Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has always brought me back to the days of Indiana Jones with its sense of adventure and the mystique of the supernatural. Harrison Ford in the Indy movies, made archeology, (grave digging and looting, almost pirate-like) the career choice for the Alpha Male. With slick moves, (women love to hate him) unchivalrous and coarse behaviour, he wasn't your average bespectacled history facinated geek that one would find at dig sites across the globe. He was in fact, the anti archeologist. He represented the exact opposite of what one would expect from a learned professional.

Where am I going? My compass doesn't work

Moving on to POTC, Johnny Depp had done similarly well in portraying a pirate. Dainty at times and eye-liner equipped, he skips across the deck (almost ballet-like) commanding his crew. Viewers quickly fell in love with the anti-pirate in The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man's Chest, however by the third installment At World's End, the audience lost their interest in him, with hardly an engaging plot, and sub-plots that have grown stale, it fell flat at the box office.

So can this fourth installment save the franchise? Why watch another boring POTC movie that has let us down and failed to reach the same heights of excitement it did in the first two movies? Will it bomb out just like the last Indiana Jones with a decaying Harrison Ford headlining? The main reason for us to flock to the cinemas is "I've watched the first three. Lets just watch this. I hope it isn't as painful as the Twilight saga."

On Stranger Tides, does well, well enough better than the last episode, but still failed to remind me of the highs of before. Bringing back the old rivalry of Barbossa and Sparrow early in the film, it quickly becomes a cliche of the third film with them ending up working together. The effects that we loved so much from the earlier films seemed missing from this film and in place simple CGI effects cheapened its outlook. Gore Verbinski had done well in the previous films, his attention to detail, even Davey Jones' tentacled beard on the pipe organ awed many of us. Rob Marshall on the other hand, made a sleepshot attempt with the supernatural powers of Ian McShane, who plays Blackbeard, a pirate (aptly so, he voiced Captain Hook in Shrek the Third) in search of the Fountain of Youth.

What was sorely missing from this installment was the entire supporting cast of the first three with the exception of Master Gibbs played by Kevin McNally, and of course Captain Barbossa played by Geoffery Rush. Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Governor Swann, Cutler Beckett, the two goony pirates Pintel and Ragetti with his fake eye, were all left out. Bring on board (pun intended) Ian McShane and Penelope Cruz in place of all of the above? I'd have to say NO! The much loved supporting cast in the previous films have grown to be an irreplaceable aspect of the franchise. Although On Stranger Tides, was pipped to be a spin-off rather than a sequel to the franchise, it still carried the Pirates of the Caribbean brand name. Leaving them out would be as detrimental as having Mercedes-Benz making a new model without all the frills. Imagine a Merc without power windows, memory seats, in-built GPS etc. All we are left with is a shell, an empty shell of a POTC movie.