Well, I
guess now Jack really is back. Walt Disney's second big Super Bowl buy this
year is one of those "commercial which leads you to a trailer" things
that they did for Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014 and The Jungle
Book last year. And this year the honor goes to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Men Tell No Tales. So the above is the second trailer for the fifth Jack
Sparrow adventure.
And unlike
the cryptic and creepy teaser trailer from last October, which premiered during
AMC's Fear the Walking Dead, this one actually features Johnny Depp. But before
that it makes a strong case for itself with a sprawling and action-packed
80-second teaser filled with thrilling pirate action and gorgeous visuals. I
don't know if the world needed a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but I'm
slightly more confident about its chancecs than I was 80-seconds ago.
It's no
secret that Johnny Depp hasn't had the best press over the last year or so.
Domestic abuse allegations were levied at him by ex-wife Amber Heard as part of
their divorce proceedings on the opening day of Alice Through the Looking Glass
and said sequel turned out to be a relative flop ($299 million on a $170m
budget). Depp hasn't had an actual hit since Pirates of the Caribbean: On
Stranger Tides back in 2011.
Five years
is a long time between installments, especially in this era and when you're not
technically aiming for generational nostalgia. But the odd thing is that, in
the last five years, the Pirates franchise has gone from Disney's crown jewel
to just another big film in a crowded blockbuster field. It was a similar
situation last year with Alice Through the Looking Glass, as the sequel to one
of Disney's biggest-grossing movies was something of an also-ran compared to
The Jungle Book, Zootopia and Captain America: Civil War.
So will a
franchise that has based almost its whole long-term appeal on a movie star who
is now damaged goods, playing a character that crossed over into self-parody,
still be able to make the sale in a world dominated by other and more vibrant
franchises? It's one of the big question marks of summer 2017, along with how a
fifth Transformers plays a month later. But this extended Super Bowl ad
certainly makes a case for Dead Men Tell No Tales being a big-screen worthy
adventure regardless of your feelings of the Jack Sparrow character or the
actor who plays him.
And, having
said all of that, getting audiences to spend a couple hours watching Jack
Sparrow engage in big-budget pirate action may be an easier sell than another
round of Alice in Wonderland adventures. And for the record, On Stranger Tides
earned $1.045 billion worldwide against a $240m domestic total, a larger global
sum (thus far) than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Dead Man's
Chest became the third movie ever to top $1 billion back in 2006 ($1.066b).
Pirates 2 and 3 were both the biggest-grossing global hits of their respective
years, and the fourth one4 was behind only Harry Potter 7.2 and Transformers 3
back in 2011. So we shouldn't necessarily count out the return of the Sparrow,
even if it will likely find itself not so much king of the hill as,
best-case-scenario, a god among gods. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell
No Tales opens May 25, 2017.
(Forbes)
No comments:
Post a Comment