The problem doesn’t lie entirely in Dead Men Tell No Tales. Warning: major spoilers ahead for all five Pirates films, including Dead Men Tell No Tales
Why should fans care about the latest chapter of a story when the creators themselves don’t? Image: Disney But their impact is blunted when no one making the films cares about what these elements are supposed to mean. Basic elements of the universe, like Jack’s compass or the Black Pearl, show up in every movie. If the whole point of a franchise (at least from a non-monetary perspective) is to give filmmakers room to tell overarching stories and develop characters and plots over time, the Pirates of the Caribbean films have utterly failed.
But the complete disregard for the series’s existing canon feels significant. This may seem like the nitpicking of a fan who spent what, in retrospect, may have been too much time watching the first few Pirates movies in middle school. ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ is puzzlingly, irritatingly ignorant of much of the continuity of the series
