Saw it opening night, and while it was entertaining in the moment, the more I thought about it afterwords, the worse it felt.
Feels like the writers tried to conjure up new, totally unheard-of BS rules ("don't betray the compass" being the real standout) and then didn't define the rules clearly enough.
- Why does lifting the Dutchman's curse mean Davy Jones is alive... and even if he is, why on earth would he still be in cursed form??
- Doesn't the Dutchman serve a necessary purpose? If there's no more Dutchman, what does that mean for the souls that need to be ferried?
And then, in classic flashback origin-story cliche, the entire mystery behind Jack's legendary status is gone. While I liked the explanation of the name "Sparrow," I absolutely *hate* how he got his title, captainship, and about half of his effects ALL AT THE SAME TIME. I thought it had been generally accepted that he acquired various pieces of his outfit throughout his adventures, not just conveniently given to him. On that note:
- He now receives the zombie finger piece of eight here, even if in the fourth one he explains how he made it himself.
- He receives the compass, even though Tia Dalma explicitly stated he bartered it from her.
Add the whole Carina/Barbossa subplot, and it's like the writers never even saw the other movies, and didn't know how badly they made it irreconcilable with the other movies.
And just to be clear, I also showed up in full Jack regalia, and probably the best part of the evening was the everyone lining up to take photos before and after the movie. Coming from a real fan, I became rather depressed.