[Lestrade]

On Stranger Tides was based on a novel that did not have Jack Sparrow in it but apparently the scriptwriters figured they could adapt it to fit their established world/characters. I have neither read the novel nor seen the movie though.

I loved the first one, liked the second a lot, and felt the third was... not terrible, but didn't live up to the expectations of the second. (I mean, they never really even explained why Barbossa was back from the dead beyond a really vague "Tia Dalma did it I guess", and all the stuff in Singapore ended up being totally pointless...)

I didn't really intentionally avoid the fourth one. Just never got around to seeing it.