The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is an odd one. Odd in the sense that, it had a lot of red flags before even starting production that would have made everyone think it was destined to fail. There seems to be two clear paths in Hollywood to make a film almost 90% sure to fail, those paths are making a movie based on a game, or a movie based on a ride.
While Pirates of the Caribbean was and still is, one of Disney’s most popular rides, the CEO in 2001, the divisive Michael Eisner strongly believed the film would be an utter disaster. After all, pirates were a difficult subject to tackle, they were dark, gritty and not very Disney. He believed the concept was entirely too niche despite there being a gap in the market for a family friendly Pirate film, and there had been success stories of such in the past, Hook and even Disney’s own Peter Pan featured a popular pirate villain. Basing a film on a ride however is a risky subject indeed, Eisner was initially right to be sceptical. There are two big issues with basing a film on a ride, the first being, rides are something a large amount of the population might not have experienced, and unlike films, books or music, it’s a medium that’s kind of impossible to understand, unless you experience it firsthand. The other issue is that the source material itself is pretty vague. Disney have around a 30 minute window max to explain a story to people waiting in line and then experiencing the ride itself (and yes, i’m aware most of the time we wait longer than that for a ride at Disney, but let’s just imagine it’s a quiet day.) Unlike books or plays, there isn’t a huge amount of time to create a story, or memorable characters that people can relate to or come to love, so yes, it’s easy to say Pirates of the Caribbean had a lot running against it to say the least.
Once Eisner did reluctantly agree to the project, the film was given an impressive $140 million dollar budget, a cast featuring seasoned actors Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush and newcomers Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom. The film was also directed by Gore Verbinski who had just a year prior, directed horror film ‘The Ring’, again, a strange choice for a director of a Disney film. Once Eisner saw Depp’s quirky betrayal of Jack Sparrow he again had another reason to question whether the film would be successful. Depp played Jack as a useless, drunk, bumbling, quirky….. can I say loser? I mean we love him but he is a lovable loser. Before then Pirates had been portrayed either as disgusting villains or charming, dashing and weirdly chivalrous heroes. (They made livings by raping and pillaging unarmed ships and towns but hey….. gotta love a bad boy…..??) Needless to say, portraying a pirate as a washed-up Rockstar was a strange choice, but boy did it pay off! The film was a huge success and spanned 4 sequels (though i’m not going to talk about the last two because really that’s when Disney showed it’s true, milking the cow patterns and ultimately ruined what was an otherwise great trilogy).
Now, onto what worked about the films and there’s a LOT that worked for them. First off. the characters. Depp did a fantastic job bringing Jack Sparrow to life. Sparrow is the ultimate anti-hero, he’s interesting because he changes sides quicker than he drinks rum and it leaves the viewer constantly wondering what he will do next. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s smart, despite sometimes behaving as if he isn’t. Ultimately, he’s loyal to his friends. While we came to love him and his interactions with characters throughout the series, realistically, most of us fell in love with him after the first 10 minutes, when he was introduced to us via saving Elizabeth. Let’s face it, he’s just fun to watch.
Elizabeth is another character I feel does not get nearly as much credit as she is due if we are talking feminist heroes in film because damn was she a complex character. The first film was released in 2003 when women were still largely treated as little other than sex symbols or one dimensional rebels, the film itself is set during the Golden Age of Piracy, which was roughly 1650-1720, not a great time to be a woman. However, Kiera Knightley did a great job making Elizabeth her own character and helping her stand out as an important character, often equalling her charismatic, charming co-stars. She is brave, she is smart, she challenges all the men attempting to enforce their will on her, (excuse the pun) including her father, Barbossa, Norrington, Jack and in some cases, even the placid, unassuming love interest, Will. She often does the hard work when nobody else will, hell she’s the one who leaves the crew of the Black Pearl behind in the first film to return to Isla De Muerta to save both Will and Jack, the other pirates are too cowardly to do so….. And that was the film where she was as close to a damsel in distress as she was ever going to be. In the third film she literally becomes the KING of pirates, not the queen, king, and nobody even questions it! Will Turner in my opinion is actually the least interesting character. That’s not to say his character sucks or Orlando Bloom isn’t a good actor, it’s just hard for him to keep up with the charisma of the rest of this cast. If anything, in the first film, he is given the role of attractive, soppy, smouldering love interest used for the plot to advance, something that usually female characters have to endure.
Elizabeth Swann – Pirate King, Feminist hero, all-around perfect human being
The villains are equally as compelling and complex, often tragic and often go from villain to a character that we root for, Barbossa and Norrington are noticeable examples of this. Barbossa is actually, hardly a villain at all, well, besides the plundering and general pirate bad behaviour, which granted is awful, but if we can love Jack for it, we can love Barbossa for it too. He doesn’t want to kill Elizabeth even when he no longer believes her to be useful to him. He has only spent the last 10 years plundering towns to find the missing gold he needs to become human again. He is as charming as Jack is and equally as funny. I actually might like Barbossa more than I like Jack, he’s just as complex a character but he just sounds more like that classic pirate stereotype which I kind of love. Davy Jones is another complex villain, fuelled by unrequited love, forced into a life of servitude by the one he once loved enough to endure such a fate in the first place. He gives his victims a choice, albeit a shitty one but still, it’s more than a lot of villains would give their victims. Cutler Beckett is another villain that’s difficult to define as such. He’s a police officer. That’s it. That’s literally it. We only hate him because we love our main cast who are technically the criminals and he wants to bring said criminals to justice. There is so much to love (or love to hate) about everyone in this series, from the comedy relief in Pintel, Ragetti and Gibbs to the morally ambiguous Calypso and Norrington as well as the main cast. The characters are some of the most developed I have seen in a film series at all, let alone Disney film series.
When the first 3 films in the series were made, it was during a time when Disney were not afraid to take risks. Pirates, as mentioned before are a difficult subject to tackle in terms of making them family friendly. We as a society can collectively agree that we love them and as kids might have wished to dress up as one or play as one but ultimately there’s a lot of difficulty in bringing them to life in media that is marketed towards families seeing as the things they in their lives ranged from questionable (at the very least) to mass murder and rape of not just armed fleets and soldiers, but also innocents too. Disney’s POTC did not shy away from the pirates antics. We are shown the hanging bodies of the dead served as a warning to other pirates, we are aware of Jack’s womanising ways, in the 3rd film they hang a child to death and Davy Jones brutally murders someone by sticking his tentacles down a man’s eyes and mouth, in the first film Barbossa quite openly admits to the fact that he can’t get off despite how many women he sleeps with. POTC does not shy away from adult elements and why? Because it took the risk knowing that audiences would watch the films for different reasons. If you have ever watched a cartoon from the late 90’s, or a kid’s film from the 80’s as an adult you will pick up on jokes you never picked up on as a kid and that’s the beauty of films that take a risk by marketing their ‘family films’ to appeal to certain demographics, instead of just playing it safe and making a film that ‘has something for the whole family to enjoy.’ There’s also something to be said about family films that also ask the audience to think a little when they watch the film. My biggest issue with Disney now is that it has become a paint by numbers organisation. The remakes are easy to follow, the jokes are bland and predictable, the moral compasses of the characters are very black and white and it’s very insulting to younger viewers to think they can’t figure out story elements themselves. POTC didn’t shy away from this, Pirates is brutal, it has grey moral areas, it is full of things that to be perfectly honest, probably wouldn’t be considered appropriate for children nowadays but that’s what made it so great.
The opening scene of At World End opened with the hanging of innocents, including a child, highlighting the sometimes brutal nature of these films
Aside from the complexities behind narrative and character developments, everything else in the series just works so well. The stunts were innovative and fun to watch, the music by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer is so well done and atmospheric. The scores epicness rivals that of a John Williams score. The CGI was fantastic in the first film and when it was used to create Davy Jones in the later films it was even better. Yes the budget was big and could afford the best of the best but still, there are films that are being released now which don’t put as much effort into making their effects look as realistic, Jurassic World is a noticeable example of this. With POTC, you really felt like the cursed skeletal pirates were there on the Black Pearl, you really felt like Davy Jones was there, the way he worked with live actors in the scenes was amazing and still holds up to this day. The sets are impressive, the attention to detail in the costumes and set dressing is spectacular. One of the only things I enjoyed in Stranger Tides was the little nod to the Pirates ride in which your boat goes past the skeleton of a pirate captain sitting up in bed, surrounded by gold and treasure. It’s one of the more memorable parts of the ride and the film paid homage to it through an entertaining scene between Barbossa and Jack within that same setting.
If you have the films on DVD, the title screen is the pirate skull telling you to choose a path, stating ‘dead men tell no tales’ and ‘here be monsters’, again, similar to an aspect included in the original ride. It’s this attention to detail that adds to the authenticity of the film. The crew were as dedicated as the cast to make this the best pirates film series they could make. Geoffrey Rush famously drove director Verbinski mad on set due to his attention to detail with Barbossa and questioned every little bit of direction in an effort to make his character as real as possible. Depp still to this day visits children in hospital in character as Jack. The actors care as much about these characters as we do and it helps add to the overall passion and energy that went into this original trilogy.
Disney had previously tried to recreate this trend of making a few films based on Disney rides, there was one about the Hollywood Tower of terror, Country Bears (Christ, no) and after the success of Pirates went on to create a film based on the ride Haunted Mansion…… with Eddie Murphy…… and Jennifer Tilly as the voice of a ghost….. and barber quartet type singing heads.……. This movie did not do well. Go figure. Perhaps that’s because the films tried to be too like the rides or too far away from the source material, could just be that they were bad movies, that’s definitely possible. The reason why Pirates of the Caribbean works so well is because it uses intelligent nods to the ride but is also just a fantastic series in it’s own right. It’s authentic, it’s fun, it’s intelligent, it’s just a really entertaining series and a perfect example of a film series done well, again, only up to the 3rd film. The last two films weren’t devoid of good material, I just felt like they should have ended on the high that was At World’s End. Plus, what the hell did they do to Barbossa in the last two films, and Will and Elizabeth? I always think if you can’t get the main cast on-board with the project it’s usually a sign you should just let it lie.
As for the future of Pirates, I hope Disney have hung Jack’s hat up and won’t return for a long time. It’s no secret that the last film didn’t do as well as it’s predecessors, though some of that could be partially due to people boycotting the film because of Depp’s questionable behaviour over the last couple of years. From a personal point of view, I would just like to remember the franchise as one of the best franchises to come out of Disney instead of watching it become a mere husk of what it once was. However, I am all for Disney returning to some sort of original content, instead of these tired, lazy remakes they insist on shoving down our throats.
Ramblings of a gayby 