MORE SEA FARE AHEAD
Captain Jack Sparrow & Co. set sail for another sequel
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Opens Friday
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales continues to feature Johnny Depp’s scalawag Captain Jack Sparrow alongside familiar mates and blackguards on his trail.
The fifth swashbuckling fantasy also introduces young loves and a new villain in the form of actor Javier Bardem’s ghoulish pirate hunter, Armando Salazar.
Indications are fans will happily fork over their doubloons for the blend of special effects action and cheeky comedy, which references the first film of 2003.
Back then, it was producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s hunch that led to a film franchise so far attracting a box office booty of nearly $1.05 billion worldwide. The latest edition will likely add millions more to those coffers.
Not bad for a movie based on a Disney ride that navigated around some predictions of a cinematic shipwreck before its unheralded release.
“I thought it was going to end my career,” recalls Bruckheimer with key cast members of the new Pirates picture, minus Depp. “The hardest one is always the first one.”
In Dead Men Tell No Tales, Captain Jack is being pursued by Salazar and his Spanish ghost crew. Along for the new journey is Captain Jack’s old nemesis Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush).
New are wannabe astronomer Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) and Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), who is determined to free his father from the Flying Dutchmen curse.
Henry can do that by locating the Trident of Poseidon before Salazar captures Jack, Henry and Carina. A showdown is inevitable. So are some surprise revelations and a few guest cameos.
As usual, Captain Jack is his stumbling, mumbling, witty self.
“I was just amazed by how easy it is for him as a clown to be (Sparrow),” Bardem says of Depp. “The first few times I did scenes they had to say, ‘Cut,’ because I was laughing. As a moviegoer I was like, ‘Wow, here is Jack Sparrow.’”
Rush as Barbossa was a lot more familiar with Depp’s alter ego, having joined the actor in the early stages of developing both of their characters during costume fittings.
“We figured that because of the rum and the sun, their brains must be fried,” Rush says of their battling buccaneers then and now.
However, Barbossa is certainly richer in the newest Pirates chapter as indicated by his treasureladen ship.
“He’s become sort of a pirate corporate CEO — if he only he had spent some of his money on his teeth and his skin.”
And like the previous films, Rush says Depp kept to himself off camera during the year-long stretch of filming in and around Australia. “He’s quite a shy guy and he likes his solitude,” he says of Depp.
On set, though, Depp was always inventive, inclusive and enthusiastic from one day to the next.
“Johnny likes to play,” Bardem says “He won’t ever let you down. He’s always very caring about the person in front of him and gives lots for the other actor to play with.”
That’s confirmed by co-directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, who earned a name for themselves with a much more modest 2012 Norwegian Sea adventure called Kon-Tiki.
“Johnny doesn’t need any direction,” Ronning says.
The filmmakers did meet with him every morning to discuss the day’s sequences. “And then he would do something completely different filming the scene, but that was the fun of it.”
It was Bruckheimer who decided Ronning and Sandberg would bring a new vitality to the franchise while recalling the tone of the more playful original.
“We wanted to return Pirates of the Caribbean back to the movie we were fans of growing up in the backyard trying to make something with our parent’s video camera,” Ronning says.
The director does confess they wanted Captain Jack to remain the same, though.
“He’s the only character who doesn’t have an arc in the movie and he doesn’t learn a thing,” Ronning says.