I found myself wishing I'd just read the script instead. If you closed your eyes and read Cruz's lines back to yourself, you could imagine her playing a self-sufficient, intelligent, capable female... none of the lines were inherently subservient or self-deprecating. But, as I guess all great actors and actresses can bend a script to theirs or the director's will, she managed to deliver every one with the whiny off-balanced inflection of the first-act tough girl who falls apart as soon as the villain grabs her by the upper arm. That's why it felt like there was no chemistry to me... it seemed a weird step for sparrow to find helplessness and naive incompetence attractive? Plus they made her up to look half his age, which was a bit unsettling.

I think I may just resign myself to never watching anything but Dr. Who and a carefully chosen subset of anime. All hail Dr. River Song...