Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth film in the series, following On Stranger Tides (2011). Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg directed it. Jeff Nathanson wrote the script. Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow. The film runs 129 minutes, and its tagline is “All pirates must die.”
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Jack Sparrow and the Trident of Poseidon
The premise is serviceable. Jack is down on his luck. His ship, the Black Pearl, is trapped in a bottle. He is pursued by Captain Armando Salazar, a ghost commanding a crew of undead sailors who have escaped from the Devil’s Triangle. Salazar is determined to kill every pirate at sea and take revenge on Sparrow.
Jack’s only hope of survival lies in finding the legendary Trident of Poseidon. To get there, he forges an uneasy alliance with Carina Smyth, an astronomer, and Henry Turner, a young man in the British navy.
That is the engine of the plot, and it is a good one. Jack’s own history with Salazar drives the threat. The film follows a search for the Trident by a down-on-his-luck captain pursued by deadly ghosts.
Javier Bardem as Captain Armando Salazar
Javier Bardem plays Salazar, once the greatest pirate hunter who ever roamed the seas as captain of the Silent Mary for the Spanish Navy. He is an old nemesis of Jack Sparrow, now a cursed ghost commanding a crew of undead soldiers.
Bardem set out to imbue the character with “a rage based on dented pride,” owing to his fall from a high-ranking commander of a Spanish fleet to being betrayed and trapped in hell by Jack. He described Salazar as “a little supernatural” and “a pretty nasty character.”
With Salazar’s body language, Bardem said he tried to convey a bull in an arena, “full of rage and need of vengeance, but also wounded.”
That is the most specific thing the source offers about the performance. The design is a genuine visual creation. Bardem built the character around wounded pride, and the source is clear about that.
Kaya Scodelario as Carina Smyth
Kaya Scodelario plays Carina Smyth, a young astronomer. She crosses paths with Jack and offers to help Henry find the Trident using her unknown father’s diary. She deciphers the clues in the diary, discovering that the stars will lead to an island where the Trident is hidden.
Brenton Thwaites plays Henry Turner, Will’s son. The film follows his search for the Trident alongside Jack and Carina.
Geoffrey Rush returns as Hector Barbossa, Sparrow’s rival and the former captain of the Black Pearl. Kevin McNally returns as Joshamee Gibbs. Stephen Graham is back as Scrum. Golshifteh Farahani appears as Shansa, a sea witch.
The Cast List
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Johnny Depp | Jack Sparrow |
| Javier Bardem | Armando Salazar |
| Geoffrey Rush | Hector Barbossa |
| Brenton Thwaites | Henry Turner |
| Kaya Scodelario | Carina Smyth |
| Golshifteh Farahani | Shansa |
| Kevin McNally | Joshamee Gibbs |
| Stephen Graham | Scrum |
The ensemble is deep. The film is the fifth installment in the series, following On Stranger Tides.
A 2017 Release That Took Six Years to Make
The production history explains some of the seams. Development started shortly before On Stranger Tides was released in May 2011. Terry Rossio wrote the initial script, and Depp was involved in the writing process.
In early 2013, Nathanson was hired to write a new script. Rønning and Sandberg became involved in the project shortly afterward. The filmmakers cited the series’ first installment, The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), as inspiration for the script and tone.
The film was initially planned for a 2015 release. It was delayed to 2016 and then to 2017, due to script and budget issues. Principal photography started in Queensland, Australia in February 2015.
Rønning’s Plan for Jack Sparrow
Rønning wanted to focus on relatable characters, as in the first film, “where Jack is not the [lead … but] comes in and crashes the party every now and then.” He wanted to make use of Depp’s “comedic genius.”
That is the right instinct. The source is clear about what the director said he wanted. Whether the finished film follows through is a separate question, and the source does not answer it.
The film also looks at how Jack came to be the pirate he is, casting Anthony De La Torre as a younger version of the character. Depp’s face was then mapped onto the performance with computer effects, modeled on his appearance in 21 Jump Street and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). Rønning said the de-aging process was difficult to square with what the franchise had already established.
A Table of the Series to Date
| Film | Release year |
|---|---|
| The Curse of the Black Pearl | 2003 |
| Dead Man’s Chest | 2006 |
| At World’s End | 2007 |
| On Stranger Tides | 2011 |
| Dead Men Tell No Tales | 2017 |
The table is the story. The later entries keep reaching back to the first.
The Trident Is Not the Problem
The hunt for the Trident of Poseidon gives the film a clean objective. The plot follows a search for the Trident by a down-on-his-luck Captain Jack Sparrow, pursued by Captain Armando Salazar and a crew of deadly ghosts who have escaped from the Devil’s Triangle.
The film was released in some territories as Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge. It is a 2017 American swashbuckler film. The runtime is 129 minutes. The tagline is “All pirates must die.”
The Verdict: 6.7 of 10
Dead Men Tell No Tales carries a 6.7 out of 10 audience score on TMDB, based on 13,051 votes. That is the number to weigh against the production history: development that started in 2011, a script rewritten in 2013, and two delays before a 2017 release.
The film is the fifth Pirates installment and the second in a row that reaches back to the first. The source confirms the filmmakers cited The Curse of the Black Pearl as inspiration for the script and tone. That is the part worth watching — not the delays, which are ordinary, but the stated intent to return to what worked in 2003.
What the source does not give is any measure of whether the film achieved that. There is no critic score, no box office figure, no audience breakdown beyond the TMDB number. On the evidence available, the film’s strongest asset is Bardem’s Salazar, a character the source describes in detail and with clear investment from the actor.
The rest is a franchise reaching backward. Whether it caught anything is not something this source establishes.
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