In order to celebrate the 2017 release of ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’, I’ve done something some of you may not approve of. I’ve ranked the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films in order from worst to best.

• Remember how fresh and novel Pirates of the Caribbean seemed in 2003? Remember the fun of seeing Johnny Depp's off-the-wall portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time? It may be It may be hard to think back that far, because the lumbering..
• Depp, grimacing, edges in and out of the action and seems irrelevant and bored most of the time.

• New York Magazine/Vulture

  Honestech tvr 2.5 user's manual. 5/23/2011 by David Edelstein

  I've never seen a film in which what was actually onscreen seemed so irrelevant.
• Ahoy me hearties, No. 4 is surprisingly not bad.
• The franchise is getting tired, but Penelope energizes it..
• It's never quite clear what the relationship between Jack and Angelica is. Sometimes it's love, sometimes it's hate; it probably depended on who was writing the script that day.
• Ian McShane gives Blackbeard as much menace as a goofball romp can handle.
• Except for one moment in the climactic Fountain of Youth scene, I never once thought, wow, what a magical place I'm being invited to visit.
• It has the feel of a TV drama renewed for one season too many, a last, furtive run at the till before it closes for business.
• Small kids won't really appreciate Johnny Depp either, though frankly he's getting to be less fun as the series ages, possibly realizing that what's riskiest in Pirates 4 isn't walking the plank, but jumping the shark.

• Christian Science Monitor

  5/20/2011 by Peter Rainer

  With further sequels already in the works, and billions more to be made, I would nevertheless like to point out that the wind went out of these pirate ship sails a long time ago.
• Marshall deserves props for putting the 'show' back into the Pirates business. But face it, he's polishing a giant turd.
• The movie was written by 'Pirates' stalwarts Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. They're funny guys, and the script might well be funny too, but it's hard to tell from the metronome rhythms set for the actors by the director, Rob Marshall..
• 'On Stranger Tides' feels as fresh and bracingly exhilarating as the day Jack Sparrow first swashed his buckle, infusing new reckless energy into a franchise that shows no signs of furling its sails.
• The more sequels spun off, the clearer it becomes that one movie about these swashbucklers would have sufficed.
• Cutlasses flash, music swells, mast sways, critic yawns.
• For all his faults, Gore Verbinski at least handled the action with panache. Those movies thrummed with derring-do. This one sinks.

• San Francisco Chronicle

  5/19/2011 by Mick LaSalle

  If you want to burden your movie from the outset, give it a protagonist who can't grow, can't change, can't feel and wants nothing. Then give Depp total license to mug his way out of this confinement.
• Dead Man's Chest and At World's End meandered so far off course, and took so long to get there, that almost any Act 4 encore would qualify as a quantum leap forward.
• There's little if anything here to keep us emotionally invested, and so the pile-it-on mutinies and sword fights and perilous dives off vertiginous cliffs exist just to wow us.