Your Disney Lawsuit link is broken

I suspect that JB could have written this review without even seeing the movie. I think most of us smelled this one coming a long time ago.

The first movie was a lot of fun, and that allowed me to tolerate the flaws in the next two. But there's no way they're going to sucker me into the multiplex with #4.

It certainly reads like he had already planned out what he was going to write before walking into the theater. Plenty of snarky jokes, mini-rant about summer blockbusters as product, very little detailed discussion of the film itself. No mention of Ian Mcshane? That seemed like spot-on casting.



This is my hope going into the film. The first one, while definitely overlong, was good fun, and while the second film dropped off a bit, it still had some entertainment value. The third film, however, was absolute rubbish, a bloated, violent mess that crashed and burned on its own self-importance. Berardinelli overrated the second film by a half-star and the third film by at least a whole star, so I'm taking his opinion of this new one with a grain of salt.

The way I see it, if the film can recapture the excitement and sense of fun from the first entry, then it will be worthwhile. Is it a completely unnecessary product? Sure. Doesn't mean it can't be good fun as well.

So hands up if you went to see this movie NOT thinking it would just be 'product'?

I'm not saying this is a bad description of course; half the movies out there were made to cash in on something but such a motive has not always had bad results.

Following the path of logic where one can 'predict' the quality of a movie based on its perceived aims, what will people make of Finchers 'The girl with/who...' remake? Logically it will be a waste of time, since it's already obvious that he has just remade the movie and not readapted the source novel yet people will still flock to see it probably out of sheer curiosity.
I find it very hard to see how anyone could go to see the movie not knowing what to expect, as with 'Pirates'.

Also 2 stars out of 4 isn't the same as 5/10. That's not how I remember JB describing his star system (2 out of 4 means he only half recommends others to see it). Please correct me if I'm wrong, JB?

They get paid better than me.

Actually, when writing the review, I kept waffling back and forth between *1/2 and **. I eventually decided on ** because the film is more tedious and mediocre than it is outright *bad*.

Based on that trend, it would mean I overrated this film by a star-and-a-half. Yikes!

Two out of four means it's the lowest form of recommendation I can give - probably at home late at night when channel surfing. Two stars is not a recommendation if it requires an investment of anything other than time to see it. (The effort of going to a theater or the cost of a ticket/rental.)

*1/2 is not recommended under any circumstances. **1/2 is considered a "qualified recommendation."

I went to see it because I haboured hopes it might actually have taken some of the good stuff from Tim Powers novel, On Stranger Tides. I should have stayed home. This is a farrago of rubbish. You can see how they could have made a good movie out of the ideas. Unfortunately, what with zombies, vampiric mermaids and a pirate magician that can capture real ships and put them in bottles, it would have qualified as R-rated and scared everyone who dared see it. As it stands, McShane is a disaster and Penelope Cruz closely follows behind in the underwhelming stakes as her English is too wooden to make anything of the lines given to her. Depp and Rush are on autopilot so the boring bits outweigh the mildly exciting bits by a factor of 3:1. Not recommended as the music is too loud and disturbs sleep.

What about Roman Polanski's "Pirates' movie?

I liked the original Pirates. It wasn't great cinematic art. But with a title like Pirates Of The Caribbean and Johnny Depp in the lead role, you know it'll be fun. And it was. Of course, it was originally designed as a one-off. But it became a hit and Disney saw dollar signs. It took me a while to get around to seeing the second and third Pirates. When I did it became painfully obvious that they were trying to stretch things as far as they could. I'd give the original Pirates ***1/2 and the two sequels ***. It wasn't as bad a fall-off as The Matrix was. But it still represented a downfall in quality.

This one just screams "contractual obligation" at the top of its lungs. If I end up seeing it I will definitely wait until DVD. I saw all three of the original Pirates films on DVD so no big loss.

Note to Vex: Regarding the Pirates movies we were lucky. They could've made 4 Country Bears movies or 4 Haunted Mansion movies and they might have if the originals of both of those hadn't bombed worse than a B-29 running on grapefruit juice. And they could still make a whole series of movies based on "It's A Small World". But let's not give them any ideas.

Well Disney is actually planning to reboot Haunted Mansion(which I didn't mind so much, guess i'm just a sucker for Eddie Murphy, i'll watch that film over any of the Pirates films ANY day)

"It's a Small World" might make a good horror film, considering the ride was one of the creepiest and most unsettling experiences of my life.

... and there in lies the reason that the studio hoped to reach $114m and it's now looking like a struggle to get to $90m

Oh happy day, hopefully this is the last of this junk

Rob

Indeed!

I'm intrigued that there has not been a single post from anyone who has seen the film.

My kids have shown little interest and they liked one and two. I feared that I would be dragged along.

Rob

Then here I am I saw the film on Friday... and I'm pretty much in agreement with James. Johnny Depp is playing the role on auto-pilot, Penelope Cruz's character was boring, Ian McShane was disappointing (a little intimidating but nevertheless not particularly memorable) and the film had simply too little plot for such a bloated runtime. Really, there were too many swordfights (after four movies, how many more of these can we enjoy?) and it simply didn't feel like too much fun to me.

On the other hand, it's pretty to look at, it's harmless, the two cameos are fun and the sub-plot involving the mermaid and the muscular priest, while not memorable, had some potential. (Still, like James said, these new characters actually made me miss Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, something that I'd never thought would happen.)

Hi Sebastian

Did you expect a good movie when you plonked down your cash?
I'm not knocking you personally, just confused about why someone would pay to see this.

Alot of people obviously did, as it took $90m in 3 days here in the US! That means over 10 million admissions!
Cheers
Rob

This is considerably below what Disney was hoping for. In fact, if you do the math and subtract the 3-D/IMAX surcharge, the number is a less-than-overwhelming $69M. So, in an apples-to-apples comparison, it fared worse on its first weekend out than FAST FIVE did on its first weekend out (although better than THOR which, with the surcharge removed, scored only about $50M).

James,

The numbers are below their hopes for sure, but any which way you look at it, 9-10 million people saw this in 3 days. Makes me sad.

I cannot remember being so completely uninterested in a set of summer blockbusters. Green Lantern? Xmen the beginning or whatever? Captain America? Transbloatedeffex Dark Side of the Moon? Fast 5? Pirates 4? Planet of the Apes 15? Conan the reboot?

It's depressing even typing them out

Rob

PS - I still have over 400 of the great movies to see - so I won't starve

No kidding on both points. Last summer the movies I was most looking forward to were Inception and The Expendables. One turned out to be great, one did not.

I try not to get nostalgic. But I find myself reflecting on a few weeks in the fall of 1994 when it seemed like a lot of people my age were flocking to a movie called Pulp Fiction, not heading for the theaters to be jolted by some cheap amusement park ride.

Of course everyone's heard the blame Spielberg and Lucas chants for the current direction of Hollywood films. Of course those chants are false. It's simple film economics. To the studios it's not about art: it's product. I know it, you know it and the studios sure know it. If we want to blame anyone for the current direction of cinema, let's blame Jerry Bruckheimer. Or better yet blame ourselves for shelling out for tickets to his mindless fluff.