Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Ladies, gentlemen and alternatively gendered individuals, welcome to a very special edition of Deep Dive Disney. Alright everybody, hoist the colors, make ready the sails, drink your rum, grab your swords and get ready to buckle some swash because today, we begin our look at one of my favorite film franchises of all time, Pirates of the Caribbean. If I haven’t made my thoughts clear on the subject by this point, pirates, at least the heavily romanticized fictitious representation of pirates in popular media, are AWESOME! Something about a bunch of sea-faring rogues sailing the seven seas in search of treasure has been capturing the imagination of the consumers of popular media for centuries and yours truly is no exception. If there are pirates in a work of popular fiction, nine times out of ten it has my immediate attention. The other one time out of ten, it’s One Piece… and it knows why. There’s a reason I tell people that the best Assassin’s Creed game is Assasssin’s Creed 4, because out of all the Assassin’s Creed games, it has the most pirates. And when it comes to stories about pirates, this franchise tends to sit at the top of the heap. So, how did all this come about. Well, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride has been a staple of Disney Parks for as long as I can remember, to the point where the attraction is as synonymous with the world-famous theme parks as The Haunted Mansion. Well, in the early two thousands, Disney had the idea to adapt some of their attractions into feature films. While The Haunted Mansion film starring Eddie Murphy was a critical and financial failure, Pirates of The Caribbean turned out to be an absolute smash hit, still to this day ranked as one of the top one hundred highest grossing films of all time and spawning a grand total of four sequels with still two more rumored to be in development. We’ll be discussing the sequels at a later date, but today, we’re looking at the movie that started it all, The Curse of the Black Pearl. So, what’s our story today? Well, in the year 1720, a young boy named Will Turner is rescued from a shipwreck supposedly caused by pirates. Elizabeth Swann, the pirate obsessed daughter of the governor of Port Royal, a British settlement in the Caribbean, cares for the boy but is concerned by a mysterious pirate medallion around his neck and decides to keep it for herself. Eight years later, a mysterious and seemingly insane pirate known as Captain Jack Sparrow arrives in Port Royal planning to steal a ship but seems to recognize the medallion around Elizabeth’s neck. Later that same night, Port Royal is attacked by the legendary pirate ship known as The Black Pearl, led by their ruthless captain, Hector Barbossa. As it turns out, the pirate medallion that Elizabeth took from Will was actually one of a set of eight hundred and eighty-two identical pieces of cursed Aztec gold. Ten years ago, when the crew of the Black Pearl found the treasure, they found themselves doomed to an eternal unfeeling existence, starving to death but being unable to die, their true visage as skeletal revenants revealed only under the moonlight. Among the original crew was Will’s father, Bootstrap Bill Turner, who found himself tied to a cannon and sent to the bottom of the sea for questioning Captain Barbossa. However, what the pirates did not know at the time was that to undo their curse they needed to return each piece to the chest along with a blood sacrifice from each individual who stole from it. The pirates, having mistaken Elizabeth for a descendant of old Bootstrap and have taken captured her. Will, who has grown to care for Elizabeth over the years, makes a deal with Jack Sparrow, who was once Captain of the Black Pearl before being mutinied upon by Barbossa, in order to track them down. Together, Will and Jack gather up a cutthroat crew of their own and chase after the Black Pearl in order to save Elizabeth and finally put an end to Barbossa. It’s honestly one of the most fun action films I’ve ever seen so let us waste no further time. Drink up me hearties as we dive right into, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Main Character:

When it comes to this Franchise, it’s always been difficult to pin down exactly who the main character is supposed to be. While most tend to gravitate towards Captain Jack, who is undoubtedly the breakout character of this franchise, Will and Elizabeth’s story, at least in the first three films, seems too prominent to relegate them to the side character’s section. As such, we’ll be talking about all three in this section.

Let’s start with Elizabeth. Right away we can see that Elizabeth is not your typical young English women. While other young ladies her age are learning proper etiquette and how to breath while wearing a corset, Elizabeth was busy studying ships and pirates, becoming so well versed in pirate lore that she’s memorized the pirates code, a set of rules (or rather guidelines) that govern the actions of all pirates. Naturally, being the governor’s daughter, Elizabeth has to keep up appearances but it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that, despite her high birth, she does not fit in with high society. Notice that when the pirates invade Port Royal, all the other women run and hide while Elizabeth immediately goes for a sword to defend herself. Very cool.

Now let’s talk about Will Turner. Will clearly cares for Elizabeth but doesn’t really gain the confidence to admit that to her until the very end. Will’s arc involves coming to terms with the fact that his father was a pirate and learning that that does not necessarily mean he was a bad man. There’s surprisingly not all that much else to say about Will, he’s basically a typical male Disney protagonist along the lines of an Aladdin or a Prince Eric. Like many characters, Will gets a lot more development as the films progress. I do appreciate Will’s mini-arc of never being appreciated for his accomplishments until the very end.

And now, the time has come. Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite. The man, the myth, the legend, the best and worst pirate you’ve ever heard of, Captain, Jack, Sparrow. Jack is of course played by Johnny Depp and brilliantly at that. Say what you will about the man’s personal life, Depp may very well be one of if not the greatest actors of this generation. No one can disappear into a role quite like Johnny Depp and Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the defining roles of his entire career. He imbues the character with so much charisma that you can’t help but love him. More than that, Depp is one of the most gifted physical actors on the planet. Every time I watch one of these movies, including this most recent viewing, I end up catching Johnny Depp adding a little bit to the performance that I didn’t catch in previous viewings. I absolutely love the Jack Sparrow character, even going so far as to dress up as everyone’s favorite pirate captain for Halloween 2006, shortly after the release of the second film. I won the school costume contest, but I’m also never wearing a wig again for as long as I live. As far as the character himself goes, it’s easy to see why Jack Sparrow became such an incredibly popular character. I think Jack’s character can best be summed up in an exchange between him and Will. Will says, “This is either madness or brilliance,” to which Jack responds, “remarkable how often those traits coincide.” When it comes to Jack, you never quite know exactly what you’re looking at. Is he some legendary pirate and master strategist who’s always one hundred steps ahead of everyone or his he some drunken loon with delusions of grandeur who just keeps getting lucky? The answer, a little bit of both. Jack’s real strength, aside from his charm and charisma, is his ability to think on his feet and adapt to new situations very quickly, to know when to act and when to bide his time and wait for the opportune moment as it were. Watch the movie again and watch Jack very closely. So often when other characters would be reacting with horror or panic, Jack is assessing the situation and trying to figure out how to work it to his advantage. Hell, Jack is even willing to inflict himself with the curse just to be on equal footing with Barbossa during their final showdown. With all his eccentricities and his near unlimited charisma, Jack really is just a character who you can’t help but enjoy watching in action.

Villain:

I know what I just said about Johnny Depp and Captain Jack Sparrow, but if you want the real MVP of the film, it’s easily its main villain, Captain Barbossa. You may recall that this whole Disney rabbit hole I find myself stuck in started when I posted my Top 20 Disney Villains articles, something I plan to redo once this whole thing is over. Franky, after watching this movie again, my biggest mistake was not putting Barbossa on the list because he is just awesome! I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself since I do plan to cover at least some of the sequels, but Barbossa might have one of the strongest arcs in the entire series to the point that by the time the fifth movie rolls around, you could consider him just as much of a main character as Jack. Oh, and if you’ve only seen the first movie, spoilers, Barbossa’s death at the end doesn’t stick. Geoffrey Rush is an incredible actor who I swear was born to play this character. He absolutely steals every scene he’s in. He’s enjoyably over the top when he needs to be, but also great in moments when he has to be subtle. Check out the scene where he’s having dinner with Elizabeth and watch his face very closely. Remember, Barbossa himself is unable to enjoy this delicious looking spread of food so the closest he can ever come to that is watching someone else enjoy the food and living vicariously through them. The expression on Barbossa’s face is brilliant. You can tell that this is both exciting and torturing him at the same time and Rush’s brilliant facial acting convey’s this with very little dialogue. What’s interesting about Barbossa is how the film is able to make you sympathize with him without actually making him sympathetic. Barbossa, at least in this first movie, is an unquestionably evil man with few actual redeeming qualities. He leads a mutiny against Captain Jack, he leads a crew of bloodthirsty pirates who kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot, when at one point the pirates think that the curse has been lifted by Elizabeth’s blood, the first thing he does to test to see if the curse is broken is shoot one of his own guys, and worst of all, it’s heavily implied that the first thing he plans to do once the curse is actually broken is rape Elizabeth since the curse has given him a massive case of blue balls (the director’s words, not mine). The point is, Barbossa is not a good person, at all. However, there’s still the nature of the curse to consider. Forget the fact that these are bad people for a second and just imagine what it would be like to be completely deprived of sensation, unable to feel, touch, taste or experience pleasure of any kind, as Barbossa describes it: “starving to death without being able to die.” Now imagine that hellish existence for an entire decade. It truly sounds like a fate worse than death. Frankly, there comes a time when even the most despicable people have suffered enough. You feel every second of agony that Barbossa has gone through in Rush’s performance and you can’t help but want to see this man, horrible though he may be, be granted some kind of mercy from his hellish existence, even if that mercy comes in the form of the sweet embrace of death. Speaking of, that leads us nicely into easily Barbossa’s best scene, his death. The curse has just been broken in the same instant that Jack has shot him in the chest. In an instant, all the sensations of life come flooding back to him only to be taken away in the same instant. You can see it all over his face the feelings of elation followed swiftly by despair, conveyed brilliantly by Rush’s masterful facial acting and three simple words “I Feel… Cold.” Add in a visual reference to Snow White as the cherry on top for good measure and we got us one hell of a death scene. Barbossa is not just one of Disney’s best villains, he might actually be one of their most fascinating characters.

Side Characters:

Some of these characters are going to be strange to talk about given the fact that a lot of them are given a lot more to do and a lot more character development in the later films. However, one where that’s not the case is Anna Maria, the female pirate played by Zoe Saldana. This character honestly just baffles me. In her initial scene they set her up as this badass, take no shit character as well as a potential love interest for Jack, but then, the rest of the film barely does anything with her. Anything she does after her initial scene could easily have been done by another member of the crew with pretty much nothing needing to be changed and as far as any of the sequels go, she’s nowhere to be found. Seems like a waste of potential and a great actress if you ask me.

Next, I’d like to talk about Governor Weatherby Swann, Elizabeth’s father played by Jonathan Price. I just want to say that it’s nice seeing this actor playing someone who generally seems to be a good person after seeing him play an absolutely despicable character in Game of Thrones. He seems to be a firm believer of the importance of social standing but never acts like a dick about it and does seem to genuinely care for his daughter. Fun fact, his outfit in the opening scene was intended as a visual reference to Captain Hook.

Next up, let’s talk about Joshamee Gibbs, Jack’s first mate who, despite being a pirate at heart, is described by the filmmakers as the most virtuous character in the series. I swear, with all the other great actors and performances in this movie, Kevin McNally may never get the love he deserves for his portrayal of this character and that’s a shame because he’s a lot of fun. I always wondered what happened to him between the opening scene and the present to make him go from serving in the British royal navy to sleeping in pig shit on Tortuga.

Finally, there’s James Norrington. I don’t have too much to say about Norrington in this film, though I will have a lot to say about him in later movies. Right now, he’s the stuffy naval officer who seems to be a decent man by all accounts, but has a difficult time distinguishing the difference between what is lawful and what is right. He also helps to reinforce Elizabeth’s arc of not fitting in with high society by being the sort of individual who a high-born woman like Elizabeth would be expected to marry. Still, Jack Davenport is yet another actor who turns in a stellar performance but gets overshadowed by his co-stars. Oh well, he’ll get a much more interesting role in the next movie so that’s something.

Songs:

Pirates of the Caribbean, despite incorporating the iconic “A Pirates Life for Me” song as a drinking song sung by Jack, is not a musical. However, while I rarely comment on a film’s score, I would be insane not to mention the incredible music in this film. I can honestly say that this film has a score on par with that of The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And of course, the track everyone remembers is the incredibly iconic track simply entitled “He’s a Pirate.” My god, I cannot think of any theme from any movie that pumps me up quite like this. It just makes me want to jump up and start sword fighting something. And of course, everything about it just screams “Pirate.”

Memorable Scenes:

While this film has no shortage of great scenes, many of which we’ve discussed already, for whatever ever reason, my favorite scenes in the film all seem to involve Jack Sparrow hanging around in Port Royal, so I figured I’d just take you through them one by one, starting, naturally with the scene that introduces us to Jack. A brilliant triumphant score is heard, and there, atop the mast of an incoming ship, with the wind blowing majestically in his long hair, stands the great Captain Jack Sparrow, looking every bit like the legendary figure he’s become both in and out of universe. Jack even gives a solemn salute to some hanged pirate skeletons put up as a warning to pirates like himself, show that he has some sense of honor about him. Then, we zoom out and see that the ship he’s on… is this piece of crap dingy that’s currently sinking. Isn’t that just Jack in a nutshell, coming into port in a leaky scrap of wood that just barely meets the minimal qualifications to be considered a boat, but doing so with a level of swagger that says he’s king of the entire goddamn ocean. The fun doesn’t stop there as Jack docks his sunken boat at Port Royal and some dock worker comes up insisting that it’s a shilling to tie up his boat and he’ll need to know his name. Jack gives the guy three shillings and says to forget the name, to which the other guy responds “Welcome to Port Royal Mr. Smith.” I think the best part of this scene is this little eyebrow raise from the kid assisting the dock worker. And naturally, Jack being a pirate, he robs the guy while his back is turned. Next, Jack heads over to the Interceptor, the royal navy ship he intends to steal, and has an absolutely hilarious exchange with the two idiot soldiers put in charge of guarding it. I especially like the bit where the guards have him at gun point and insist he tell them his business in Port Royal. Jack… surprisingly, tells the entire truth, knowing that they wouldn’t believe him because they’re expecting him to lie, something that absolutely confounds the two idiot soldiers. The strangest thing about this scene is that the next time it cuts back to Jack, he’s telling the same two guys who were holding him at gunpoint a second ago a funny story about one of his adventures, one that may or may not be foreshadowing a scene in the second movie at that. The next big moment comes when Elizabeth falls into the water, and Jack, with zero hesitation, leaps in to save her simply because it’s the right thing to do, something that further illustrates that though he may be a pirate and a thief, he’s still a good man. Later, when Norrington catches him and figures out his true identity as the legendary Jack Sparrow, he mocks him for being a poor pirates, citing things like a compass that doesn’t point north and a pistol with no additional shots nor powder as evidence of this. What’s ironic is that fans of the series now know that those things are actually items that have great meaning both to Jack and the lore of this world. I especially love how Jack’s response to Norrington calling him “The Worst Pirate He’s Ever Heard Of” is “But You Have Heard of Me.” That just feels like such a Jack Sparrow thing to say. Jack running from the guards leads him into the blacksmith shop where Jack meets Will and the two exchange witty banter during an incredibly fun and creatively choreographed sword fight that culminates in Jack’s capture and starts a running gag where Jack is convinced that Will is a eunuch. Finally, there’s the much later scene where the invading crew of the Black Pearl come upon Jack in the Port Royal jail. After a nice reference to the Disney ride, what with the dog with the keys and all, two pirates show up and taunt Jack for his misfortune. Jack answers with a taunt of his own about how the deepest circle of hell is reserved for those who commit mutiny, prompting one them to grab Jack by the throat revealing his skeletal hand in the moonlight, our first bit of concrete evidence of this film’s supernatural element. I love that Jack isn’t even scared, he just says “That’s Interesting.”

Story:

There are actually a lot of themes that can be read into this film, such as the contrast between high and low society, the idea that it’s possible to be a pirate and a good man, the value of patience and waiting for the opportune moment and many others. However, there are only two I’d like to discuss in detail, and both are illustrated during the scenes where Jack and Elizabeth are marooned on a deserted island. First, there’s the idea of how the legend of a person, in this case Jack, can be bigger than the man himself, a theme I often incorporate into my own writings. As I’ve mentioned, Jack is someone whose daring deeds have become legend over time. Even the story of how Jack escaped from this very island is this grand tale involving sea turtles and ropes made of his own back hair. However, the actual story ends up being far more mundane. Jack just happened to be lucky enough to be marooned on an island that some rum runners were using as a secret cache and ended up spending three days getting drunk before hitching a ride back to civilization. This revelation angers Elizabeth for being so mundane, but then, legends, while sometimes containing a kernel of truth, are often not what they seem.

Second, there’s this major theme of freedom running through this film as well as the sequels. All the principal characters in this movie feel trapped in one way or another. Will and Elizabeth are trapped by the roles society expects them to play, Barbossa and the pirates are trapped by the curse and even Jack feels trapped or at least vulnerable due to his separation from his beloved Pearl. They’re all looking for their own brand of freedom and what the idea of freedom means to them. An interesting concept that I hope to expand upon further when we eventually cover the sequels.

The Dark Disney Factor:

Like with Roger Rabbit, or any film more geared towards adults, or at least older children, the Dark Disney Factor doesn’t really apply in the same capacity that it would with something like Toy Story or The Lion King, but there’s definitely a lot of darkness to go around. You best start believing in ghost stories people, you’re in one. We’ve already discussed the nature of the curse and just how nightmarish that really is, and indeed, the skeletal pirates are indeed frightening despite some CG effects that admittedly look great by 2003 standards but look a bit dated in 2021. There’s also this thing where, if a pirate is marooned by his crew, tradition dictates they be given a pistol with a single shot. This is not for hunting, but rather, to take one’s own life if the soul crushing loneliness and starvation becomes too much to bear. That’s a cheery thought. I do appreciate how Jack saved his bullet with the intent to use it to kill Barbossa, which ended up working out for him nicely. Finally, there’s a scene that’s not especially disturbing until you think about it for a bit. During the final battle, Will and Elizabeth fight three of Barbossa’s pirates while Jack has his duel with Barbossa himself. To defeat these pirates, Elizabeth shoves a bomb into one of the pirates’ skeletal chest cavity and pushes them out of the moonlight to ensure that it’ll get stuck there, causing all three of the pirates to explode. What’s twisted about this is that the curse renders the pirates unable to die. This means that those three exploded pirates are presumably conscious in some capacity despite being nothing but a pile of twitching scraps of charred human remains. Jesus! I thought they were living a hellish existence before. Can you imagine what that must feel like? Fortunately, the curse is broken shortly thereafter so their suffering doesn’t last too long but it’s still deeply disturbing to think about.

Final Thoughts:

I love every single second of this film. It is easily one of the most fun and exciting action movies ever made with likable, charismatic characters who have withstood the test of time. And this one isn't even my favorite in the series! What started as a seemingly silly idea to adapt a Disney ride into a feature film has exploded into a multi-million dollar franchise and this is the movie that started it all. As long as this article is, I barely scratched the surface in terms of everything that makes this movie great. If you haven't seen it yet, I cannot recommend it enough. In my mind, it's up there with Star Wars or The Godfather or other pop culture touchstones that everyone should watch at least once, and I have had an absolute blast talking about. Next time we're back to business as usual as we return to the animated Disney canon with another movie I've never seen, Brother Bear, but for now, I say, Bring Me That Horizon

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