Javier Bardem

It’s been a while now since we’ve seen Orlando Bloom dressed up in pirate gear. The actor didn’t appear in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, but will make his return as Will Turner in the upcoming Dead Men Tell No Tales. The only thing is, you might not totally recognize him.

After the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga debuted to a critical shellacking, many believed the film would be a franchise-killer for the swashbruckling adventure series. (“Swashbruckling” is an industry term for Jerry Bruckheimer-produced films that include swordplay.) But because On Stranger Tides also raked in a cool billion dollars worldwide, yet another sequel was inevitable. Between the dire notices for the most recent film, the six-year gap between entries, Johnny Depp’s declining public profile, and the motivator of a financial imperative, fans braced to greet No. 5, Dead Men Tell No Tales, as more studio-mandated pap. What this article presupposes is... it might not be?

Disney The smartest thing that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise ever did was introduce a revolving door of ghost pirate enemies. I don’t really care why Javier Bardem’s character hates Jack Sparrow, nor do I think for a moment that this is the film that will permanently kill Johnny Depp’s character off for good, but those plots points are secondary, the franchise’s equivalent of a ghost McGuffin (a McGhostin?). All I really care about is seeing charismatic actors like Bardem play campy villains.

For many movie fans, international trailers are an afterthought, an attempt to repackage previously released footage for a new market. But given the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies abroad, it’s probably safe to say that Disney takes its international footage pretty seriously. After all, the previous film in the franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, grossed a total of $240 million domestically and $804 million internationally. Put another way: the film failed to make back its budget ($250 million) in the United States but tripled it abroad.

Over the years Disney has made their Pirates of the Caribbean villains more and more ridiculous. The films began with Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa (no doubt the best bad guy of the series), then became super CGI heavy with Billy Nighy’s tentacled Davy Jones, and seemingly went back to basics with Ian McShane’s Blackbeard, but he used voodoo, so not the most traditional of pirates. (I still have no memory of who the villain was in At World’s End, but that movie was a ridiculous mess overall.) And now for the fifth installment in the Pirates franchise nobody asked for, Disney is going back to a CG villain.

There’s a famous part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland where an ominous voice says “Dead men tell no tales!” So I guess this is an adaptation of that line? These Pirates of the Caribbean movies are getting really granular.

Universal’s plans to reboot their classic monsters into a shared franchise universe are certainly ambitious, to say the least. In addition to casting Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe in The Mummy, the studio has Johnny Depp lined up to play The Invisible Man, and there have been talks of getting Dwayne Johnson for The Wolf Man and Angelina Jolie for Bride of Frankenstein. You can add another great actor to that list, as Javier Bardem is reportedly in talks to play Frankenstein’s monster in Universal’s reboot of Frankenstein.

The biggest event on the global cinematic calendar is nearly upon us, with the 69th Cannes Film Festival set for May 11-22. The selection committee won’t release their picks for the titles screening In Competition and the festival’s many sidebar programs until mid-April, but to stoke the fires of anticipation just a little, they’ve gone and revealed the official poster for this year’s proceedings

If you’re a Jennifer Lawrence fan, lately you pretty much had to settle for one of three types of movies: Hunger Games, X-Men or David O. Russell films. That’s all well and good (and has led to two Oscar wins), but with the Hunger Games franchise over and X-Men winding down, we’re also excited to start seeing Lawrence spread her wings. To wit: the actress is set to star alongside Javier Bardem in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming thriller.

After years of false starts and delays, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales finally began filming in Australia yesterday. And that’s not a moment too soon for the franchise’s star, Johnny Depp, who hasn’t headlined a hit since 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. So, this brings up two important questions. First, will a fifth Captain Jack Sparrow adventure resuscitate Depp in a post-Mortdecai world? Secondly, can new directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning inject new life into a series that ran out of steam two movies ago?