Released 9 July 2003
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Screenplay by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
Story by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Damian O'Hare, Giles New, Angus Barnett, Kevin McNally, Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Zoe Saldana
Rated PG-13 for action/adventure violence.
143 minutes
Estimated Production Cost: $140 million
Domestic Gross: $305.4 million
Worldwide Gross: $654.2 million
Nominated for 5 Academy Awards
Best Actor- Johnny Depp (nominated; lost to Sean Penn for MYSTIC RIVER)
Best Visual Effects (nominated; lost to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING)
Best Makeup (nominated; lost to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING)
Best Sound Editing (nominated; lost to MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD)
Best Sound Mixing (nominated; lost to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING)
A PIRATE MOVIE BASED ON A THEME PARK RIDE
Gawl, remember back when everyone was making the same joke about how they used to make the rides based on the movies and not the other way around? Except, while that argument is meant to call Hollywood out for having "run out of ideas", it's really the opposite. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is practically an original concept and story, while using the familiar brand name of the Disneyland ride to a commercial advantage. It's not like 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, however, a movie initially titled The Shelter before being retroactively branded into a franchise; the Pirates of the Caribbean movie began with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as an inspiration, but it's merely a concept, the established concept of doing a pirate movie. The ride (or "attraction", as Walt Disney would have referred to it as) has no plot, and what characters it has are not fleshed out, so all that was created whole cloth for the film. Although the ride is probably the most famous Disney Parks attraction (unless you count "Sleeping Beauty's Castle"), it wasn't the first one "adapted", as it were, to the screen. The first one was a 1997 Wonderful World of Disney TV movie (although, the original Disneyland TV series included episodes specifically meant to promote aspects of the under-construction Disneyland Park, such as the iconic Davy Crockett miniseries starring Fess Parker, meant to promote interest in "Frontierland"), TOWER OF TERROR, a bare bones production (the exterior scenes at the titular Hollywood Tower Hotel were actually shot at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction in Disney's Hollywood Studios) starring Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst in a very little-kid-friendly supernatural 'thriller'. It's thoroughly mediocre. In 2000, Disney released an original Brian De Palma sci-fi thriller called MISSION TO MARS, which shared the name and logo of an attraction at Walt Disney World's Tomorrowland that had closed in 1993, but the movie was released under the adult-centric label of Touchstone Pictures and any ties of the movie to the theme parks was mostly downplayed. MISSION TO MARS was a flop. Disney's first theatrical release clearly presented as an "adaptation" of a theme park attraction was the ill-advised THE COUNTRY BEARS in 2001, based on the Country Bear Jamboree (the attraction in Disneyland had closed in 2001, but remains open in Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland), a "getting the band back together" family comedy about a country rock band made up of anthropomorphic bears (who live in the real world with humans, similar to the Muppets), with a lead character named "Beary Barrington", voiced by Haley Joel Osment. Obviously, that one flopped (ironically, this prompted Disney CEO Michael Eisner to attempt pulling the plug on POTC, making the connection between the two movies as theme park adaptations, rather than the fact that THE COUNTRY BEARS was clearly stupid). After POTC, Rob Minkoff, co-director of THE LION KING, managed to foul up THE HAUNTED MANSION, which should have been the easiest Disney Parks attraction to translate into something cinematic, but I digress. The point is, POTC sets itself apart.
REFERENCING THE RIDE Although POTC is essentially an original story, it's interwoven with many homages to its namesake, including, although not limited to:
- "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)": The melancholy sea shanty sung by a young Elizabeth Swann (Lucinda Dryzek) in the opening shots of the film, and which she later teaches to Jack Sparrow while they're marooned, is of course the famous theme song of the Disneyland ride, with lyrics by Imagineer Xavier Atencio (scriptwriter for the ride, and who also later wrote "Grim Grinning Ghosts" for The Haunted Mansion) and music by George Bruns.
- Dog With the Keys: Emulating what is probably the most famous vignette from the ride, the prisoners in the cell next to Jack's in the Port Royal jail use a bone in an attempt to woo the dog that holds the cell keys in its jaws just out of reach. As Jack quips in a somewhat meta moment, "You can keep doing that forever; the dog is never going to move."
- Attack on the Fort: When the Black Pearl first attacks Port Royal, it exchanges cannon fire with the town fort, a visual similar to the battle between the Wicked Wench and the Spanish fort on the ride.
- Tortuga: The Tortuga scenes are a trove of references to the ride, including Gibbs (Kevin McNally) passed out in the pigs' wallow, the man guzzling alcohol from two steins and leaky barrels, the redheaded prostitute Scarlett (Lauren Maher), various pirates recklessly firing pistols, and the exterior scenery in general resembles the Puerto Dorado on the ride.
- Wine: In his skeletal form, Barbossa drinks a bottle of wine, which is visible pouring down his throat and splashing though his ribs like a wine-drinking skeleton by the bar on the ride.
- The Dreaded Isla de Muerta: The Black Pearl's treasure trove, and particularly the passage that Jack and Will row through, resemble the Dead Man's Cove section of the ride, including a glimpse of a shuffling crab on the bank and a skeleton with a sword through its back. A longer version of the scene included Jack and Will taking their boat down a waterfall on the way into the cave, in reference to the drop at the beginning of the ride, but it was cut at Michael Eisner's request to downplay the movie's connection to the ride in hopes of increasing the appeal to teen audiences. The treasure cache in the cave also calls back to the treasure cave in the ride.
- Cotton's Parrot: Mr. Cotton's parrot resembles the parrot that greets park guests at the start of the ride queue, and recites the line "Dead men tell no tales" from the ride.
- "Strike Yer Colors You Bloomin' Cockroaches!": Barbossa's line during the battle between the Black Pearl and the Interceptor is borrowed from the captain of the Wicked Wench in the ride (in the 2006 remodeling of the ride, that captain was replaced by an animatronic of Barbossa, voiced by Geoffrey Rush).
- Cannonballs: When Norrington and the Navy boats are returning to the under-attack Dauntless, Pintel and Ragetti fire the ships cannonballs at them which splash down in the water, emulating the cannonball splashes from the ride where riders pass between the battling Wicked Wench and the Spanish fort.
SUPERNATURAL
The big plot point derived from the ride is the device of a cursed treasure, which riders see in the "Dead Man's Cove" section of the ride, where a hoard of gold is presided over by skeletons, and a voice says, "Pretty baubles--and a king's ransom in gold. Aye, blood money, and cursed it be. No fear of evil curses, says you? Argh, properly warned ye be, says I. Who know when that evil curse will strike the greedy beholders of this bewitched treasure? Perhaps ye knows too much...ye've seen the cursed treasure, you know where it be hidden. Now proceed at your own risk. These be the last friendly words ye'll hear. Ye may not survive to pass this way again." From there, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and director Gore Verbinski find their way beyond doing a straight pirate movie, which with their peg legs and eye patches had devolved into camp and the last two to try, Renny Harlin's CUTTHROAT ISLAND and Roman Polanski's PIRATES, had been massive flops (to be fair, they were also just bad movies in their own rights). Gore Verbinski, whose biggest mark prior to the franchise had been the 2002 supernatural horror hit THE RING, seamlessly blends the high adventure of a pirate movie and the fun sort of chills of Gothic horror in THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, but he resented the title. The movie was originally titled simply PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, but in hopes of ramping up its franchise appeal, Disney CEO Michael Eisner requested the subtitle, which Verbinski, in turn, insisted be small enough on publicity materials so as to be barely noticeable. Verbinski's point was that the curse was on the Black Pearl's crew, but not the ship herself (a little nitpicky, if you ask me, especially considering how easy it is to nitpick the plot of the movie itself), and in a case of audience perceptions shaping the mythology of the series, the Black Pearl was intended to be the fastest ship in the Caribbean because its sweeps (rowing oars showcased as the Pearl is pursuing the Interceptor just prior to the ship battle), but audiences read it as the ship's supernatural ability, so the sequels just went with that. The skeletons, though inconsistent (you're telling me that the only time that there was enough moonlight to reveal the pirates' curse during the sacking of Port Royal was for a moment in Jack's cell?), are a real highlight, and in particular, I love their first big showcase scene with Elizabeth aboard the Black Pearl.
PG-13
I don't know how much it was elsewhere, but at least in Utah, it was kind of a big deal that POTC was rated PG-13. Disney, of course, has been making movies with PG-13 and R ratings since the '80s, but before POTC, any movie with those ratings (or even PG-rated movies that were skewed more toward adults than was considered appropriate for the Disney brand name) were released as a product of "Touchstone Pictures" or "Hollywood Pictures". POTC was already attached directly to the Disney brand though, so it was going to be a Disney movie. Certainly by today's standards and the standards of 2003, making a swashbuckling action movie within the boundaries of a PG rating would be too restrictive. With science fiction, you can do more, such as Star Wars, where a lightsaber cuts off an arm bloodlessly, or even a head inside a helmet, and the detail is minimized to a point that the Motion Picture Association of America's Film Ratings Board considered PG-level (notably, as of 2017, scenes of stylized violence from ATTACK OF THE CLONES and THE PHANTOM MENACE would be very unlikely to be rate less than a PG-13, as was the case with THE FORCE AWAKENS), and when people are killed in TRON: LEGACY, there's no blood, only pixels. In a pirate movie with swordfights though, people are going to get stabbed, and even if you're not gushing blood all over the bloomin' deck, the impressions and squishy/crunchy sound effects of metal piercing meat and bone are going to quickly land you in a PG-13. POTC is a particularly pivotal development in the evolution of the PG-13 rating, because PG movies from the '70s and '80s had pushed levels of violence while being marketed toward families and teens, and when the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984, a lot of those movies had started to edge closer to teens and adults, rather than families, even though they were the same kind of movies as before. Disney's decision to allow their films the option of a PG-13 reopened those movies to families and younger audiences, but the rating has also widened further since, to the point that the PG rating today encompasses mostly movies that would have been rated G in the '90s and early 2000s. THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is noticeably milder in its violence and horror elements than its sequels would be though, and appears made more outside the idea of the ratings system than most movies are. It doesn't pull punches in order to avoid a rating, so when swords are drawn, people are stabbed and slashed with auditory details, and when it's made clear that the curse has been lifted and Barbossa is mortal again, they can show the blood flowing out of the bullet wound. It doesn't, however, indulge in the kind of PG-13 "money shots" that you get with a lot of blockbuster action movies, such as the prisoner's eye plucked out by the bird in DEAD MAN'S CHEST or Mercer's face getting mutilated in AT WORLD'S END, which, at least in the case of the latter, aren't necessarily gratuitous, but there's a definitely shock aspect to it. Just something to make the younger audiences feel like they're getting something edgy.
I've seen that meme where they have a picture of Jack Sparrow, and it says something like "Admit it- these movies would be crap without this guy," but I'm calling bullshit on that one. The first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies are great for a number of reasons, and a lot of it has to do with Gore Verbinksi's direction, set designs, special effects, even in many cases the screenwriting by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (although, in part thanks to rushed scheduling, they occasionally have some misses), and certainly even the performances of other characters, particularly Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy and Keira Knightley. Even Orlando Bloom is pretty darn good to the character he's given. Credit where credit is due, though, Jack Sparrow is one of the great character creations of the 21st century, and I mean that with all sincerity and enthusiasm. I was still pretty young when the first movie came out, and I knew who Orlando Bloom was because of the Lord of the Rings movies, but I don't think I knew anything about Johnny Depp. I knew about EDWARD SCISSORHANDS to the extent that a preview for THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS on the VHS of HOMEWARD BOUND said "From the creator of BATMAN, BEETLEJUICE and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS," but I didn't know it had Johnny Depp or what the hell it was in any case. If POTC had come out a few years later, I probably would have been more up to date by then, but you know, Depp had been in mostly art house movies and gonzo cult classics, notably FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and DEAD MAN, off-kilter romances like BENNY & JOON, DON JUAN DEMARCO and WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, and already a few collaborations with director Tim Burton like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, ED WOOD and SLEEPY HOLLOW. He was a known name (to people a few years older than I was, anyway), but the R-rated horror-fantasy SLEEPY HOLLOW was the only movie he'd been in that managed to eke out $100 million at the box office. Post-Jack Sparrow, once he'd hit the big time in a big way to become Hollywood's biggest star during the 2000s, public opinion started to turn against him, although it's not like he started doing anything particularly different from what he'd been doing before. It was more just that the movies he was appearing in got worse, and he had enough clout by then that directors weren't reining him in like they had before. He'd done a pretty over-the-top performance with a funny voice and goofy hair in FEAR AND LOATHING, and when he did SLEEPY HOLLOW, he suggested that his character, Police Constable Ichabod Crane, have an exaggerated prosthetic nose, ears and feet, but Tim Burton talked him out of it. Even with POTC, which was offered to him when he sought a role in a Disney movie that would appeal to his brood, one of his initial ideas was, according to the book Disney War by James Stewart, that Jack Sparrow might not even have a nose, just a hole in his face where it had once been. Naturally, the director brushed that idea out of the way as soon as it was convenient. The thing is, Johnny Depp is weird as balls, and when someone gives him too much creative leash (the moment I felt my enthusiasm for Depp's style suddenly diminish was Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, where the grotesquely overdesigned and over-inflated Mad Hatter, with his wavering accent and cheap sentimentality, exposed the fragility of his brand), the results can be disastrous. Abed Nadir summed it perfectly in the sitcom Community when, in an attempt to gauge the quality of Nicolas Cage's acting, that everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum of quality, and Johnny Depp is "the bad kind of good" (in contrast to Steven Segal, who is the "good kind of bad"). But when he plays it straight, for instance, in THE TOURIST (which, prior to ALICE IN WONDERLAND, I hoped was simply a misfire), it's not good either. But with just the right balance of creative leeway and collaboration, Depp can strike gold, and the motherlode is Captain Jack Sparrow.
"He's ruining the film!" Disney CEO Michael Eisner reportedly complained while reviewing progress on THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. The number of anecdotes about how much opposition Depp faced in his initial outing as Sparrow is evidence of the character's impact and appeal, and perhaps for the worse, it catapulted him to the top of the actors heap in spite of the naysayers. It even nabbed him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor, an exceptionally rare recognition in a summer blockbuster, although he lost to Sean Penn as Boston gangster Jimmy Markum in MYSTIC RIVER. I realize that public opinion is against Johnny Depp these days, and that's fair, but that Oscar decision ought to be a lot more controversial. It wasn't even really an upset, Penn was the favorite to win, which is just nuts, because his was a very intense, Oscar-y performance, but there's nothing all that special about it. Penn won again for the 2008 movie MILK, and that one makes a lot more sense. For 2003 though, it was just a case of snooty Hollywood types voting for what seemed important instead of what was truly the greatest performance. Depp doesn't deserves 100% of the credit for Sparrow, however. Credit is also due to writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who developed the cocky pirate character from previous drafts by Jay Wolpert and Stuart Beattie into a sort of Bugs Bunny-like trickster archetype, and director Gore Verbinski and costume designer Penny Rose, who collaborated with Depp on the look and style of the character. The results are straight-up magic, though. He's playful, generally benign with just a hint of self-interested menace, a bit kinky (that eyeshadow though), and otherworldly, as though operating on a level above everyone else and the world around him. He's a hero for the 21st century, but he's also not quite a hero. Outside of the fourth film, where he hardly seems like Jack Sparrow anyway, he's at his friendliest in this movie, but he's always wheedled between his selfish nature and his conscience that together make him one of the "good" pirates. It's an idea summed up in a moment between himself and his mutinous former first mate Barbossa, when they close in on the Interceptor, and Sparrow suggests they fly a flag of truce so he can scurry over and negotiate the return of the cursed medallion. Barbossa, in contrast, points out this as the attitude that lost Jack the Pearl and that "People are easier to search when they're dead." As it's more specifically identified in the sequels, Jack may be a sleazy, thieving, even treacherous scoundrel, but he's a scoundrel with an "honest streak."
10. Jack's Hanging - The trapdoor gallows may be anachronistic, but it makes for a great action coda to have Will help Jack escape hanging by hurling a sword into the trapdoor for Jack's feet to land on ("not probable" as the character might say), then running through the crowd with a rope to trip them all up. It's the opposite of the standard James Bond opening action sequence.
9. Black Pearl vs. Interceptor - This is just a really solid ship battle, like the cannon exchanges in MASTER AND COMMANDER but more in a heightened blockbuster fashion with rapid fire editing as holes are blown in each ship in sprays of smoke, sparks (there's a notable motif of glowing embers and sparks in this first movie, I noticed recently) and splinters, with people falling off into the water, and Barbossa standing there as the Interceptor's rigging falls down around him. It's less violent than the climactic battle with the skeletons, and it's a bit more in the vein of a traditional pirate movie, but a little souped up.
8. Moonlight Battle on the Dauntless: Well, it's a wild battle in the moonlight between a bunch of gruesome skeletal pirates and a bunch of English redcoats, so obviously it's awesome. Maybe it runs a little long, especially considering that one side is immortal and ruthless, but shut up, because its cool.
7. Aztec Gold - "This is Aztec gold. One of 882 identical pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortez himself. Blood money paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies. But the greed of Cortez was insatiable, so the heathen gods placed upon the gold a terrible curse." One might note, however, that in the slow motion shot of the coin with Elizabeth's blood falling into the chest shows it with the skull decoration on both sides, but in other shots of the medallion it has the skull on one side and some Aztec-y zigzags on the other.
5. The Score - It's not actually my favorite of the orchestral scores in this series (it's about on par with ON STRANGER TIDES, but just a tad behind DEAD MAN'S CHEST, while AT WORLD'S END is the best of them), but c'mon, it has the now-iconic "He's a Pirate", which is a swashbuckling standard and favorite of pep bands. The "Underwater March" and other selections are also good. Ironically, the score received a mixed response from music critics who fairly noted the similarities to Hans Zimmer's GLADIATOR score (the score is credited to Klaus Badelt, but major contributions were made by Zimmer), but also complained of its bombastic deviations from traditional swashbuckling scores like those of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. However, that same community of critics largely praised John Debney's CUTTHROAT ISLAND score for its Korngold style, but look which one people associate with swashbuckling action now. Korngold was no hack, but Badelt's and Zimmer's bombastic, slightly Celtic-inspired, slightly rock-inspired themes are ideal for Disney's partially revised version of a pirate movie.
4. Moonlight Serenade - Gore Verbinski indulges in the Gothic horror angle of the movie most in this sequence, and it's pretty corny, but in a good way that serves to revel in the spooky skeleton crew in kooky way. All the skeletons are doing their work on the ship, swabbing decks, pulling ropes; some skeletons are flailing a sail that bounces a screaming Elizabeth up and down (because why not?) before another skeleton swings by overhead to grab her, and she turns toward the camera and screams. It's silly, but fun. Plus, while you can't hear them over Klaus Badelt's blaring score (not that I'm complaining about the score), a couple of pirates are sitting atop the capstan playing a fiddle and a squeezebox to work to, which is a cool visual.
3. Barbossa's Monologue - "Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living so we cannot die, but neither are we dead! 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 of a woman's flesh." Barbossa's hand reaches out at Elizabeth into the moonlight, revealing it to be decayed down to the bone, creaking and clicking. "You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner...you're in one!" and he bites the cork out of a wine bottle and guzzles it's contents which then spill out messily through his ribs, then he smashes the bottle. It has a great rhythm, and Rush's delivery of the lines exudes menace, sadness and desperation.
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