New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Except they have poor taste. Pirates 4 was crap. So was Transformers 4. Doesn’t matter. China loves Hollywood as much as I love Chinese food. Both are bad for you but we still shove it down our own throats. But with the internet we don’t just get a global marketplace, we get global criticism. Audiences hated Transformers of the Caribbean 4: The Curse of the Desperate Franchise Relaunch. Just complete and total trash. But IMAX and 3D made older franchises cool again and we all paid the price, financially and emotionally. Yet somehow executives weren’t ready to give up. Transformers hired a team of writers to plot out a cohesive storyline for several future films with the first of this “writer’s room” sequels coming out in a few weeks. Pirates 5 went a different way. They chose to bring back the old cast while launching a new younger one. Two franchises from similar paths finally find themselves at a fork in the road.

So, what we have here are not just two blockbusters in the making but a battle royale of franchise fifth-quels. Which will win? In one corner, we have Pirates and the return of the series regulars. In the other corner, we have Transformers and the writers room. Both fourth films opened between $90-100 million. Both earned between $240-245 million domestically. Both earned between $1-1.1 billion worldwide. I have prepared you for the battle and will talk more about it when Transformers 5 comes out. For now, all I have left to do is prepare you for how to possibly enjoy the nonsensical complexities of the inevitably terrible Pirates 5. Uuuugggghhhhhh……

1) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

Since the fifth Pirates is bringing back the characters that left off in the third film, it only makes sense for At World’s End to be my sole recommendation from the franchise. The fourth film was more of a one-off, like just another random James Bond entry from the 007 franchise. Pirates 1 introduced us to Depp’s Jack Sparrow, a famous pirate. Will Turner (Bloom) is a poor guy that loves a rich girl Elizabeth Swan (Knightley) and together they get sucked into the mystical world of pirate ghosts, led by Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, another franchise regular). Pirates 2 was bigger and louder, introduced Davy Jones as the villain and Will Turner’s father as a pirate zombie fish mutant thing, Swan sacrificed Sparrow to the Kracken monster, and was “to be continued…” leading into the third film. Again, I assume Pirates 4 is irrelevant but Pirates 5 might refute that in the end. We shall see.

What you’ll likely need to know is from Pirates 3. To defeat Davy Jones and redeem themselves, the crew need to bring back Sparrow from dead. They do this with help of Barbossa, who is already back from the dead. Ummmm, okay. Sparrow comes back and all the pirates of the world unite to defeat Davy Jones. However, to do this, Turner must sacrifice himself to become the new Davy Jones and spend ten years away at sea, leaving behind his new wife and child and ending the trilogy. You need to know this because Orlando Bloom is back for Pirates 5 and his son is all grown up as one of the film’s lead characters. We don’t know in what capacity Bloom’s undead captain will come back as or how his return will go down with Knightley but we know it all comes full circle here in Pirates 5… if you even still care after five films.

Continued:       1       2       3       4