(Sorry for the hiatus, I sat on this review for a couple weeks while I’ve been enjoying the summer and looking for some fresh meat. I should be back on my regular schedule now.)
I recently saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and I am sad to say it did not hold up. After the great success of the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, which to date has spawned 3 sequels, 7 videogames, countless 3rd party knock offs of each, and revived the long struggling pirate genre; it is difficult to watch this series descend into mediocrity.
In 1967 Pirates of the Caribbean was added to the Disneyland lineup and was one of the last rides Walt Disney helped design before his death. Like most of the attractions at Disneyland, the themed lands dictated the subgenre of each attraction as opposed to being based on feature films. Over time more and more attractions became based on films and rides such as Pirates of the Caribbean became less attended by regular guests. By 1992 Pirates of the Caribbean was installed in 4 Disney parks as a classic attraction; however the dwindling attendance to many attractions gave Disney executive Dick Cook, then the Disney Studio Chief an idea. Instead of spending millions to build or redesign rides in the parks to coincide with current popular movies, they could make movies relevant to the old movieless attractions. This was one of the worst ideas to come out of Disney in the 1990s. This gave us the horrendous flops of The Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears. In the next few years we will also get a taste of a remake of The Swiss Family Robinsons and Jungle Cruise. I remember walking out of a movie and seeing for the first time the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl poster in my local cinema. My feelings at the time were somewhere between speechless confusion and dismay. How could they be so stupid? Do they have nothing better to do with their money? And who thought it was a good idea to hire Johnny Depp for a kids movie? I think I was in the same boat as a lot of people and Disney knew it. They pulled out all the stops and got together an amazing group to make Pirates of the Caribbean a big splash. And against all odds I still think this was one of the most fun movies of the last 10 years. I watched it again recently and it is still enjoyable after multiple viewings and nothing in the film dates it. This was truly one of Disney’s greatest triumphs and completely turned around their financial views on live action films. The less well received but more widely attended Dead Man’s Chest pulled in audience members like shanghaied sailors and took them for a ride that has since sent the franchise on a downward spiral.
There were several things going for Pirates of the Caribbean when it first came out. Warner Brothers had recently taken over the market for family films with the massive box office successes of the Lord of the Rings films and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at a time when Disney was living fat and happy off of the slave labor of Pixar and letting their own animation studios stagnate. Very quickly Disney executives realized that their current lineup of films needed some wind in their sails or they would permanently lose the market for big money family films. This drive to get back on top gave Pirates of the Caribbean all the effort they could muster and no corners were cut anywhere.
The soundtrack was a big part of the success of the first film. Hanz Zimmer was in charge of the soundtracks for all four Pirates movies. The theme “He’s a Pirate” completes the movie and Hanz Zimmer actually used its popularity to work on other projects such as Thunderbirds, which has an almost identical theme. This however has not helped the Pirates series along like it helped the first film. It seems like they have just been rehashing the same theme music with slight differences for all the movies most noticeably, in the most recent film. I’ve always enjoyed the music in these films but the ending credits really grabbed me. There were 4 new songs credited and 2 of them were traditional songs sung by the characters. The others were the new remix of the Pirates theme which I don’t care much for and Blackbeard’s theme which sounds suspiciously like the Imperial March from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
Johnny Depp is still the star of the show. From his first press release that he would be starring in a family movie, critics were wary of this casting choice since he was the star of such notables as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and had acquired a reputation for being an R rated actor. Depp however has young children like many aging actors in Hollywood and would like to be seen by his children on screen in a better light. While Depp’s Jack Sparrow character, (sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow) is the driving force of the series, he was one of the characters primary creators and compromised on his costume with studio executives only by removing 2 gold teeth. Sparrow‘s look and character were almost entirely up to Depp who has shown great love for the character as well as playing the part.
The writers all along have been Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio. These two have been a great team. While the previous several films have been their creations this film is actually based on the book On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Many of the elements of the story seem to be the same such as being captured by pirates searching for the fountain of youth. The film not being completely based on the book was a problem. There were many characters that were in the film but not the book and so character interactions had to be changed slightly to make everything work. The final result was less than perfect. The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film is scheduled to begin production and Terry Rossio was dropped from the writing staff. Gore Verbinski was another long time Pirates contributor who was dropped as the director for this most recent installment and replaced by Rob Marshall.
So what put the holes in this sinking ship? First off was the two parter of the second and third films. Like Lord of the Rings, they chose to bet on the series and film the first 2 sequels simultaneously. This rarely works out well. They brought back the same writing staff as before and they did a fairly good job but not as well as the first time around. There were fewer jokes, more special effects, and less Jack Sparrow…Captain Jack Sparrow, which was the most egregious offence to audiences. Instead the sequels focused more on the expanding Pirates of the Caribbean universe which stretches all the way to Singapore (very far from the Caribbean), and following the stories of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann our budding young lovers from movie one. These shifts signaled the downturn of the series. Depp’s performance was what sold the first film but they chose instead to sell the series on romance. After the popularity of the first film Orlando Blume and Kiera Knightly had to come back for a sequel but after their contracts were up they abandoned the series for fear of becoming type cast in the near future. This established a strong romantic theme to the series with the tragic love story between Davy Jones and Calypso as well so it was practically required to have a new love story in the fourth movie. In one fell swoop the series lost leading male and female characters as well as the main romantic storyline so Penelope Cruz was brought in to start a new romance with none other than Jack Sparrow. This probably wasn’t the best idea since it opens the door to Jack settling down at some point which would completely kill the series. It also means that half of Depp’s onscreen time is spent dealing with romantic issues and not being the quirky pirate that everyone came to see. Contrasted by the focus of marriage in the previous movies this film goes out of its way to bring attention to Jack’s sexual exploits which is a deviation from previous films and seemed very out of place in the series as well as in a Disney film. There was also the curious addition to the romance of the young missionary and the mermaid which I really expected to go somewhere. It seemed to me that they were only included to be the replacements for Blume and Knightly and the actors did a fair job with what they had to work with but their characters were poorly written and served little purpose in the film.
Possibly the film’s biggest flaw was the lack of dialog. One of the things that made the first film so enjoyable was its reliance on character interaction through snappy dialogue, banter, and reoccurring jokes like having a big hat. Very little of that has survived. Instead the films have been increasingly made for the international audience. Looking at the international box office numbers one finds that while international success of the first film was slightly higher than the domestic total the international numbers for the sequels are nearly twice the grosses for domestic ticket sales. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 set a box office record for foreign ticket sales in its first weekend. Part of this success was toning down the English specific jokes, working with simple dialog that translated well, and making up for the lack of verbal humor with eye popping special effects and exotic locations.
Unlike the first film Industrial Light and Magic has been heavily involved since Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and it really shows in this new installment. ILM’s involvement seems to have been the most publicized with the rock crabs from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End but I thought they did an amazing job at the animated ropes. It is a simple enough thing to animate but the quality of the animation was amazing. While I think Blackbeard’s strangest superpower was an awkward and forced addition I will admit that ILM did a good job at making it believable.
I mentioned earlier about the expanded Pirates universe. In the first film the idea of zombie pirates was incorporated to lend relevance to the zombie pirates in the ride. It had a certain freshness to it like this supernatural world was new to all the characters. However in the second and third movies it seems to side with the idea that any normal pirate would have vast knowledge of mystical practices, legends, and magical items. This reaches ridiculous proportions in the fourth movie with Blackbeard’s unexplained powers to steer his ship with his sword, summon the wind at command, control rope psychically, and to miniaturize captured ships and imprison them in bottles. The idea of pirates has also been vastly changed over the course of the films. Like any modern news story pirates are the highwaymen of the seas and the various pirates are implied to have massive criminal records throughout the series. However very quickly the film makers dissociated law breaking from piracy and instead labeled piracy as being a free-spirited sailor looking for treasure, adventure, and the next bottle of rum. Watching the fourth movie I suddenly realized that this isn’t a movie about pirates. It’s a movie about seafaring wizards! Many of them seem to have magical powers, there seem to be good pirates and bad pirates, and every movie so far has revolved around some kind of magical occurrence and the obtaining of the proper magical items to complete the ritual of the movie. And there you have it. Pirates of the Caribbean is the new Harry Potter. And just like in Harry Potter, the overarching theme that causes all the trouble is the obtaining of immortality. Without Voldamort’s quest for immortality we may have seen a wizard uprising but Harry’s inclusion in all of this is dependent on being connected to Voldamort’s personal quest for the preservation of his own life. In the first Pirates of the Caribbean, the characters were concerned either with the obtaining or shedding of immortality. In the second and third films the theme was continued with the plot of capturing Davy Jones’ heart, the key to his immortality, and now they come right out and say the theme is immortality by searching for the fountain of youth.
To be more critical of the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, there was little dialog that held up to previous installments, Jack was far less Jacky than in previous installments, it just wasn’t as funny as the previous installments. Are you noticing a pattern yet? The budget decrease from At World’s End of $50 million may not be entirely justified by the reception of the last two films but it shows in the final product. This series has kept up the visual aesthetics demanded of it by audiences but the substance has been sucked out. While The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is still one of my favorite movies I have no hope left in me for any more good sequels.
Movies Referenced:
Announced-The Swiss Family Robinson
Announced-Jungle Cruise
2011-Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
2007-Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
2006-Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
2004-Thunderbirds
2003-The Haunted Mansion
2003-Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
2002-The Country Bears
2001-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
2001-2003-Lord of the Rings Trilogy
1998-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1980-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
