Release Date: May 26th, 2017
Starring: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush
Director: Joachim Ronning, Espen Sandberg
Pre-Trailer Thoughts: The Pirates series had an incredibly strong first entry before devolving into one of the most unnecessarily confusing, tonally disparate, and overly long films series ever (still raking in billions of dollars all the while). And yet, the fanbase for these films remains about as strong as when the series began 14 years ago. The addition of Javier Bardem as a new adversary at least gives me some hope for a reason to go watch a series that I gave up on over a decade ago. – JTM
Rate the Trailer: 2 out of 5. While the sense of action and adventure these movies usually deliver on is all there, something was just…off. I think the appearance of Will Turner and Elizabeth’s son Henry and his love interest Carina makes this the start of what Disney hopes to be Pirate of the Caribbean: The Next Generation. But all this has done is remind me of the same attempt last year by Independence Day: Resurgence to combine old cast members with newer, younger heroes that turned into a total disaster. Glimpse we see of flashbacks to a young Jack Sparrow (basically wearing the same clothes as he always does but now with no beard) seemed so touched up to try and make this young actor look like tiny Johnny Depp it dipped into the uncanny valley. – JTM
Theater, Rent, Undecided, No Thanks: No Thanks. All the goodwill I felt towards this series after The Curse of the Black Pearl dried up pretty quickly with the increasingly confounding sequels. This new installment looks to just compound upon the confounding and deliver another summer mess. – JTM
