GardenSirens

my 4K of the first movie shipped!

DigificWriter

After having just finished it completely, At World's End was definitely better than I remembered, and a ton of fun. I'm not sure it surpasses Dead Man's Chest as the best of the first 3 films, but it's at the very least on par with it.

Looking ahead, I'm quite excited to watch both On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales for the very first time, and will try to post my in-depth thoughts on both of those films here once I finish them.

msstock87

I have been thinking of re watching these soon. It has been awhile.

DigificWriter

So, On Stranger Tides:
As the first and only Pirates film without OG main cast members Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom, and the first and only film not to rely on a completely original story, this one is an interesting outing that could have easily fallen apart, but that ends up succeeding rather well on its own merits thanks to the strong returning core of Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Kevin McNally and the equally strong additions of Ian McShane, Penelope Cruz, Sam Clafin, and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey.

Because the story is a loose retelling of a novel, it does feel far more like a 'quest movie' than its predecessors, but that shift in tone and feel also allows the film to branch out into areas of the world that wouldn't have felt right had they been included in the first 3 movies, and for an expansion of lore and worldbuilding that feels both new and somehow familiar.

Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow was inarguably the biggest draw in the absence of Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley, but I've always been a bigger fan, personally, of Geoffrey Rush's Hector Barbossa, and so it was a great treat for me to see him get an opportunity to help drive a story without the threat of being overshadowed by Jack. It was admittedly strange to see him working for England, but once it's revealed that he's only doing so as a means to an end, any dissonance vanishes.

Moving on from old characters to new ones, I absolutely adored Ian McShane Blackbeard and Penelope Cruz's Angelica, and thought they were the perfect foils for Barbossa and Jack, respectively. The interplay between Jack and Angelica also hearkened back to the quasi-nonplatonic tension between Jack and Elizabeth Swann that dominated much of Dead Man's Chest, along with shades of the romance between Indiana Jones and Elsa Schneider from Indiana Jones and The Lsst Crusade.

I also want to spend a moment talking about Sam Clafin and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, who stepped into the Deuroantagonist roles previously filled by the aforementioned Miss Swann and her love Will Turner; their characters weren't quite as prominently featured as Elizabeth and Will, but the two actors really delivered on what they were given.

On Stranger Tides had a lot of avenues for failure given how different it ended up being from its predecessors, but, in the end, it succeeds based on the strength of its cast and story and, as of now, leaps just ever so slightly ahead of Curse of the Black Pearl as my third-favorite film in the series behind Dead Man's Chest at #1 and At Wotld's End at #2.

livstevi21

I still have never seen the fourth or fifth movies. I always felt like three pirates films was enough for me, much as I enjoyed them. I also felt like At Worlds End was a little too long imo.

msstock87

I am not sure if I have seen them or not. If I did, I don’t have a memory of them.

livstevi21

Maybe because you didn't find them as memorable.

msstock87

That is probably why!

livstevi21

msstock87

I will have to re watch them though to see if I do remember the last ones at all.

livstevi21

Good idea.

msstock87

Nothing is ringing a bell with them plot wise. The last ones at least.

livstevi21

I didn't really have any interest to watch the fourth or fifth films, but maybe I will one day, to see if I would find them memorable or not.

msstock87

I want to at least give them a shot once.

livstevi21