This film is as good as the Original "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" - I never liked the story arc that followed Curse of the Black Pearl, it was about everything but Pirates. Sea Goddesses, Flying Dutchman (With the wrong Captain, Davey Jones was not captain of the Flying Dutchman, Vandervecken was), the three original Pirates films were the story of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann- Curse of the Black Pearl was complete in itself, I always thought by adding all these sequels, they were stretching for a story. It was all too much, too fantastic, and not wholly as enjoyable as the first adventure.
Not so here: This 4th installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, brings the focus back to a Pure Pirate Adventure, and with the departure of Swann and Turner "At Worlds End", Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio were free to tell further stories about Captain Jack Sparrow, with the help of novelist Tim Powers, Disney actually purchased the rights to his book and worked with him, as opposed to James Cameron's outright theft of Poul Anderson's 1957 Hugo award winning short story "Call Me Joe" (Which became Avatar). This merger of a 20-year old novel and new characters from the franchise, and the acknowledgment thereof, makes me hope for Hollywood Writer/Directors who would borrow plots and characters from well known books and try to get away with it "scott free".
The threads from the Novel meld into the already laid out story of Jack Sparrow, which we have been hearing since the first film in the franchise- Kevin R McNally, as "Gibbs" has been Keeper of Jack Sparrow's Continuity since the first film.
This film injects a new villain into the Pirates Universe: Blackbeard, as played by the great character actor Ian McShane. McShane epitomizes all of the portrayals of Blackbeard and other evil pirates in pirate movies back to Basil Rathbone in "Captain Blood".
Geoffrey Rush once again plays Barbossa, who is "Not a Pirate", well, at first, in this story. Along with McShane as Blackbeard, Penelope Cruz is "Angelica" - Apparently "Blackbeard's Daughter". Or is she? The characters of Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, Angelica are all wonderfully duplicitous, not being "evil" or "good" characters, they are more like real people, who have both bad and good aspects. And so, the relationships between Jack and Barbossa, and Jack and Angelica leave you asking "Who is fooling who here"? And in reality, we are the ones being fooled, by the convoluted plot which Elliott & Rossio have woven into the fabric of the original Powers' novel.
With the absence of Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, This film focuses more on Jack's actual romance with Angelica, and there is also a side-romance which develops between the characters of Man of Faith "Philip" (Sam Claflin) and a mermaid named "Syrena" (Spanish Actress Astrid Berges-Frisbey) - The resolution of which is difficult to understand, unless you pay attention to the sailors small-talk and speculations regarding the nature of Mermaids in this story.
Look for Cameos from Dame Judy Dench, Richard Griffiths and another appearance of "Captain Teague" (Kieth Richards). Stephen Graham (Band of Brothers, Snatch, Gangs of New York) is the Mandolin-playing Scrumm, another duplicitous character. The "First Mermaid" is played by Gemma Ward, the Mermaids are all Fashion Models - From the waist up.
Barbossa has developed a "hobby" of collecting Poison Frogs - There is a reason for every apparently idle scene in this film.
This film is back to the basics of what made "Curse of the Black Pearl" so good - It is a fresh story, less dependent on special effects and more on character interaction. The introduction of new Director to the Franchise, Rob Marshall, did not significantly alter the way the story was told- This is a story about Jack Sparrow, and all of the things that endeared that character to us from the first three films, are all here in "quadruplicate". Marshall's direction was less over-the-top than Verbinski's. But the best quality of this film is the usage of Hans Zimmerman's Score, including the "Pirate Theme" - Which was first used in the movie "Gladiator", all of the musical queues from the first three films are here, plus new cues with Spanish flavour which add a lot to the atmosphere of the film. This is a film of extremely high quality, as is the case with anything Jerry Bruckheimer produces.
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