Then a CGI shark with three heads explodes behind him, and you remember: this is a franchise that’s been sailing on nostalgia and spectacle for over a decade.

Here’s an interesting, slightly offbeat review for Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (released as Dead Men Tell No Tales in the US): The Ghost of a Good Time, Haunted by Its Own Past

There’s a moment about halfway through Salazar’s Revenge where Captain Jack Sparrow—rum-soaked, half-conscious, and dangling from a gallows—looks directly at the camera and grins. It’s the same grin from 2003. And for a split second, you feel it: the swashbuckling, chaotic magic that made The Curse of the Black Pearl a masterpiece of accidental genius.