appease his unruly crew with some old-fashioned looting. Along the way, he is aided by a reluctant Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the teenage son of his old friend Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), self-trained astronomer Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) and his best-friend-slash-nemesis Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), who each wants to find the relic for their own individual reasons.
If all that sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it all more than once. Be it Barbossa in the first film, Davy Jones in the sequels, or even -- after a fashion -- Blackbeard in the fourth, every antagonist in the series have been undead (or, in Blackbeard's case, simply undying) pirates who have a grudge with Jack Sparrow for one reason or another. Jack Sparrow, despite his exploits and notoriety, still struggles to keep together a crew (the same crew, mind, he has been with since the first film), and has to be convinced, coerced and bribed to go after a magic artefact (Aztec gold, Davy Jones' heart, Fountain of Youth) that could save his life. He is accompanied by a reluctant young man (William Turner, that preacher who gets with a mermaid and now Will's son), who falls in love with an equally reluctant young woman (Elizabeth Swann, the mermaid and now Carina). In the end, Jack ends up saving the world's oceans while ending up with nothing to show for it, and a contented crew who will most likely be unsatisfied with old Jack's captainship again by the time Pirates VI rolls around.
In short, Dead Men Tell No Tales feels like a lazy rehash of old ideas. The plot seems to just dejectedly tread through a checklist of old Pirates Of The Caribbean hallmarks without even the guise of effort. Watch it if you must, just know that nagging feeling of déjà vu you have throughout the film's two-hour-plus duration isn't just you.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, Orlando Bloom
Directed by Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
