The Pirates of the Caribbean series is a rare franchise in Hollywood. Any other film based on a game or something like an amusement park ride would have died after the initial movie. But Pirates has withstood critical acclaim, and Jack Sparrow, the lead in each adventure, gave Johnny Depp one of several well-deserved Academy Award nominations. The fifth installment in the series, Dead Men Tell No Tales, is coming next year, and we have the first trailer for the film, a brilliantly moody clip where we meet the new undead antagonist Captain Salazar played by Javier Bardem. Call them ghost pirates or pirate ghosts, the inhabitants of this fantasy world continue to excite fans of a good adventure story. Thank Sir Walter Scott and later Robert Louis Stevenson for getting generations excited about a good pirate story. Add in a ghost story and just tell us the time and place to show up and we’ll be there.
The last Pirates entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, was such a visually stunning production with–more importantly–an interesting story, that it could be the franchise may just be hitting its stride. On Stranger Tides kicked up the film’s action compared to the prior two films, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End. Check out my review here. It was almost as good as The Curse of the Black Pearl, which made my Top 10 fantasy movie list.
We just can’t get enough of Johnny Depp and the roles he takes on, especially with this character–a character he has been able to develop over a 14-year span. Depp and Ethan Hawke, who we discussed here at borg.com last week in our review of The Magnificent Seven, are the best actors of their generation. It’s hard to beat Depp continuing on with a recurring role like this. And just look at the guest stars of this series: Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane, and Keith Richards? Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbossa in Dead Men Tell No Tales, and its rumored David Wenham and Paul McCartney will appear.
So check out this preview for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales:
), this new film is simply better all around. Except for some scenes that could stand to be edited down, On Stranger Tides is nearly as good as the original Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl. 
