One of the biggest mistakes most people, writers and audiences alike, have made with the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy was understanding who the protagonist was. I am still unsure if the second and third installments even had a protagonist; it certainly wasn’t Will Turner, the actually protagonist of the first film. The source of this confusion lies in Johnny Depp’s performance of Captain Jack Sparrow, a character so quirky bizarre and likable, that it simply outshines everyone else. But while Jack has been the poster child for the franchise, he was never the protagonist. On Stranger Tides outdoes this problem by removing the excessive amount of side characters, side pirates, pirate ships, pirate lords, pirate crew, and pirate monkeys, and centering the story on the latest of Jack’s shenanigans. All in all a more fitting title for this movie would have been: The Next Installment of The Captain Jack Sparrow Adventures; it highlights the story’s pulpy silliness much more than On Stranger Tides and since the movie doesn’t really take place in the Caribbean there is little point in keeping it on the title.
