So, I went down this weird wormhole trying to discern how many years have passed in Jack Sparrow’s life from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. By the breadcrumb trail I’ve pieced together across a troubling number of Wikipedia entries, I’ve arrived at a number: 100 years.
 
If the first one begins vaguely, “in the late 17th century,” and if this new one features a guillotine—first used publicly in France in 1792—this has been a long, strange century for Jack and company. I mean, someone on the island where our fifth Pirates installment begins has a Herschel telescope. Homie didn’t even invent the 40 footer until 1789! And it’s not like this kind of technology (see: guillotine) quickly disseminates to remote island colonies. So, yeah, a century in-universe. Come at my numbers.
 
Anyway, what does this matter? It doesn’t! And by extension, how much more is there to say about this or any other Pirates movie? To adopt the pirate affect, she be what she be. The assertion is POC:DMTNT is the end of the adventure, though one of the two (two? two.) credited directors has already teased that this is merely the beginning of the end of the adventure. But as we all understand the current climate in Hollywood—N.F.E.R.D. or No Franchise Ever Really Dies—a new branch of critique has emerged in my reconnoitering of films. A mixture of defeatism and pleasant surprise, all hail the arrival of, “it’s better than it needs to be,” cinema!
 
So, the good news is that POC:DMTNT is better than it needs to be. The bad news, is this real life? I can’t claim to have invented this rubric, but last summer around the release of The Legend of Tarzan (which is so much better than it needs to be that it’s actually almost mostly good) my friends and I started to use the descriptor more and more. How can a movie possibly be better than it needs to be? Well, certain properties are going to perform no matter what happens between the margins.
 
Do you remember how ghastly bad the last Pirates movie was? It did, and you’ll want to sit down for this, On Stranger Tides did $1.045 billion—with a B—at the box office. By this measure, why bother making a good movie? Like, why fuss with rewrites and reshoots and so on if a massive turd is going to yield gold bricks? I know this is profoundly cynical, and undercuts the many good people working hard on these movies, but if you see those numbers, what is the incentive to raise the bar? But hey, old man Monte will creak his sad, unfranchised bones off of the soapbox and talk some Pirates, because that is what this is about. Right?!
 
There are some the goods in this one. First and foremost, the gold star goes to Kaya Scodelario. Her turn as Carina Smyth is the highlight of the cast of characters. Her damsel is distress proofed, a hero, thinker, astronomer, and general swashbuckling badass. Also, if you ever need to class up the joint, add a Javier Bardem. You’re already trending in the right direction. But the meat and potatoes for any Pirates film are the set pieces, and this one has a couple of real gems. Going into greater detail would ruin the explosiveness, but there is some zeal injected back into these pirate-y hijinks. Also, big shout out to runtime. Where the 168 minute slog of At World’s End is a distant memory, it’s noteworthy that Dead Men Tell No Tales checks in at a nice, sober 142 minutes. The picture moves at a brisk pace, and it’s digestible, never bogged down in overlong sequences or explanatory chicanery.
 
The bads? Let’s remember Johnny Depp as he was, shall we? Young, lithe, and not yet an inescapable parody of himself. The sea has him now. Also, Paul McCartney. Just...why? You didn’t need to offer more evidence as to why you’re my least favorite Beatle, but why? You don’t need the money. Just, but…why tho? Youngface. Youngfacing—the hottest new Hollywood trend as utilized by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and POC:DMTNT—is where we take a moment to digitally recapture how handsome working actors over 50 used to be. Sorry ladies! And where I call to remember Johnny Depp as he was, I did not mean like this. The script. The character dynamics are cursory at best, and at times downright silly. Overall, the story is pretty limp. Ultimately, when we’re brought to our moment of emotional catharsis, we’ve been asked to make almost no investment in the players or their conflicts. As such, the payout resonates accordingly.
 
All of this mills out to a pretty average film, but Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell no Tales is better than it needs to be. Though the question persists, is this or any franchise willing to put in the work to be its best self? To aspire to something beyond a crudely drawn caricature to be passed off as complete enough to return a profit? Only time will tell, and let’s hope it doesn’t take Jack Sparrow another century to find out. 

The logical self and the emotional self—these are the two elements pitted against each other in Marvel Studios’ newest installment Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. And by that, I mean "installed," a perfunctory act complete with an instruction manual. As with so many things in this life, the rational mind—with its shrewdness and well-defined goals—curtails the heart’s ambitions. GOTG2 roots around in this idea instilling it in every place from character design to conflict, but it also inadvertently (or very purposefully) articulates the going concern with all films of this ilk: can the heartlight ever outshine the strictures handed down by the cinematic universe superbrain?
 
Through this lens, I can say I unequivocally enjoyed the first Guardians more. Where I found it incrementally less enjoyable with each ensuing watch, I still think the first installment deserves a ton of credit for being a buoyant, ephemeral moviegoing experience. The soundtrack was better, the film felt scrappier, and the little Marvel franchise literally no one cared about was spun into pure gold. But what was once an ascendant property is now burdened with Atlas-like stature. You can feel more hands in the pie, and you can see the weight of expectations hung around the film’s neck like a millstone.
 
With much fan servicing to be done, many characters to prop up, and fleets of franchises to launch, there is barely room enough to squeeze an actual movie between the opening and closing credits. Did I cut and paste that exact criticism from an older Marvel Studios review? I dunno, but let me know when it stops being true. Oh! And do stay till the end of the credits if you want to get a sense of how many turds Marvel thinks you’ll gleefully choke down. I’m talking Ozymandias levels of, “Look on my works ye mighty and fuck you.” We are beyond tail wagging the dog. That implies some lesser appendage run amok. Guardians 2 feels more inline with Marvel handing out a model 'Summer Tentpole' kit, and shouting at James Gunn as he walks out the door, “but hey, when you’re done, paint it any color you like.”
 
And all of this is a damn shame because GOTG2 is a solid, occasionally superb film. When the checklist of demands moves out of the forefront, the movie bursts with joyous cinema custom tailored for the big screen. Gunn and company understand the unique advantages offered them with the mixtape trope, and to that end, Guardians 2 offers some exquisite music and cinema moments. The picture can be visually delicious and impassioned and just downright likeable, but it cannot escape the template. Not to read into things too aggressively, but when a problem is posed by an eternal brain—the ultimate symbol of rationale over feeling—inextricably bound to its self-imposed purpose regardless of consequence, I can’t help but see it as a kind of mea culpa and meta-self-satire deftly snuck past the bosses.    
 
Perhaps I’m giving James Gunn too much credit, but he’s a very gifted filmmaker. The core talent is as endearing as ever, and Kurt Russell and Pom Klementieff make fine additions to the roster. Yondu, Rocket, and Nebula are awarded some heavier lifting. The Star-Lord, Gamora will-they-won’t-they is taken to some sweet spots, pacing appropriate to a sequel. And Dave Bautista’s Drax, where one note, man that cat can blow.
 
Though, as with any ever expanding universe, the more sentient beings you introduce, the more relationships there are to satisfy. After a hasty count, I think there are at least eight inter-character dynamicsGuardians 2 tries to sift through in 138 minutes. Combined with the laundry list of other franchise prerequisites, subtle examination must have been left on the cutting room floor, or maybe nuance just didn’t focus group well. Make a mental note of the times all aural chaos falls away and one character delivers an incisive, punchy line to another. By my math, you should arrive at the exact number of complex interactions satiated with a cursory, “that should do.”
 
This kind of hurried, hollow sentiment is what frustrated me most this go round. It’s one thing to openly acknowledge none of this is about characters or story—these are blockbusters, not drawing room dramas—but for relationships to be serviced in such a cheap way is cynical. Manicured and oversimplified, the wildness of feeling something deeply is exchanged for an emotional reaction similar to a gag reflex. It’s procedural. When our core emotional connection feels so broadly manufactured, the whole exercise is rendered inessential.

If my opposing poles of praise and haranguing seem incongruent to the point of contradictory, know it is indicative of the gulf between the head and the heart. Overtly signaled by the characters of Ego and Mantis—one who is all frigid logic, the other an empath capable of feeling and altering others emotions—the concept expands in concentric circles beyond the characters, beyond narrative function, beyond the margins of the film, until it embodies an existential crisis. In its brain, the film knows it is merely a ribbon being woven around the Marvel maypole from which it would never dare sever or distinguish itself. But in those handful of moments where Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 flirts with the sublime, when genuine movie thrill cascades from the screen, you can feel it comes from the heart. 

​—By Monte Monreal