Pirates of the Caribbean 4 occupies a unique place in Pirates of the Caribbean history, in that it’s the only movie in the series I’ll never watch again. I kid but like, not really. The first two Pirates movies are excellent, the third one is watchable but too reliant on CGI, and the fifth one one at least makes sense, meaning it’s a helluva lot better than the fourth. Looking ahead to the Margot Robbie-led Pirates spin-off, I just want it to be nothing like the bad Pirates - it kind of goes without saying that I’d like this movie to be good. But Pirates of the Caribbean 4 feels in its own way like a spin-off, with Jack leaving a lot of the original trilogy behind for a new adventure. I hope Robbie’s version avoids its many, many mistakes.
All-female reboots were the big thing a few years ago, and while it feels like the Black Pearl has sailed on that trend, perhaps this still has some promise. After all, Daisy and Peach still need their Mario spin-off, so we can’t be done with it yet. That said, I wouldn’t have picked Pirates of the Caribbean as the horse to bet on. Five films already feels like two too many to make when your inspiration is a campy theme park ride, and there’s a sixth Jack Sparrow one in production too.
Clearly though, someone in Hollywood likes me. If you were going to make a Pirates movie specifically for me, this is how you’d do it. Robbie has apparently pushed for queer representation in the film, meaning her Pirates movie is going to be a gay Harley Quinn pirate adventure - that’s just Mad Libs for ‘reasons I’d watch a movie’. I’m basically imagining Jennifer’s Body but with pirate ships instead of demons, which means it’s on track to be a top ten film of all time.
If it is going to be queer though, it will probably have a love story of some sort - P.S. Disney cast Margot Robbie and Kristen Stewart as Anne Bonny and Mary Read, please and thank you. Whatever this love story is, it needs to avoid the huge stinking mess of a romance in Pirates 4. In the first three movies, the love story was Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, and it was… fine. Good, even. Not a tale for the ages, but certainly a tale for six hours of popcorn flick fun. These characters aren’t in Pirates 4 though, so instead it’s a random sailor whose personality we never learn, and a mermaid who doesn’t appear to have any personality in the first place. They look at each other in a vaguely romantic way, then at the end of the movie when the sailor is injured, she pulls him down into the watery depths, where he presumably dies from drowning faster than he would from his injuries. There’s some ‘mermaids are magic’ mumbo jumbo that implies she’ll heal him, but then what? He’s a regular human being, he can’t live underwater. Naff. Naffer still, I’ve probably spent more time thinking about it here than the suits who commissioned this movie ever did.
Then there’s the mumbo jumbo itself. Pirates movies have always included fantasy, and like all fantasy - especially the type aimed at younger audiences - there’s a bit of suspension of disbelief required. Even the first two movies have a plot hole here, a stunt that defies the laws of physics there. But on a very basic level, for a story about undead pirates, they made sense. Pirates 4 does not.
This nonsense starts, as you might expect, right at the start. The opening scene is Jack in disguise as a judge, except he’s not in disguise - he’s very clearly Jack Sparrow, guyliner and all. Nobody notices until he’s eventually caught because his getaway driver had been bribed, but if they knew he had a getaway driver, why let him get away? Why not just arrest him there? Silly Billys.
I don’t have time to go through everything wrong with Pirates of the Caribbean 4, but I do want to talk a little bit about the central mystery. They want to find the Fountain of Youth, but not to become youthful - they want to have eternal life. No, they don’t go to the Tree of Life, the expected destination for such a wish. It’s the Fountain of Youth. Like going to SpecSavers and asking them for a hot dog. That’s not all though. The Fountain only works with a mermaid tear, which people discovered… somehow. You also need two chalices, one with the tear and one without, so one person can drink the tear chalice and become youthful - I mean, have eternal life - and the other will drink the regular chalice and have nothing happen. This exists for no reason other than an extremely predictable, farcical twist around which chalice is which. Again, naff.
I don’t think Margot Robbie’s girl power Pirates movie will change the face of cinema, but if it avoids being like Pirates of the Caribbean 4, it will at least be watchable. Surely it can't be worse.