Everyone knows sequels get worse the more there are of them, so this, the fourth of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, was rather a risk. Luckily, it was pretty good -- not even close to being as horrible as it had the potential to be.
For one thing, the tone of Pirates 4 is similar to the tone of the first film. Fun and lightheartedness is what the Pirates films are all about, and as gripping and funny as Pirates 2 and 3 are, they went off the deep end: they were so dark compared to the first one. We liked the first one because it was fun, light, and amusing. A lot of bad stuff happens to the characters in P2 and P3, but they could have included all that without making it so very sad. For instance, they killed off a lot of characters in P2 and P3 who didn’t actually need to be killed off -- it felt like they did it out of convenience, because they couldn’t figure out any other way to get them out of the storyline. If the writers had figured out a happier way to dispose of them, things wouldn’t have been so dark.
The filmmakers should be commended for leaving Elizabeth and Will out of it (not that Keira Knightley or Orlando Bloom would have returned, anyway). Their story was over, and I think that including them would only have made old problems and love triangles resurface. However, because they aren't in it, it's not as emotionally involving as P2 and P3. Ted and Terry's goal as screenwriters is to make the viewer feel the emotions they create through the story. This film didn’t do that as well as P2 and P3, even though in many ways it's a better-written screenplay. P4 does have its love story, of course, but it’s a cute romance rather than an epic romance. P4 makes you hope that the characters end up happy (you’re nearly positive they will), but P1-3 made you ache for the characters (things came a lot closer to not working out).
The execution of this movie was better than P2 and P3, though there are still some problems, such as excess characters: a big deal is made out of a Spanish explorer, but then he disappears for most of the story and becomes sort of a deus ex machina at the end. Also, there are zombies, and nobody in the story or in the theater seems to know why they’re there or where they came from. As a nitpicky pirate, I noticed one or two other things that were inconsistent with the previous films, but well, that’s something only I would notice.
The objective viewer rating: middling. Not Oscar-worthy, but it’s a good, fun summer blockbuster. 5 out of 10.
Pirate rating: Great. Lighthearted and populated with funny characters, both old and new. 7 out of 10 (with Pirates 1 being 10 out of 10).
