A new teaser/trailer (who the hell can tell the difference anymore) for the new Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales dropped recently, and the response from much of the audience was: “Wait, they’re still making those?” Evidently, they are.

The Pirates of the Caribbean teaser/trailer is pretty brief, and doesn’t really give away much of what the movie is about, which is actually a blessing in today’s time, when every new film seems to have gotten into the habit of condensing the whole movie into a three minute reel, major spoilers and all, and calling it a trailer (looking at you, Terminator: Genisys). Let’s see what this teaser/trailer has to offer:

What Works

1. Johnny Depp is still in the movie. He wasn’t there in any of the earlier trailers for the movie, and he only shows up for a couple of seconds here, looking strange and bemused under a covering of mud and mouthing a one-liner, which is essentially the whole character of Captain Jack Sparrow in one line.

No matter what the movie’s going to be like, it’ll be nice to spend some more time with one of the most interesting film-heroes of the last decade.

      “Think of me as this movie’s Tony Stark”

2. Orlando Bloom also shows up. That’s.. something, I guess. Okay, so no one was going to the Pirates movies to watch Bloom, but he does make for a pretty effective straight man to Depp’s Captain Sparrow.

The first two Pirates movies(widely considered the best ones), may have been fantasy, but they were pretty character focussed, and Bloom’s character was the guy everyone cheered for while he tried to navigate a world full of dead pirates and giant squids on a quest to find his father.

Hopefully, Depp and Bloom will be enough to maintain some semblance of focus and humanity in a movie that looks to be trying very hard to rival superhero films in terms of spectacle.

                     “And Lords of the Rings. Don’t forget Lord of the Rings”

3. Captain Barbossa is back as well. Next to Captain Sparrow, Barbossa was the most interesting character in the franchise, and he will hopefully be given enough scenes to provide some banter with Sparrow and bring light-hearted wit to the proceedings.

                              Hey, he’s still wearing that stupid wig!

What Doesn’t Work

1. There a new villain, and he is so scary, you guys. His army is a race of undead pirates… just… just like the first Pirates movie. But he’s got a huge, scary ship too, that jumps out of the water and terrifies everyone… just… just like the second Pirates movie. So the villain of this movie seems like a mashup of the villains from the two most popular Pirates films.

2. Also, the overload of CGI action in the trailer seems to belong to a videogame more than a film, or two ten year olds playing with their pirates merchandise with no regard for physics or realism.

                                  “Take that! Pew! Pew! Pew!”

Overall, the trailer looks to be much in the same vein as earlier instalments of the franchise. There’s the battle between ships in the middle of the ocean

                          “Stop firing at us, a**holes, we’re on the same side!”

There’s the obligatory character covered in mysterious symbols and markings

             “Hey, at least I don’t have sea creatures sticking to my face.”

And Captain Jack Sparrow being Captain Jack Sparrow. Let’s hope the movie, when it comes out, is more than a retread of the earlier movies, and offers something new and interesting to make the audience forget about superheroes for a bit and have them care about pirates again.    

This is a guest post by Neeraj Chand Who blogs at Some Thoughts and Things.

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