Arrrr, there be spoilers ahead. No way around it, missy.

Pirates is always a fun movie to watch. Jack seems to be out of his depth or has no clue what is going on, and then somehow everything works out okay in the end and it turns out that he knew what was going on all along. This movie doesn’t stray too far from that formula with a few exceptions.

First, instead of Will Turner (who is now the captain of the Dutchman in place of Davey Jones), we have his son Henry Turner who is determined to free is father of the curse that is upon him. This alone is a weird thing, because I thought that someone had to captain the Dutchman to lead souls to the afterlife. If I remember correctly it wasn’t a curse, just a job, and Jack did it to save his life. Initially Jack was going to stab the heart and live forever but because Will was so badly wounded and wouldn’t survive, he took his hand with a knife and stabbed the heart instead. So curse? Not really. It’s an ancient agreement – that was my first big problem with the storyline.

Second was this situation with Barbossa’s daughter. UGH. U. G. H. So she holds the secret to some secret island that will reveal the location of the trident of Poseidon which, when broken, would also break all curses that have ever been cast by or apply to the sea. Ooooooookay. *rolls eyes* Now, I ~heart eyes~ Geoffrey Rush, so seeing him sacrifice himself for her was really sad, but then I was like, “No, you don’t get to pull in a daughter I have never heard of and try to twist my emotions, that’s bullshit.”

Lastly, the story follows Jack but he’s not even really the main character. He doesn’t really do anything in this movie, which is a sharp departure from the past movies. Javier Bardem is chasing him, similar to how Jack was being hunted by Davey Jones, but I just didn’t care about that so much because it felt so much like a rerun. Also why was Javier Bardem’s character cursed instead of just dead? To many new characters and backstories needed, and not enough time to help us understand.

This movie was fun, but it was also like watching a franchise die a very sad death, gasping for one last breath, one last money grab before we should probably put it out of its misery.

This movie gets 2 stars and 5 giant shrugs from me. But Disney got my money so everybody wins, I guess.