7. Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Why The Franchise Failed: It became messy, convoluted and to wrapped up in its own mythology.
Why It Re-Succeeded: It lowered its sights and dumped the backstory. I know I'm going to take a kicking for this one, but strangely, I enjoyed On Stranger Tides. That's not to say it's a perfect movie, because it clearly, clearly isn't. There's still flaws all over the shop and Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow shtick is starting to get quite old. But still, what I admired about the film was that it took to the opportunity to start (relatively) afresh with aplomb. Dropping the always-wooden Will and Elizabeth from the franchise allowed the film to focus on Captain Jack and for the large part abandon the leaden back-story and rules which killed the third film in the crib. Go back and watch At World's End. Go on, I'll wait. I'll be here three-odd hours, but I'll wait. If you've done that (or you don't particularly feel like it), you'll notice that there was just far too much going on. Remember it was the previous film which featured a boatload of exposition from Pintel and Ragetti about who was fighting for what, replete with a we-know-its-complicated subtext. Yet the third film drops even more on top of this, throwing in the Davy Jones-Calypso love story, the East India Trading Company's endgame and a surreal pirate law session and accompanying vote. It was baffling, hard to follow, and left the audience cold. So really, Tides' choice to dump the majority of the mythology to focus on some barmy action set pieces couldn't have been more welcome, and augmenting the formulaic plot with the addition of the always-terrific Penelope Cruz couldn't help but improve matters. Throw in Ian McShane overacting like it was going out of fashion ('Mutineers HAAAAAANG!') and you've got yourself a perfectly serviceable movie perfect for a Sunday night. Granted, it's not going to win any awards, but by dropping Pirates' dead weight in favour of tried-and-tested pirate tropes Blackbeard, mermaids, etc. you could switch your brain off, safe in the knowledge that no-one's going to bludgeon you with ridiculous expository rules from two films ago. If anything, it's quite cathartic.