I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides tonight, and I’ve got to say…Tim Powers was robbed. It was a mess of a movie that wobbled from point to point, with no sense behind it, and a plot that had nothing to do with what I expected.

Skip the theater and read the book, On Stranger Tides, instead. This movie could have been stunning if it had simply used that wild and thrilling story from Powers, instead of stealing only the title, giving a feeble acknowledgment (“Story suggested by Tim Powers”), and then ignoring everything in the book.

Someday, I would like to see something by Powers given the full movie treatment. If not On Stranger Tides, somebody should take a shot at The Anubis Gates, the best damn time-travel novel ever written. It would beat the pale and hackneyed writing that characterizes most SF movies nowadays, that are little more than clumsily plotted vehicles for CGI and confusingly violent action.

Also, this movie didn’t have any cephalopods in it. Not a glimpse of even a single tentacle.