While it’s true that thing’s need to change in order to keep from growing stale and stagnating to the point that people lose interest, the era of the reboot and the remake are beginning to wear thin with some people. It was believed, or hoped in some cases, that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise might finally end with Dead Men Tell No Tales, but it would appear that Disney is willing to do some wheeling and dealing to keep the happy retirement from happening. With the announcement that Johnny Depp will not be coming back for the reboot a lot of people are already giving the many articles announcing this sad development odd looks as the general idea of “Who wants that?” seems to be felt around the proverbial campfire.
You can’t really blame anyone for this sentiment to be honest.
After all, in terms of the cast Johnny Depp was the absolute best character in the series since Captain Jack Sparrow was the one man that seemed to make everything worth watching. The gentlemanly character of Will Sparrow was fun enough but kind of stodgy in his own way, and Elizabeth Swann kind of lost her charm by the midpoint of the third film. In fact Tia Dalma and Captain Barbossa were actually more engaging after a while than Turner and Swann as they lent a much more devious air to the movies than the noble and upright (supposedly) couple did. It was important to have some sense of morality to the movie but after a while they’re more upright nature seemed to be kind of a bother, but of course that’s personal bias more than anything. However, taking Sparrow out of it seems like a poor choice since if one is going to be honest the series kind of starts and ends with him since he coined some of the greatest phrases and became the face of the franchise.
But Disney seems intent on leaning on the strength of the writing at this point to make the film into something greater, or hopefully just as great, as it was in the beginning. Originally they brought in Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writers that were responsible for the Deadpool movie and therefore two scribes that knew what they were doing. But unfortunately these two managed to find their way off the project and it was then that Disney decided to try and bring back Terry Rossio, the writer that had helped to bring the Pirates movies to where they currently reside. You could easily argue that his efforts were met with a loud and thunderous applause in the beginning, but as I already in the beginning, things have to keep moving or they stagnate. The only problem with the Pirates movies is that they went off in such an erratic direction and without any real link to to one another following the third movie that people found themselves lifting an eyebrow and wondering just what in the world had gone wrong.
Rossio is a talented writer and there’s no doubt that things could possibly turn around with a reboot, which they might need to now since the whole ‘Trident of Poseidon’ debacle in Dead Men Tell No Tales kind of took away a good deal of the mystique that the movies were built upon. With no more curses to explore, no power left in the ancient artifact that apparently bound them all to its will, and therefore no other stories to build upon, it seems as though the franchise might have gone back to being the unpredictable and possibly quite normal history show that people may or may not be interested in. But a reboot might actually put the magic back into the sea and create something that’s not so potentially mundane and can still amaze the audience. There’s not a lot of word on who will be cast for the reboot but obviously Depp will not be there and the whole idea of leaving him out has a lot of people just kind of wringing their hands thinking how the Pirates movies could be any good without the best pirate of the lot being absent.
Well, the good news is that we can probably relax for a while since it sounds as though the reboot might not be coming to the big screen for a while a while as it might be stuck in development hell for just a bit. That might sound rather cynical but in the estimation of some it might sound like a good idea to kick the idea around for a bit longer until it can be discovered just how a rudderless ship might be set aright without the good captain we’ve all come to know and care about. One can only hope that Disney will stick to the ideas that made Pirates of the Caribbean such a great series, at least for a while, instead of burying it within the PC culture that seems poised to pounce on just about everything.
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