Are you sick to the gills of Captain Jack Sparrow yet? I sure am. The original Pirates of the Caribbean was great, but with each sequel the franchise has gotten gradually worse, with On Stranger Tides a bloated, incoherent and largely unwatchable critical disaster. Nevertheless, it somehow grossed a billion dollars at the global box office, leaving the franchise as un-killable as one of its skeleton pirates.
And so, here we are, with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales poised to swashbuckle onto screens in May, helmed by Kon-Tiki directing duo Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning. Thing is, that little-seen film was actually pretty great – proving (at minimum) that the pair can handle high seas drama.
Anyways, Disney have now released this “First Look” featurette for the Dead Men Tell No Tales, which takes us onto the gangplanks of the latest movie. Interestingly (perhaps mercifully), it doesn’t feature a huge amount of Johnny Depp. It does, however, confirm that Brenton Thwaites’ Henry Turner is indeed the son of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley’s series mainstays.
It also seems there’s to be a decent amount of practical effects in the film, an interesting development given how much the franchise has pioneered seamlessly combining actors and CGI costumes. We also get a nice look at Javier Bardem’s Captain Salazar, who’s some new kind of supernatural pirate (neither skeleton, fish-man or voodoo) that looks as if he could use some time in the tanning machine.
We’ll find out whether this increasingly creaky franchise still has its sea legs on May 26th, when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales sails into wide release.
