#ORDER TO WATCH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SERIES#

Ian McShane can certainly do evil and terrifying, as anyone who has seen Deadwood will attest. Perhaps my biggest grievance with the film is the way it completely botches the character of Blackbeard. This half-arsed, asexual romance that blossoms between them is a completely extraneous subplot that appears to have been shoehorned into a story already fit to bursting in order appeal to (read: patronise) the pre-pubescent girl demographic.

Amusingly, the onscreen credit says the film was вЂsuggested byвЂ™ the Tim Powers novel, which surely opens the door up for other vague credits like вЂimplied byвЂ™, вЂemailed toвЂ™, and вЂsiphoned fromвЂ™.ДЄs for Keira and Orlando, the filmmakers seem to have learned their lesson by ditching Willl and Elizabeth for On Stranger Tides, only to ruin everything by introducing a relationship between yet another pair of razor cheeked, anodyne milquetoasts around the halfway point. This may be down to the fact that much of the story is adapted from well-regarded pirate novel On Stranger Tides. ThatвЂ™s a very stripped down summation of the plot, but you can still probably tell from it that the plotting is just as convoluted as ever.Дespite this, the story is nowhere near as scattershot and hard to follow as the previous two films. Coincidentally, thatвЂ™s also where the newly one-legged Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is heading, now employed by the British Navy to get control of the Fountain of Youth before it is reached and captured by the Spanish. He wakes up to find himself on-board the Queen AnneвЂ™s Revenge, a legendary ship where Angelica is first mate and the captain is Blackbeard (Ian McShane), the mostfeared pirate on all of the seas.Д«lackbeard, spooked by a soothsayer who has predicted he will die at the hands of a one-legged man, is attempting to find the mystical Fountain of Youth in a last ditch attempt to gain immortality. After some playful fighting and flirting, Jack is tricked by her and knocked out.

HereвЂ™s the set-up: whilst dodging the navy in London, Captain Jack (Johnny Depp) discovers old flame Angelica (PenГ©lope Cruz) impersonating him while recruiting sailors for her ship.

#ORDER TO WATCH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SERIES#

So has On Stranger Tides rectified these issues? Is the series back on track? The answer is a resounding вЂkind ofвЂ™. Completely incomprehensible plotting coupled with the sucking charisma vacuums of Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom (not that I blame them вЂ“ some of the characters in Pirates are so thinly drawn that the best actors in the world would struggle to make them interesting, unless theyвЂ™ve got a comedy Keith Richards impersonation to fall back on, obviously) were huge flaws that, when combined with a bafflingly epic running time, rendered, for me at least, much of the films largely unwatchable.

ItвЂ™s this loyal pubescent audience that has led from the front to make the Pirates films one of the most successful film series in history.Д«ut even taking into account that these are ultimately kidsвЂ™ films, the disappointment of the middle chapters in the saga should not be overlooked. The key demographic for the films is clearly eight to 12-year-olds, however many clunky innuendos and bizarrely unpleasant hanging sequences they want to tag on for the вЂgrown-upsвЂ™. Before we do though, hereвЂ™s another reason why this review is largely meaningless: the Pirates series isnвЂ™t for us.

Order to watch pirates of the caribbean