10 Franchises That Peaked With The First Movie
3. Pirates Of The Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl remains one of the most re-watchable blockbusters of the 21st Century a full fifteen years later, thanks largely to Gore Verbinski's precision-designed action scenes and Johnny Depp's unforgettable Academy Award-nominated debut as the instantly-iconic Captain Jack Sparrow.
None of the sequels could come close to recapturing the lightning in a bottle that had made the first installment so entertaining, with back-to-back sequels Dead Man's Chest and At World's End piling on supporting characters, exposition, double-crosses and intricate mythology until the narrative reached breaking point, with Verbinski failing to reign in his excesses. Sure, they made billions at the box office but they remain two of the most bloated blockbusters in recent memory.
After Verbinski jumped ship, Rob Marshall took over for On Stranger Tides, which forgot that Jack Sparrow works much better as a supporting character, with Depp's constant mugging bordering on the excruciating in a movie that couldn't quite decide if it was a true sequel or a soft reboot of the franchise, but still managed to retain the unnecessary over-indulgence of its two immediate predecessors.
Last year's Dead Men Tell No Tales definitively proved that the key creatives had learned absolutely nothing from their previous mistakes as it delivered more of the same convoluted plotting and tired slapstick, resulting in the lowest box office total since the original and the worst Rotten Tomatoes score in the entire franchise. Still, $794.8m is a fair chunk of change, so we may yet see the Black Pearl on our screens again.