Disneyland: The Movie - POTC: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
Genre: Action-Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Released 9 July 2003
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Kevin R. McNally, Zoe Saldana, Damian O'Hare, Giles New, Angus Barnett, David Bailie, Isaac C. Singleton Jr.
Rated PG-13 for action/adventure violence.
143 minutes

Pirates of the Caribbean, opened in March 1967 at Disneyland Park, three months The Walt Disney Company co-founder Walter Elias Disney had died due to complications related to lung cancer.  It was the last Disneyland attraction in which Walt himself participated in designing, and began test runs the day he passed.  Originally conceptualized as a "wax museum" walk-through exhibit, it was ultimately realized as a "dark ride", a common form of attraction at Disney Parks, in which vehicles on a track carry riders through an enclosed environment past illuminated scenes with typically animated characters and theatrical effects.  Pirates of the Caribbean, coming after the simplistic Fantasyland dark rides such as Snow White's Scary Adventures, Peter Pan's Flight and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (which all opened with the park in 1955; on a side note, Pinocchio's Daring Journey was a late addition accompanying the remodeling of Fantasyland in 1983), but before the opening of the more advanced The Haunted Mansion, is one of the groundbreaking achievements in the history of theme park attractions and a perennial favorite across generations.

In Disneyland's New Orleans Square, patrons enter a building with a facade resembling the architectural designs of the actual New Orleans, Louisiana's French Quarter, and board boats that lead them through the sleepy Louisiana bayou before plunging down a waterfall and past eerie scenery of presumably cursed pirate skeletons washed up on a beach, still clutching the helm of a ship or frozen in the place of their merrymaking in a treasure trove.  Passing the cursed pirates, riders find themselves in the midst of a battle between a pirate ship and a Spanish fort, with cannonballs exploding in the water, and then into a town ransacked by pirates now auctioning off the local women (all in good fun, I guess) and dunking the mayor to extract the location of the town treasury.  Eventually things get a little hairier as the whole town appears to be ablaze and about to blow with barrels of gunpowder littered about much too close to the flickering flames just when the boats are pulled to safety, up a "waterfall" and back to the dry land from whence they came in.
The film more-or-less "based" on the attraction, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, with subtitle added at the urging of studio executives hoping to distance the movie from its peculiar source material and perhaps foster franchise ambitions, broke in multiple respects itself, at least within the realm of the Disney Company, and did kick off Disney's most successful franchise released under their own company banner.  As would be expected from a movie based on a theme park attraction, it's loosely based on its source material, and had a dramatic and tumultuous journey to the screen.
With a story credit shared between Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert, with Elliot and Rossio credited for the screenplay, PIRATES... indeed takes place in the Caribbean, in the early 18th century.  Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), a sun-baked and nearly mad pirate with a reputation, arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica with plans to steal a ship, but following an encounter with a stiff-necked blacksmith's apprentice by the name of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Sparrow is apprehended by local authorities and locked away to await the hangman's noose.  That night, the legendary Black Pearl, Sparrow's ship before his treacherous first mate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) led a mutiny against him and stole command, attacks Port Royal and makes off with Governor Swann's beautiful daughter Elizabeth (Keira Knightley).  A longtime secret admirer of Miss Swann, Will makes a deal with Sparrow to spring him out of jail in exchange for his assistance in bringing Elizabeth back, while the Royal Navy, led by Elizabeth's noble but pompous suitor, Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport), aimlessly arranges a rescue mission.  As they'll all soon found out though, the crew of the Black Pearl and their captain, Barbossa, are cursed to be undead by a chest of ancient Aztec gold, revealed in the moonlight as ragged skeletons.  It is for this reason that Elizabeth has been kidnapped with the gold piece in her possession, as the Black Pearl crew painstakingly returns each piece of gold stolen with an offering off blood from each who took.  Jack knows more than he lets on, including the fact that Will is the only son of the pirate "Bootstrap" Bill Turner who Barbossa killed for protesting the mutiny against Jack, and now the last thing keeping Barbossa and his crew from freeing themselves of the curse is the blood of William Turner.
The convoluted plot line is packed with interesting and fun ideas, but what it really comes down to is old-fashioned swashbuckling with a spooky twist.  Skeleton pirates with tattered clothing and decaying pieces of flesh and hair in a moonlight battle with Royal Marines, sailing vessels that pull up alongside each other and blow the smithereens out of one another with cannon fire, a swordfight between skeletons, dashing heroes, snarling villains and a roguish trickster; it all screams "Saturday matinee" fun.

Director Gore Verbinski, whose previous directing credits included the dark comedy MOUSEHUNT in 1997 and the horror-thriller THE RING in 2002, and his creative team defy the stereotypes in creating their pirates, making them almost cartoonishly filthy, informed by the characters of Sergio Leone's classic westerns.  The cast is populated by interesting faces, most of them sun-tanned and dirty, and rotten teeth abound throughout.  Depp's performance is of course the film's most famous aspect, as one of the most significant new characters of this century on film, the wily pirate Jack Sparrow, which film critic Roger Ebert noted "is original in its every atom".  While a known name, Depp was best known at the time for edgy, offbeat films of a much smaller sort, like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, and PIRATES... vastly amplified his star power.  Jack Sparrow is arguably Depp's best role, collaborating with costume designer Penny Rose to create the design of a whole new kind of pirate, with his signature red bandanna over an array of dreadlocks into which are woven souvenirs as varied as beads and a deer bone, a leather tricorne hat and eyeliner.  Traipsing drunkenly throughout the scenery, Disney executives were confused over whether Sparrow was intended to be drunk or gay, and many of Depp's choices were met with resistance by executives.  With Verbinksi to rein him in when necessary, such as when Depp went out and had several teeth fitted with gold caps (they let him keep most of them) or when Depp suggested that the character might have had his nose cut off with only a hole remaining after first being offered the role, Depp was ultimately vindicated in his choices and even earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, a true rarity for a summer blockbuster.  Although this was largely changed with following installments of the franchise, this first film brilliantly used Sparrow as a character who wanders in and out of someone else's story (in this case, Will and Elizabeth) and steals the show, playing off everyone else in comical fashion.  He seems silly, but he actually knows better what's going on than anyone else, all but breaking the fourth wall as he manipulates the goings-on around him.  Sparrow is too much to carry a film, as we'll find out with ON STRANGER TIDES, but his straight man, Bloom's Will Turner, is bland nothingness without Sparrow.
Most underrated of the cast is Geoffrey Rush as the villainous pirate Captain Barbossa, who, while Depp was inventing an all new kind of pirate, was resurrecting the traditional pirate with delightfully scenery-chewing villainy of a Shakespearean sort.  Few other actors working today could get away with loosing an "Aarrrrr!" in classic piratical fashion, and he makes an excellent counterpoint to Depp's New Age scoundrel.
With a $140 million budget, it was a significantly larger film than Disney was accustomed to producing when it was released in 2003, but the landscape of mainstream film had changed without Disney, shifting to an emphasis on franchise filmmaking, building up recognized and highly marketable brands with multiple-film potential.  PIRATES... had a tumultuous journey to the screen, initially intended as a more straightforward swashbuckler for direct-to-video release, and when it was picked up by producer Jerry Bruckheimer (whose previous credits with Disney included ARMAGEDDON and PEARL HARBOR), Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner was reluctant to approve the proposed $140 million budget and freaked out when he saw footage of Depp as Jack Sparrow, reportedly exclaiming, "He's ruining the film!"

It was also notably the first film released as a Walt Disney Pictures production with a PG-13 rating.  While Walt Disney Studios had been producing and distributing films geared toward teen and adult audiences, including films with PG-13 and R ratings, for the previous 20 years, they were always released under a separate label, usually Touchstone Pictures, and sometimes Hollywood Pictures.  Bruckheimer insisted that the film needed to be more intense than a PG rating would allow, but being based on a Disneyland attraction, it wouldn't be fitting to release it as a Touchstone Pictures production.  PIRATES... has a darker and more violent bent than most earlier Disney films, but very much in an adventure genre context with a family audience appeal.  Frankly, if its been a while since you've been on the ride its based on, you might be surprised at how edgy the attraction itself is.
Despite apprehensions at The Walt Disney Studios, the spectacular failure the few pirate movies attempted by Hollywood during the past several decades, and all the joking that, "I thought they were supposed to based the theme park rides after the movies," PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL was a massive and unexpected success.  With $654.2 million worldwide, it was the highest-grossing live action film out of Disney up until that time, and the sequels would make even more.  POTC redefined the way Disney makes movies, and not necessarily for the better, constructing over-sized fantasy/action-adventure tent-pole films with varying degrees of financial success, from the highs of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, to the moderate success of TRON: LEGACY, to the outright belly flops that are JOHN CARTER, THE LONE RANGER and PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME.  I think Disney is aiming in the right direction with a lot of these films.  Swashbuckling adventures are too great a rarity in Hollywood today, even with the immense success of each of the four POTC films to date, but they do have a tendency to grind them out like product and forget the heart.  PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL comes from a more uncertain time at Disney, where the risk provides the opportunity for something special, like a movie based on a theme park attraction that entered the cultural zeitgeist to become as widely beloved as its origins at the Happiest Place on Earth.

How Do You Adapt a Theme Park Attraction into a Movie?
The short answer is that you don't.  You make up a story that fits the basic concept of the attraction (pirate ride = pirate movie), then fill the movie up with homages and references to the attraction:

• "Yo Ho (A Pirates Life for Me): The theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean, with lyrics by legendary Disney Imagineer Xavier "X" Atencio and music by Disney composer George Bruns, is featured prominently in THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL as an old sea shanty that Elizabeth learned as a child, opening the film as young Elizabeth (Lucinda Dryzek) sings it to herself, later as a drunken Elizabeth and Jack sing it while marooned by Barbossa, and lastly by Jack just as he reclaims the Black Pearl and the credits roll.
• "The dog is never going to move.": Probably the most direct visual reference the film makes to the ride is the scene in which a group of condemned men locked in a prison cell offer a bone to the dog holding the prison keys in its mouth at a distance outside their reach.  In a sly meta reference to the ever-continuing cycle of the theme park attraction, Jack Sparrow, in the neighboring cell, chides them, saying, "You can keep doing that forever, the dog is never going to move."

• Pirate Attack on the Fort: The scene in which the Black Pearl fires on the fort at Port Royal resembles the scene from the ride in which a pirate ship referred to as the Wicked Wench fires across over passenger boats at a Spanish fort.
• Tortuga: Scenes taking place in the pirate port of Tortuga in the film are inspired by the "Burning Town" scene in the ride where the pirates ransack an unnamed town.  Specific references include the redheaded prostitute Scarlett, who slaps Jack and resembles the "redhead" from the auction scene in the ride; pirates drunkenly firing flintlock pistols; and Mr. Gibbs is found sleeping in the mud with pigs, similarly to the ride character apocryphally known as the "Scalawag", who wallows drunken with pigs.  Specific references such as the dunking in the well and one captive with notably quivering legs, and a fat woman chasing a skinny pirate appear in deleted footage on the DVD, and other footage shot for this sequence was later used in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST.
• Wine: Barbossa, revealed in the moonlight as a skeleton, throws back red wine that is visible pouring through his ribcage, akin to a skeleton guzzling wine on top of a bar counter in the "Grotto" scene of the ride.
• "Dead Men Tell No Tales!": Mr. Cotton's parrot speaks this line as the HMS Interceptor sails into the flotsam-filled waters around Isla de Muerta, a repeated line in the attraction.
• Isla de Muerta: The pirates' treasure trove on the island Isla de Muerta resembles in the treasure trove in the 'Grotto" sequence of the ride.  In addition to the piles of treasure inside the damp cave, as Jack and Will row into the cavern, Will notices a beached skeleton with a sword in its back and crabs scuttling about, directly referring to a vignette in the ride.  Initially, it was intended that Jack and Will would go down a flume to enter the cave, in reference to early in the ride when the boats plunge into the Grotto, but the scene was removed at the request of Michael Eisner, who wanted to distance the movie from its theme park origins.
• "Strike yer colors, ya blooming cockroaches!": Barbossa's dialogue as the crew of the Black Pearl fire on then board the HMS Interceptor borrows from the captain of the Wicked Wench in the ride.
• Cannonballs: In the climactic battle, as Commodore Norrington and Royal Marines row boats toward the under-siege HMS Dauntless, pirates on the ship fire cannons at the boat, splashing down in the water like the splashing cannonballs in Spanish Fort scene from the ride.

Following the success of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL and to promote the sequel, DEAD MAN'S CHEST, Disneyland made a number of alterations and additions to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that tied into the movie franchise that had been inspired by the attraction:

• 3 Jack Sparrows: Much of the dialogue throughout the attraction has been reworked to involve various characters pursuing Captain Jack Sparrow, with Sparrow himself making three separate audio-animatronic appearances; first, when the mayor, Carlos, is being dunked in the well by pirates who now want to know the whereabouts of Sparrow (as opposed to previously seeking the town treasure) while he hides behind a tailor's supplies dumped on the street; second, Jack pokes his head out of a barrel, spying on the character known as the "Pooped Pirate", who holds a treasure map.  [The Pooped Pirate changes are probably the most welcome, as the original Pooped Pirate, shown in a 1967 Disneyland TV special included on the DVD of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, originally was chasing a "shy little wench" who he presumably wants to rape, and the young girl pokes her head out of the barrel behind him.  That was fairly disturbing, but when it was given a PC makeover in 1997, the Pooped Pirate was made to be merely in search of food, with a cat in the barrel, which Disney Imagineer X Atencio, who wrote the script for the ride, criticized as "Boy Scouts of the Caribbean".  With Jack, it's safe to assume there's no rape (well, [ahem], let's hope), but it makes more sense than food.]  Finally, Jack shows up as the boats are taken up the waterfall at the end, rocking back in a chair and surrounded by loot.  At the ride queue, where various famous pirates are painted on the walls, Jack Sparrow and Barbossa have also been included.
• Barbossa: An audio-animatronic of Barbossa, in search of Sparrow, has replaced the captain of the Wicked Wench in the scene of the ship attacking the Spanish fort.
• Aztec Treasure: At the conclusion of the Grotto sequence filled with piles of treasure, the actual Aztec treasure chest prop from the film production makes an appearance, illuminated by an eerie blue light.

• Soundtrack: The now-practically iconic main theme, "He's a Pirate", by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer, has been integrated into the attraction's musical score.
• Tom Sawyer Island: In 2007, coinciding with the release of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END, the separate Disneyland attraction Tom Sawyer's Island was reopened as Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island with interactive exhibits that includes a an animatronic of a cursed Pintel (Lee Arenberg) that pops up and scares guests, and Ragetti's (Mackenzie Crook) skeletal hand that reaches down, holding his wooden eye.

Top 5 of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL 

1. Johnny Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow - 12 years and three movies later, Jack Sparrow is still Johnny Depp's masterpiece and the highlight of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL.  He is better utilized in THE CURSE... than in any other movie in the series, less of an active protagonist or antagonist than he is a meandering force, manipulating all other parties in pursuit of his own objective.  He seems crazy, but he happens to know better than anyone else how to play the game.
2. "You best start believing in ghost stories..." - In a masterwork of exposition delivery, Captain Barbossa explains to a skeptical Elizabeth about the Aztec curse.  It's straightforward expository dialogue, but Elliot and Rossio's florid dialogue matched with Rush's commanding delivery and Verbinski's direction make it the most electrifying scene in the film.  "For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth," he says as he reaches a skeletal hand out into the moonlight at Elizabeth, "of a woman's flesh."  Emerging fully into the moonlight to reveal his undead state, Barbossa continues, "You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!"  In reference to the moment from the theme park ride, Barbossa then pulls the cork out of a bottle of wine with his teeth and throws it back down his throat, letting it spill out his ribcage.
3. Geoffrey Rush is Captain Barbossa - In the shadow of Depp's thoroughly original Jack Sparrow, Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, the old familiar pirate given new life, is unfortunately too often overlooked.  Rush chews the scenery as Barbossa, and few other actors could likely get away with shouting "Aaarrrrrrr!"
4. Two Immortals Locked in Epic Battle - A swordfight between skeletons?  Yes, please!  "So what now, Jack Sparrow? Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle until Judgement Day and trumpets sound?" 
5. Crossing Blades With a Pirate - Probably the series' most noteworthy swordfight, doubling as the first meeting of the franchise's two main heroes, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, the duel in the blacksmith's shop is a rollicking and energetic sequence that even gets up into the rafters, with a no-holds-barred choreography.

All images via The Walt Disney Company, unless otherwise noted.