Tides opens with Jack Sparrow in London, putting together a crew for his next expedition: to find the Fountain of Youth. As always, the work is cut out for him, as several others are likewise on the trail, foremost and mysterious among them is a figure known as The Spaniard, who’s been commissioned to not only seek out the fountain, but destroy it as well.

In addition to that, his old foe Captain Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush), now down a leg and bereft of his beloved Black Pearl, has returned and is now working as a privateer for King George II (Richard Griffiths), another fountain-seeker. And rounding out the stranger tide is Angelica (Penelope Cruz), a former lover of Jack and daughter to the dreaded Captain Blackbeard (series newcomer Ian McShane), who seeks eternal life to bypass a prophecy that a one-legged man shall kill him.

However merely finding the fountain and juggling adversaries and fellow adventurers isn’t enough, to unlock the power of eternal youth, Jack must first acquire the tear of a mermaid, which entails capturing a mermaid (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) and getting her to cry. That doesn’t seem like a particularly ardent task, especially when you have several men with knives and a Blackbeard, but, wouldn’t you know it, the missionary Philip (Sam Claflin) has fallen in love with her. But that’s easily remedied, right?

I’m not much of a Pirates fan and don’t find Depp’s Jack Sparrow as endearing as everyone else seems to (he’s like Chevy Chase in that both simply make deadpan observations of the flagrantly obvious), but I didn’t mind On Stranger Tides. It’s a hefty 137 minutes and yet is the shortest of the quartet. It drags, but no more so than the previous installments and has one truly inspired sequence with the mermaids.

We’re had a pretty heavy few weeks when it comes to big budget movie trailers. There were some good ones like Thor, some bad ones like Transformers: Dark Side Of The Moon, and some really bad ones like Real Steel. Thankfully, there’s now a decent trailer to warm moviegoer’s hearts and give us something to look forward to in the coming year.

Of course, we’re talking about the fourth film in the Pirates of the Carribbean series, titled On Stranger Tides. From the looks of it, some of our favorite characters are all coming back, including Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa. This time around, we’re getting treated with the awesomely bad ass stylings of Ian McShane as Blackbeard and the lovely Penélope Cruz as Angelica.

This time, Jack Sparrow and his gang of drunken pirates are after the fountain of youth, and travel to the ends of the earth against Blackbeard and his daughter to get to it first. The flick has prime placement for a box office smash, as it’s slated for a May 20th release.

Check out the full trailer after the jump.