Are you the kind of fan who will be camping out for tickets before the release of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? Well, you might want to look away, as things in his honest trailer are about to get brutal.
There was a time when the Pirates Of The Caribbean was a fresh, rousing and enjoyable franchise. In fact, that time was actually 2003, when The Curse of the Black Pearl was released. Since then three more Pirates Of The Caribbean films have come out, and each has been progressively worse. To honor how truly bad they are, the good folks over at Screen Junkies have done what they do best and created a harsh video lampooning the franchise.
As usual, it’s pretty impossible to argue with any of the points that Screen Junkies are making with their latest Honest Trailers installment. The Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise did start out as an enjoyable action adventure, but everything after The Curse Of The Black Pearl was simply a tedious barrage of swashbuckling shit. I mean, honestly, how much narrative can you actually get out of a story inspired by a theme park ride? Over 10 hours apparently. Honest Trailers also point out that Disney basically diluted Pirates of the Caribbean's pirates down to a laughable version of what they were supposed to be. They only use PG swear words, are unable to be killed and refrain from using the word rape, even though that's what actual pirates were synonymous with - alongside pillaging and murder.
Meanwhile they also note that Johnny Depp's performance in the first blockbuster has had a rather terrible impact on his career. I think that we can all admit that we much prefer the Johnny Depp before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. You remember him. He's the guy who starred in the likes of Edward Scissorhands, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Donnie Brasco, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Blow, and in each of them deployed a modern masculinity that was still intensely tough, but also possessed a complex fragility.
Still, the reason why the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise developed into the worst nautical cinematic disaster since Titanic isn’t purely down to Johnny Depp. It simply became too convoluted and complicated for its own good. While Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest managed to recreate some of the charm of its predecessor, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End was a complete mess from start to finish. Meanwhile Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - as the Honest Trailer points out - was void of any originality and only confirmed that the franchise had turned into a lost cause.
Bad as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has gotten, however, the problem is that it has remained successful through the years. Forgettable as it was, On Stranger Tides still went on to gross $1.046 billion at the box office, meaning that over four installments the franchise has amassed an eye-watering $3.7 billion. It's this that has led to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which will be with us on July 7, 2017. Expect it to be just as bad the previous three films.
