7. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)/Pirates Of The Caribbean (2007)
We'll lump these two movies in together because they're plainly terrible and they don't really deserve to be explored as singular entries anyway. Also: they share exactly the same flaws. It's wholly surprising that so many people still claim to like these movies, despite the fact that they don't have a patch on the original, Curse of the Black Pearl, which was fun, humorous, dark and made pirates cool again. These flicks made pirates boring. So whereas Curse of the Black Pearl clung to an interesting storyline that you could - you know - make sense of, the storylines inherent to both Dead Man's Chest and its follow-up, At World's End, are so confusing and overwritten that it's genuinely bewildering that the people over at Disney said: "Yep, let's start production on these films that are intended for family audiences, even though the plot rivals that of 2001: A Space Odyssey." And not in a good way, either. Despite being bluntly messy, then, the Pirates sequels are also incredibly long - why do they need to be two and half hours a piece? Worst of all, it would have been so easy to make a couple of good sequels, given that the key to original movie's success wasn't the storyline but Johnny Depp. Here, he lapses into a parody of Jack Sparrow as he appears to wonder what the hell is going on. Majorly disappointing.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
