Grab your black eyeliner, red bandana and a bottle of rum because the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow is back on the big screen.
The hugely anticipated Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the fourth voyage for Johnny Depp’s iconic pirate incarnation.
This chaotic figure has delighted cinema-goers since the first instalment of the franchise, The Curse Of The Black Pearl, in 2003.
That film and its subsequent sequels, Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and At World’s End (2007), earned $2.6 billion and now the cast and crew – some old, some new – are back, and this time the adventure’s in 3D.
“Audiences fell in love with the pirate genre all over again after an absence of some three decades, and they certainly fell head over heels in love for Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow,” says producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who’s been involved in the franchise from the start.
For Depp, there was never any doubt he’d set sail as Captain Jack once again.
‘‘There’s great comfort in playing him because you have licence to be completely irreverent, completely subversive, absolutely abstract in all situations,” says the actor. “I know him so well that it just comes naturally.”
Be warned, changes are afoot in this latest adventure. However much we relished Captain Jack’s escapades, there was a feeling the franchise required something of a reboot.
“Pirates two and three became quite sub-plotty,” Depp acknowledges. “This one is a little closer in tone to the first film – more character-driven, more subject-driven. It has a freshness.”
The main guideline for On Stranger Tides was to create a standalone story rather than a continuation of the trilogy.
Writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio dug deeper into the treasure chest of pirate history and mythology and, inspired by a 1988 pirate novel of the same name as this film, take audiences on an adventure to the fabled Fountain of Youth. Along the way there are zombies, mermaids, stunning vistas and thrilling action-packed sequences.
It begins with Captain Jack escaping custody to run amok across 18th century London before being bundled unwittingly aboard Blackbeard’s ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Ian McShane is in tremendously grizzled form as the legendary and barbarous pirate.
“Blackbeard is probably the most famous pirate who ever lived,” says the actor. “There’s a legion of stories about him and whether they’re true or not, he’s now part of pirate mythology.”
