Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Here There Be No Monsters?

After a nine-month drought of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales news, producer Jerry Bruckheimer just can’t seem to shut up about it now. Barely a week after he revealed that shooting on the fifth film in the popular pirate fantasy series would commence in 2015, he’s now telling Collider that the fifth film won’t have any fantasy creatures in it, a first for the franchise.

“I think we’re back to more of a straight pirates movie this time,“ the producer of Deliver Us From Evil said in the interview. When asked to clarify about the possibility of another giant Kraken, for example, Jerry Bruckherimer responded, “Not in the script I read recently.”

If you stop and think about it, it’s almost strange that this qualifies as news. When ghost pirates showed up in the first film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, many people wondered where the hell they came from. It wasn’t like the original Disneyland ride had anything supernatural in it. Although the first film in particular is beloved by movie fans the world over (and many folks like the sequels to one extent or another), the presence of giant witches and crab limbo and fish captains and mermaids really wasn’t “necessary” to turn Pirates of the Caribbean into a movie. It may have been fun but it wasn’t the original point, and it may prove refreshing to see Captain Jack Sparrow simply do awesome pirate stuff without the aid of over-the-top CGI creations.

What do you think? Do the Pirates of the Caribbean movies NEED fantasy creatures to be successful, or would still you go see a Captain Jack Sparrow flick even if he wasn’t necessarily going to fight starfish vampires or whatever the hell else they could have gone with this time?

This Week in Film News – Week Ending 07/04/14

William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.