The first three Pirates of the Caribbean films all came together as a trilogy. Curse of the Black Pearl was the most stand-alone of the films, but with Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, you can’t have one without the other.

Jerry Bruckheimer, the films’ producer, said recently in an interview with USA Today that they’re abandoning the trilogy idea originally proposed for the future of the franchise in favor of doing one-off stories in order to “keep things fresh”. This decision is being based on what test audience said about the fourth film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides:

The audience told us what they loved about it is that it was fresh, it was new, it was a whole new story. So that will carry over into the next one, too, to give it something fresh and different.

It sounds like Bruckheimer may be jumping the gun on what the audience meant by that. It may be nice to see some fresh faces next to the iconic Captain Jack Sparrow, but it doesn’t sound like anyone would be opposed to seeing these new faces carry over into another ongoing storyline either. The good news is that the people behind the camera are at least planning on keeping the franchise alive with an already planned Pirates 5 as long as Johnny Depp is on board, and since he loves doing the character according to Bruckheimer we shouldn’t expect him to walk away any time soon.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do with this new structure idea. Obviously the films will have a universal tie in the form of Capt. Jack, but just how tight the films will feel is still up in the air. We’re not going to see anything like Star Wars, but we may see something closer to the Alien franchise with the main character’s previous exploits shaping what happens next. Or it could be like Mary-Kate and Ashley where nothing that happened before matters at all.

Where do you stand, Pirates fans? Do you like the one-off idea, or would you rather see main storylines carry over multiple films? Sound off in the comments below.