Sunday, August 18, 2024

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

 


Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth and likely final installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Before the allegations made against Johnny Depp by  Amber Heard were exposed, it was hard to tell if the Pirates franchise would ever truly be over until Johnny Depp decided he did not want to do any more of them. It seems, however, that this will be the final movie. This one was released in 2017 and starred Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, and Kevin McNally. The main focus of the story is the search for Poseidon's trident, which allows whoever wields it, power over the seas. Javier Bardem is the new "big bad", Captain Espinoza, who has a history with Jack Sparrow. Geoffrey Rush reprises his role as Barbosa, and many of the original supporting characters appear as well (e.g., Kevin McNally as Gibbs). Thwaites plays Henry Turner, the son of Will and Elizabeth, and Scodelario plays an astronomer (who is accused of being a witch) who is trying to find the trident to follow a map her father left for her. 

The 4K set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The movie looks and sounds great in the UHD format, and it is a reference-quality release. There are awesome visuals that are a mix of practical and CGI, and they really pop in the UHD format. The UHD disc has just the movie, and the regular Blu-ray disc has the extras. The extras include over an hour of making-of and behind-the-scenes material, a gag reel, deleted scenes, and a couple of previews. A pretty good amount, especially with less and less bonus material being put out with the physical discs these days.

Overall, I think the movie is good, even if it is derivative (at times) of parts of the other movies. Assuming this is the final movie in the series, it does a good job telling its own story while having callbacks to and essentially finishing the Will and Elizabeth story (both Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly have cameos in the film). The younger actor's roles were clearly meant to mirror, but not outright copy, the roles of Bloom and Knightley in the first movie. Depp can easily step back into what has become an iconic character without missing a beat. It would have been nice to incorporate Orlando Bloom into the movie more, as there was certainly a pretty easy way to do so, but from what I remember reading back when it was announced that the movie would be made, he was not really interested in more than a cameo role. While I do not think that the movie is as good as The Curse of The Black Pearl, I do think that it was on par with, or better than, the other sequels. I do think with a running time of just over two hours, it did not feel like the movie was dragging on too long. I definitely think it is worth checking out.

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