Pirates of the Caribbean 4: I don’t know what to think. Seriously.

I mean, when I read that the chance of it happening may have been wrecked by Dick Cook getting fired (Disney muckety-muck), I was relieved. I was very disappointed by the second and third movies (the first, of course, rocked on toast). And heck: I didn’t even know that they were planning to make a fourth film.

But then I read the working title.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

On. Stranger. Tides.

As the Onion AV Club noted:

A 1988 Tim Powers novel called On Stranger Tides concernes pirates, a character called Jack, and the search for the Fountain Of Youth. And as POTC fans may recall, Jack and Barbosa ended At World’s End hinting that they planned to get their Ponce de Leon on. A compass couldn’t point us in a straighter direction.

So now I’m stuck.  Johnny Depp starring in a reboot of a franchise that takes its plot from a FREAKING TIM POWERS NOVEL.  There will be nothing mediocre about the result: it will reach Iron Man / Star Trek levels of awesomeness, or it will suck utterly.  There can be no middle ground.