On Stranger Tides: Watered-Down Rum but Rum Nonetheless

The Hollywood blockbuster has always been vulnerable to film’s version of shock-and-awe: Too much is never enough. After their previous entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the entertaining but ultimately exhausting and overstuffed At World’s End, screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot (and other filmmakers) take mercy on our senses and return to the focused storytelling of the film that started it all, The Curse of Black Pearl. It’s all relative, of course, and this fourth film — “suggested” by Tim Powers’ imaginative novel On Stranger Tides (from which the film takes its title and a few ideas, but that’s about it) — doesn’t fully abandon the bigger is better approach. Although Rosso and Elliot saddle Johnny Depp’s already larger-than-life Captain Jack Sparrow with mermaids, zombies, Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, at least this time the script doesn’t feel like the product of a kid’s attention deficit in a candy store.

And so, a simple summary is enough to handle the plot: Captain Jack gets himself entangled with the voodoo-wielding Blackbeard, a magnificently fearsome and sinister Ian McShane, through the machinations of a young woman he once (ahem) loved, left, and perhaps corrupted. As it happens, she turns out to be the daughter of the pirate all pirates fear. Along with Spanish and British competitors, Jack “There should be a ‘Captain’ in there somewhere” Sparrow ends up in a three-way race for the ultimate prize: immortality. It’s all nonsense, of course, which isn’t surprising in a universe that includes so many disparate fantasy elements that it might as well be Marvel or DC’s mish-mashed comic book multiverses. But while director Rob Marshall doesn’t necessarily dazzle us with sights previously unseen or action previously unstaged — whatever happened to the classical, easily understood swashbuckling of yesteryear? – the whole affair achieves its goal which is, after all, to entertain.

By now, it’s clear how much fun Johnny Depp has with the role. Captain Jack, who certainly cannot be burdened with pristine heroic motivations, doesn’t have the cruelty or violence of an antihero. He’s ever the lovable rogue, full of cunning and mischief. Although he has become familiar by now, almost domesticated, he remains a charismatic icon that makes a pirate’s life seem like a perfectly enjoyable Disney ride. Yet for all that Captain Jack is the driving force of the franchise, Geoffrey Rush yet again justifies our suspicion that Captain Hector Barbossa – who returns, amusingly, as a privateer officially sanctioned by King George III – could carry a film on his own with results no less entertaining. It helps that Jack’s rival-cum-ally is given a personal and not immediately obvious stake in the plot. Unlike Jack, who floats through the film thanks to the plot’s ebbs and flows, Barbossa has a tangible motivation to propel him, making him a more relatable figure. Where we are merely amused by Jack, we can actually sympathize with, and even root for, Barbossa.

The addition of Penélope Cruz to the series, as Blackbeard’s aforementioned daughter, represents something of a missed opportunity in comparison to Barbossa’s return. Although an evenly matched rival to Jack in many respects, Cruz’s Angelica never presents a true emotional challenge to a character who essentially flitters from one shiny object to the next. This, despite Jack’s shameful admission that she did, indeed, evoke more than stirrings in him. “All right, feelings, damn you,” he tells his trusted sidekick Gibbs. Part of the explanation simply rests with Rossio and Elliott’s reluctance to force Captain Jack into a position where genuine human emotion, instead of mere flippancy, would be required.  Although Jack does make decisions that are obviously based on something more than opportunistic self-interest, he is never made to confront anything in a way that would elevate his comic nature to something approaching pathos. The other part of the explanation is simpler than that: Cruz’s faint performance, which dampens the combustible, sexually-charged chemistry with Depp that a bona fide swashbuckling actress like Catherine Zeta-Jones or Geena Davis might have achieved.

Amidst the additions and returns, On Stranger Tides benefits from a few absences. Gone are wisecracking pirates Ragetti and Pintel, played respectively by Mackenzie Crook and Lee Arenberg, who offered all they could to the previous films and have been properly retired. Also gone are Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan – Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, of course – whose story was effectively ended with At World’s End. There’s always the possibility of seeing Will Turner on the high seas again – as the captain of the Flying Dutchman ferrying the dead from the sea to the afterlife, he’s presumably still out there – but for now Rossio and Elliot wisely resisted the impulse to revisit characters that have already had their adventure of a lifetime.

Taking the place of all that is a love story between missionary Philip Swift (Sam Claflin) and a mermaid played by the fetching Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey. The subplot is wholly irrelevant to the overall search for the Fountain of Youth, and further proof that even when aiming for a leaner story the filmmakers can’t help but overshoot the ideal running time by half an hour. Nevertheless, it’s an engaging and intriguing romance on its own merits, pitting two unlikely characters together in a relationship forged under the looming menace of Blackbeard’s ambitions. The missionary is a kind-hearted man whose compassion extends even to hoping that Blackbeard himself, an unrepentantly evil man, can find salvation. His encounter with the mermaid, a species of alluring yet vicious beauties who seduce men to a watery grave, leaves them both affected as both extend mercy towards each other. The tentative way in which they overcome differences that owe as much to a bizarre food chain as anything else proves surprisingly sweet and affecting, right up to an ending that can be read as either hopeful or filled with the poignancy of doomed romance. It has all the elements of the kind of folk tale Mike Mignola might use in his Hellboy stories, and presents the film’s most authentic emotion – which makes this aside’s irrelevance all the more ironic.

So where does the series go from here? Although fun, if not quite blustery, On Stranger Tides does show signs of the syndrome that felled the mighty Star Trek juggernaut when TV’s Enterprise and film’s Star Trek: Nemesis failed to maintain fan enthusiasm: franchise fatigue. The script for a fifth film has reportedly been turned in for attention after Disney’s next attempt to launch a franchise around the Lone Ranger. This is good news insofar that Pirates of the Caribbean continues to embody the carefree spirit of summer entertainment without literary pretensions. But one has to wonder how many times the filmmakers can indulge their hopes of replicating the brilliance of Curse of the Black Pearl, the first and still best film of the series.

Pirates of the Carribbean: On Stranger Tides. Directed by Rob Marshall. Written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot. Suggested by the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Starring Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane and Geoffrey Rush. 137 minutes. Rated PG-13.

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