PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: SALAZAR’S REVENGE Review
- Adam Tye
- Jun 11, 2017
- 5 min read
The ‘Pirates’ franchise hobbles back into cinemas with this aggressively lame movie
A few days ago, I sat down with Rob and Junice to watch The Happening. For those of you blissfully unaware of this film, it stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, is directed by M. Night Shyamalan and is about a strange, plant-born toxin that causes people to commit suicide (I'm getting to Pirates, just give me a minute). It is bafflingly awful, filled with some of the strangest acting from good actors you will likely ever see in a movie and is made and edited with the apparent intention of making the film seem even more stupid than it already is. I could not tell you whether it was intended to be a joke, but a joke is what it is and Rob, Junice and I laughed our asses off for a pretty decent portion of its run time.
Yesterday, I watched Salazar's Revenge. For those of you blissfully unaware of this movie (and you would be blissful in that ignorance): it's about a guy trying to find another guy so he can do a thing and then a girl shows up and she wants to do a thing and there’s also a bad guy and ships and oh thank goodness the movie’s over. Until the halfway point of the movie, I could understand the impulse to chuck a two star review up this movie’s backside and call it a day. It’s not particularly badly made, there’s the odd nifty visual (though nothing approaching the original trilogy’s inventiveness) and so it feels like there’s at least some merit to it. But there is no merit to Salazar's Revenge. It is a shambling husk of a movie: one that is about nothing and contains very little joy or anything close to entertainment. It is that remarkably tedious beast of a film that is boring to watch and angry to contemplate afterwards. At the end of The Happening, as bad as that movie was, I felt a sort of fondness for the last couple of hours or so I had spent watching it. The same cannot be said of Salazar's Revenge.
In essence, Salazar's Revenge is about Will Turner’s son (I think his name is Henry?) trying to find the trident of Poseidon in order to free his father from the curse of the Flying Dutchman. Along the way he meets a girl who’s trying to find the same trident for…reasons…and Jack Sparrow and others come along for the ride even though they don’t actually do anything.
Our new characters, Henry(?) and girl (I can’t remember her name and I’m not going to Google it) are the carriers of most of the story and it seems, tragically, as though they have each been born without a sense of likeability. Henry, in particular, might be one of the most boring characters in a Hollywood movie I’ve seen in a long time. For a good while I was convinced he was the same actor from On Stranger Tides who fell in love with the mermaid. Apparently he isn't, but I remain unconvinced. Whatever the case, he’s literally Orlando Bloom Jr. in this movie, only Orlando Bloom had a personality to go along with his looks, whereas this guy does not.
If Henry is Orlando Bloom’s replacement, then the other character (I’m not being mean - I’ve asked my girlfriend and she can’t remember her name either) is Keira Knightley’s replacement. She has a bit more promise than Henry and is probably the most straightforwardly knowledgeable character in the whole film. But then nothing really happens with her. There’s a plotline involving her father that I’ll spoil later in this review, but rest assured that it goes nowhere and the payoff is thunderingly hollow. Also, despite her book smarts, she’s constantly undermined by every other person in the movie, so she’s not even a boon for strong female characters. Actually, now I think about it, she’s looking for the Trident of Poseidon, but doesn’t believe in supernatural things, so maybe she’s not that smart after all. For most of the film I just wondered why she was there.
Whilst you struggle to keep your attention on the new characters, you won’t be able to focus on anything but Johnny Depp. His character, Jack Sparrow, has been criticized as grating for a while now, but in this film, it actually becomes distracting. On Stranger Tides might have made a mistake in putting Jack as the main character of the film, but at least Depp still seemed to know how to play him. In Salazar’s Revenge, it feels like we’re watching Depp desperately try to impersonate the character he brought to life four movies ago (which was, itself, a loose impression of Keith Richards), rather than actually act.
A tired, awkward impression might actually be the best way to describe Salazar’s Revenge as a whole. It’s a shambles; a movie that’s about nothing. There’s not a single story or arc being in the entire film that leaves any sort of an impact and virtually no-one learns anything, with the exception of Barbossa, though it’s not a particularly great arc. Geoffrey Rush has remained the series’ most consistently enjoyable element and he tries his best to enthusiastically march through this film. His story involves learning that he’s the father of the main girl, feeling sorry for himself and then sacrificing himself to save her. It would probably have landed better if his daughter was a good character, or if they’d had some more meaningful scenes together. Instead you’ll just shrug it off.
Salazar’s Revenge is ultimately the natural creative conclusion of the 'Pirates' franchise. What started as a promising franchise gradually disintegrated until we’re left with this: a film so creatively bankrupt, filled with such awkward callbacks and cameos* to the previous movies that I struggle to think of it as anything but incredibly expensive fan-fiction. There are moments to enjoy: the odd neat visual an amusing bit featuring a guillotine come to mind, but the former never reaches the heights of the original trilogy and someone will eventually turn the latter into a GIF, so we can wave goodbye to those miserable reasons to see this movie. For those that absolutely have to see this (potentially) final movie in the 'Pirates' franchise, do what you have to do. For everyone else: spend your money and time elsewhere because this film sure as hell doesn’t care about the latter.
Verdict:
★
*I don't think I can adequately describe how aggressively insulting it is when Keira Knightley shows up at the end of the movie to do absolutely fuck-all. It’s the culmination of soulless money-grabbing nostalgia bait, wrangled into one facepalming cameo. Fuck this movie. Fuck it.
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