Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Tyler, Josh, Jordan, Michael, Naomi, Alex, Kyla, John, Kim, Paul

Rob Marshall needs to not turn everything into a musical. Granted there was only 3 songs and one dance number but still, not in my pirate movies please. The one advantage he does have is he's buddies with Judi Dench so she shows up for a funny little cameo.

There was a little Gore but not enough Verbinski. Gone are the fantastic creature effects and big action sequences. We're left with people walking around the jungle talking at each other in 3D. Ok that's not entirely true, the best sequence involves a mermaid hunt and the mermaids are done very well indeed.

But not much else connected with me. The forced love story between the young guy and the mermaid captive didn't amount to anything. The new character of Blackbeard is not nearly as intriguing as Barbosa or Sparrow. Penélope Cruz is in there somewhere too.

So Tim Powers wrote a book called On Stranger Tides and after 3 huge films the writers were obviously out of any ideas to continue the franchise so they appropriated his book, chucked in their characters and ended up with this. It's small in scale, more on par with the first film and thankfully cuts down on the excess of characters and plots but didn't have much fun with the new ones. There were hardly any nods to the other films either. It's very much it's own thing.

The 3D was good, only one or two shots where the compositing was given away (the sky was in front of the ocean horizon... an odd vision indeed.)

Despite a few good moments it didn't leave me with a very satisfying feeling. If it is indeed the first of a new trilogy as IMDB suggests then maybe it will lead to bigger and better things. But it's not satisfying on its own.