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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival May 14,2011
Plot (Spoiler Alert)Jack Sparrow has been taken by Black Beard in order to lead him to the Fountain of Youth in order to gain life. Barbossa is working for King George III when really he is using it because it’s his only way of getting to Black Beard for his revenge for the Black Pearl. 
Blaine: I like the humor in “On Stranger Tides" more compared to the first three because it makes you laugh like Jack Sparrow hitting the two red coats in the crotches at the beginning of the escape scene and ending it with Jack’s face against a wooden woman’s knockers. I can still hear the laughs from the people in the theater every time I see those humorous scenes. “On Stranger Tides” also gives me more of an exciting and fun feeling every time I watch it. I love Jack Sparrow’s intro in “On Stranger Tides” with him in disguise as a judge. Jack Sparrow’s look has changed a bit like he has this red X on the right side of his face and he has a few highlights in his hair, he has more eye liner and he is more tan. Johnny Depp felt there was much more for Captain Jack Sparrow to explore and as long the script was good, he was game to return as Jack for a fourth time. Jack shows his romantic side 40% in “On Stranger Tides” for Black Beard’s daughter, Angelica, who he had been in a relationship before until he hurt her, but he still has feelings for her somewhere inside him. It was a whole new experience for Rob Marshall to be apart of a project this big. When Rob was fifteen, his family went on a cross-country trip and they went to Disneyland. Rob had bought a postcard of Pirates of the Caribbean and it’s been a dream for him to direct a “Pirates” film and he was thrilled to be working with Johnny Depp, who he has been wanting to work with for a while. Johnny Depp said that Rob is respectful of what everyone apart of the project has established, but also has his own signature on it and gave it a fresh new look. “On Stranger Tides” shot for six months and shooting began in a island of Kauai in Hawaii and it has these extraordinary jungles. Penelope Cruz said one of the beautiful privileges of their work is they get to travel and see these beautiful places, especially these places people would never see. There was one location that they had to travel by boat because it was an island. Whitecap Bay was a perfect location in Hawaii for scene when the mermaids attack, but the problem was the tides were rough so they couldn’t shoot there so they took photographs of it John Myhre, the production designer re-created it on the back lot of Universal in Los Angeles. Rob needed a tiny island for when Captain Jack abandons Angelique towards the end and no island like that existed in Hawaii. Janice Polley, the location manager, had remembered there was an island like that during another movie she did, so she showed Rob the picture and it was exactly what Rob was looking for. The location was in Palominito Island, Puerto Rico. After that shooting continued in Greenwich, England and was a big change, the cast and crew would be on boats going from island to island and in England they could just walk and drive to the sets. And then they shot at Pinewood Studios a British film studio. Johnny Depp said that the Fountain of Youth was something that was talked about early on when they were talking sequels and with “On Stranger Tides” the gates were re-opened. The biggest question was what does the Fountain of Youth look like. Rob Marshall said there were 50 different versions of what the Fountain of Youth would look like and production designer John Myhre lead the designs. They did drawings of a natural fountain, then one that had been carved by man, then an embellished and then things that were more man-made over a fountain. But everyone said that it should be just be a natural thing so John created this stone structure that was a circle. There’s a blue cave in Kauai, Hawaii and they decided to have it be the path way to the Fountain. And then the Fountain of Youth was built in Pinewood Studios in England. It was a director’s dream for Rob Marshall to be on that stage and directed fifty people in this climactic moment. Both Johnny Depp and Rob Marshall have worked with Penelope Cruz before in separate films and that was one of the reasons she was casts in “On Stranger Tides”. Penelope had gotten married during the beginning of shooting and then became pregnant during shooting and there are scenes in the movie where she does look puffy from the face. Penelope said she was protected every step of the way while she was pregnant. What was hard for Penelope to keep a straight face in front of Johnny Depp’s performance as Captain Jack. Geoffrey Rush liked the idea of Barbossa being disabled because physically it made him angrier, more forceful and more resilient as a character. I really like seeing Jack and Barbossa work more as a team in “On Stranger Tides” and Geoffrey always thought if those two would collaborate more they would make an unstoppable team, but they’re worlds apart because Barbossa is strategic thinker, he is one step ahead of everyone and will stop at nothing to achieve it where as Jack fools along the river of life improvising, taking huge daring risks which always pay off for him. I love one of the new characters Scrum, played by Stephen Graham, because he’s a funny guy. The cinematography was done by Dariusz Wolski, the same cinematographer of the first three “Pirates” and what I like about his work for “On Stranger Tides” is the orange and yellow tints in a lot of scenes like the pub, Blackbeard’s study and when the mermaids first show up because they remind me of the orange tint’s in my dad’s photographs. 
Sam Claflin had just graduated from acting school at the time and both producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Rob Marshall thought he was great so they added him onboard. Sam was nervous because he had always wanted to be in a pirate film and he didn’t want to screw anything up. And being there on the Hawaii set was hard for him to believe as soon he saw it and it felt realistic to him as well. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said that Johnny Depp was instrumental and the character Philip that Sam plays was created by Johnny. Rob Marshall was in the airport lounge in Paris and he was looking through a French magazine and there was a section about all these young and upcoming actresses and he saw Astrid Berges-Frisby’s picture and he thought she was so beautiful and so otherworldly. He ripped it out while no one was looking, took it with him, gave it to the casting director and asked if they can find her and if she could speak english. They found her and they had her audition for the main mermaid character, Syrena and Rob was very impressed because she had all those things Rob had hoped for when he saw the picture of her. Astrid was nervous her first day of shooting and that was the scene where the glass box breaks and her character falls out because she said it was a complicated scene. But as she arrived on the set Rob brings her to a more quiet space just to speak with her about the scene and to rehearse and after that she wasn’t nervous anymore because Rob made her feel more comfortable. Astrid trusted Rob 200 percent with what he was doing after that. It was also the first time for her to speak english full time. When they casted the other mermaids, there needed to be an exotic sense to them and otherworldly sensibility, but under those layers, there’s a deadly quality there as well. They had three different sets of mermaids like girls who had lines and were gorgeous who show up on the surface. And there was women who were synchronized, Olympic swimmers. And they had doubles who did a lt of the stunt work that the swimmers and actors didn’t do. The actress had to learn how to float on top of the water, how to move with their legs together, undulating-type movements and being comfortable with a flipper kick in a pool. They also had to practice eggbeater a lot. It was basically all pirates that were male during the first half of shooting of “On Stranger Tides” and then when they got to LA, the male cast members got to work with beautiful models and they couldn’t believe it was work. Kevin McNally, who plays Gibbs, couldn’t understand why his character couldn’t be around for that scene. They also had these Olympic athletes who could do anything including flip out of the water, they even flipped the actress on top of them during shooting. And then the stunt mermaids do the stuff when they attack. Rob wanted the mermaids a combination of beauty and terror and that was a big challenge for the visual effects department. They started off making them look more like a viscous creature, but Rob Marshall and Jerry Bruckheimer thought it looked too scary and looses the appeal of being beautiful, so they reined it back and just give them sharp teeth and viscous eyes. I remember the first time I saw that scene with the mermaids rising above and seducing the men, I asked myself “Are they wearing tops?” Because their backs were nude and their hair was covering their breasts. And then when Syrena got captured, it showed the scale skin goes up to the chest. Judging by the looks of it from what I’ve seen in the special features, it doesn’t look like they were wearing any tops while shooting which is a huge surprise for a Disney movie. I think of the mermaids in the film as piranhas because they jump way out of the water, grabbing men and taking them down to be eaten. There is a lot of action movies that have great slow motion diving and the best way to end that mermaid scene is with Jack doing a slow motion dive as the lighthouse behind him explodes. 
The Black Pearl in the first three films is a real ship that is metal underneath that was clad as an old wooden ship and it has been re-modeled to become Black Beard’s ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge in “On Stranger Tides”. They started off with the deck and stepped it up two stories and became a three-story tall ship in the back. And they added skulls and the production designer, John Myhre, based it off a bone church he saw outside of Prague once. It was a church that was decorated in the bones from a cemetery. The skulls would represent Black Beard’s victims because he’s evil. They also added flames to it as well to light the ship up at night. Judging by the looks of it, it ended with the feeling that new doors will open for a fifth installment to “Pirates” and it all started from seeing Syrena taking Philip down under in order to save his life and the after credit ending showed the voodoo doll of Jack Sparrow washing on shore on the island Angelique was abandoned on. She finds it and has nasty plans for it. But the question was how long will fans have to wait for the fifth movie because it took four years to wait for “On Stranger Tides” and now we have to wait for another one. Another question was how will it continue? But I do know my rating on “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” is five out of five stars and it is my number one movie of 2011. Concept drawings 
Music by Hans Zimmer
Blaine: One of the things that can make a movie like “On Stranger Tides” so exciting is listening to an extreme music score in the background. I mean it sounds like it has more of a faster pace compared to the first three. And then you have tango added to it from time to time and Hans had a collaboration with Mexican guitarists Rodrigo y Gabriela. I love listening to Hans Zimmer’s work and “On Stranger Tides” is one of his bests. 
Sam Claflin, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Penelope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Ian McShane and Director Rob Marshall at the 64th Cannes Film Festival 
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