Disney’s lucrative Pirates franchise may have meandered away from that innate charm that made the original so special in recent years, though newcomer Kaya Scodelario believes the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales represents an opportunity to take the swashbuckling series back to basics.
The Maze Runner starlet recently took time to talk more about Jack Sparrow’s latest high-seas adventure with Digital Spy, hinting that directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning are aiming to recapture the spirit of the 2003 original.
“It [does have] a lot more of the first movie, that’s what they wanted to bring it back to,” the actress said. “[The producers] want to take it back to the beginning again. They wanted it to have this epic journey, and for it to make sense, and for it to tie things up, and also lead to new storylines.”
For many, The Curse of the Black Pearl remains the high point of the longrunning series, and since then Pirates of the Caribbean has offered little more than diminishing returns. On board to play Carina Smyth in the 2017 feature film, Scodelario went on to expand on the nature of her own character, and what she brings to the table.
“[Carina] is an astronomer, and she is an academic. She’s fighting for the right to study at university, because women couldn’t at that time…So she’s on her own journey – looking for the trident of Poseidon – and she has a diary with clues, and she encounters Jack Sparrow along the way, and he messes everything up. As he does. And it’s fun!”
The actress is by no means the only new addition cramming up Dead Men Tell No Tales, with Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, David Wenham, Golshifteh Farahani and, much to our surprise, Orlando Bloom, all making up the cast.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is due to dock in theaters on July 7, 2017. But after so many sequels and meandering adventures, is it really possible that we could see the return of the original, swashbuckling Jack Sparrow? Time will tell.
