Back in 2003, no one could’ve said this one looked too terribly good. And for many reasons. Cutting out that overlong, franchise-hungry subtitle, The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Pirates of the Caribbean seemed (then) most obviously a theme park adaptation. Not that conceivably you couldn’t create decent art from any source (so hope those guys making Monopoly and Battleship), but…a ride?! Nothing against the wonderful Pirates of the Caribbean ride – the Citizen Kane of themed amusements, really (and I’m talking of the DisneyLAND version, not that weak one down in Orlando) – but Disney’s timing just smacks of franchise from the get go, of a company so desperate to will a hit into existence, and without a “Harry Potter” or a “Lord of the Rings” to choose from, and so many other automatic “name recognition” properties otherwise spoken for…
But what about those parks, that last great untapped bastion of something, anything to keep the moneymen from having to finance something original? It doesn’t help that the lone former Disneyland adaptation was The Country Bears, a dreadful flop in every respect. It’s “theme parkness” isn’t to blame, though, honestly, The Country Bear Jamboree?!
Ignoring that, pirate movies are rarely a guarantee either – not since the studio system disbanded have swashbucklers been successful, with the most prominent subsequent examples being Cutthroat Island and The Pirate Movie – flops, one and all! It’s actually kinda amazing that source-of-all-evil Michael Eisner was willing to risk any sort of money on such an enterprise.
“Any sort,” meaning “not very much, actually.” At least initially. There were talks – and we’re traveling back into the archaic ‘90s now – when a potential Pirates was to be made for video (a DTV POTC). This is in keeping with Disney’s short-term money mania in those days, a mentality which saw the ersatz sequelization of nearly every animated Disney feature, in a short span, drying up wells for Eisner’s coffers with no thought towards greater studio sustainability. And in this light, Country Bears was NOT the first Disney theme park movie. To coincide with Orlando’s© Twilight Zone® Tower of Terror™ (all rights reserved), there was Tower of Terror, featuring a pre-Spider-Man Kirsten Dunst, and surely a financial success by its ubiquity in the inevitable post-ride stores, where park goers are too woozy from the roller coaster to make wise trinket investments.
So too was Pirates of the Caribbean’s fate, conceivably to hog up retail space following its ride (meanwhile, let’s synergize It’s a Small World with a few more characters from other media, why not). Even at this nascent stage, the film was a swashbuckling callback, a rather straight pirate picture written by Jay Wolpert (known primarily for…daytime game shows like “Jeopardy!,” “The Price Is Right,” “The $25,000 Pyramid,” oh boy!). As a swashbuckler, naturally they considered tossing in Cary Elwes (see The Princess Bride), for the Errol Flynn-styled role of Will Turner. Countering as Jack Sparrow, which was then not remotely iconic, but merely “the Burt Lancaster role,” they turned to supposed “Burt Lancaster of the modern age,” Matthew McConaughey – and excuse me, princess, for confusing him with Matthew Modine, the interchangeable ball of non-charisma who helped sink Cutthroat Island.
Nothing too promising yet in this Pirates project…Then enter Jerry Bruckheimer, über-producer most famous for creating Michael Bay in an antiseptic laboratory – whence the creature escaped for an uncontrolled reign of terror. And even now, using the logic of cartoonish dollar signs in eyeballs to convince Eisner that the project deserved real money, enough to compete with The Lord of the Rings et al…even now, with Bruckheimer helming (in the sense that he, as producer, is oft the greatest auteur)…even now…no…nope, still doesn’t look promising.
(Let it be known, among Disney’s evil execs, it was Dick Cook who championed this picture’s promise through these dark shoals.)
Changes took place, the “straight” pirate movie getting new writers in Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio, and from them earning a supernatural angle (undead pirate skeletons – extrapolated from ride visuals), necessitating CGI special effects and thus gaining blockbuster status. Then in comes director Gore Verbinski (then of The Ring, later of Rango), anxious to resurrect the feel of old Flynn flicks, Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, and about a dozen other things Michael Curtiz directed. It’s a nicely counterproductive decision in the era of bullet time, to do a stylistic throwback with modern technology – that sort of mentality is what created Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Still not a wholly promising package (and to the public at the time, having not seen the picture yet, they’re still stuck on “It’s a ride adaptation?!”). But then comes the casting, show-offy enough to rival any Bruckheimer production, with one name in particular notable for how unusual it is in a tent-pole: Johnny Depp. He was famous then, but not hugely popular perhaps, idiosyncratic in cultish things like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Ed Wood. Taking on the Jack Sparrow role, Depp would, well…
Pirates of the Caribbean, the movie, it IS Jack Sparrow. Sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow. He’s perpetually drunk, or possibly gay, or bisexual, or a deviant of some sort (to the Disney execs’ tremendous terror)…oh, and completely amoral! Selfish to a fault, with no allegiances as easy as “good guy” and “bad guy,” and one mean negotiator too. Which all goes to counter Jack’s relative incompetence in matters of pure action heroism. Not that Jack was, on paper, hugely interesting – still merely the Burt Lancaster type, with some Bugs Bunny counterintuitively tossed in. It’s all Depp who brings an engaging spin, making Jack an off-kilter observer who only partially inhabits a normal seafaring adventure. It’s all Depp, with hardly anything in the performance referring back to former pirate archetypes. Rather, he’s a wholly new outsized loon of the sea, with measures of Pepe le Pew (sure, any Looney Tune works) and Keith Richards – pirates, the rock stars of the 18th century, Depp’s reasoning goes.
(With all of Jack’s amorality, there is precious little actual pirating in Pirates. Blame the Disney brand, if you must, that they’re in the strange position of trying to romanticize a profession now most associated with Somalian anarchists.)
It’s a good thing, too, that Jack Sparrow is so engaging, because the nominal romantic leads – blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and governor’s daughter Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) – are boring people. They’re flat, so earnestly devoted to their cookie cutter self-seriousness; they’re rather what one’s optimistic expectation of a Pirates of the Caribbean might’ve been like. The film’s first ten minutes, before Jack shows up (in maybe the greatest character entrance of the ‘00s), play out like a stultifying period piece, an over-broad Jane Austen adaptation with admittedly beautiful production design.
Oh, sure, Jack is more effective (as both a hijacker of ships and cinema) in contrast to dull Will. So much that, ignoring the plot for now, the central question of Pirates of the Caribbean arises: Is Jack the (Spanish) main character? Or is [snore!] Will?
Well, perhaps in the lead up the execs thought Will was. Surely, Bloom was the head-turner (Turner, eh?) of those Lord of the Rings movies, a teenage heartthrob in a climate where everyone sought the next DiCaprio circa Titanic. Yes, the teenage girls liked Orlando Bloom, mostly because he looks like a teenage girl – save for his maddeningly inconsistent facial growth. Woe betide to him, then, that Johnny Depp (clad all in mascara, evidently suffering from sunburn and scurvy and reeking of sickness right off the screen, and maybe gay) stole his thunder, became the heartthrob. Became People’ Sexiest Man Alive for acting bizarre…and got an Oscar nomination for his troubles as well. And for that Dark Knight-hating Academy, their even considering a summer action performance is noteworthy.
Getting back to point, I’d argue Jack is the main character. Surely, Will and Elizabeth are the emotional underpinning, running through their own pastiche of the same blockbuster romance ever since Star Wars. But it’s Jack, fueled by his “freedom” underpinnings, who drives the events, commands our interest, kills the villain. And by films end, with Will and Elizabeth having a romantical smooch upon a cliff, it’s Jack who gets a speech, a farewell as it were to them and the assorted other supporting characters – Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport, a distant third in the strange “hottest male in this movie” competition), Governor Swann (Jonathan “Brazil” Pryce). The impression at this moment, without reference to further sequels, is that Jack is off for further wacky pirate misadventures, while Will and Elizabeth (having completed their romantic arc) are finished.
What of the adventure bridging Jack’s adventure and his departure? Well, just when you’ve forgotten this is A) a pirate movie, and B) a Bruckheimer joint, pirates arrive (satisfying A) and blow the shit out of everything (B). Represented by Captain Barbossa – Geoffrey Rush, no doubt not in the “hot guy” running whatsoever. Rush gets to do “Pirate Classic” to counter Depp’s “Pirate Nouveau,” actually shrieking “ARR!” and otherwise perpetuating old pirate clichés (walk the plank, shiver me timbers, anything else you might say on September 19) without a hint of irony. They kidnap Elizabeth – “governor’s daughter” being the princess of the Spanish Main – as the various drafts of the films diverge. Initially, this kidnapping makes perfect cliché sense alone, as does Will’s rush to save her. That’s with the aid of Jack, for Barbossa’s pirates are his mutinous crew, having already banished him well before the film even started.
Here the new supernatural angle becomes prominent. Barbossa et al are cursed, made undead by already having stolen a treasure (Aztec). The skeletonized buccaneers’ central notion is now to return the stolen gold coins, and lift the curse (which robs them of their mortality and senses, except when a joke prefers otherwise). It’s clever, on that level, a reversal of the usual Robert Louis Stevenson “get the treasure” plot. Too bad explaining it takes so much exposition! It’s not just returning coin; they need blood, and after many speeches from many different characters, we learn it’s Elizabeth’s (or maybe Will’s) blood they need, for a mightily convoluted past of mutinies, grotto robberies, sub-mutinies and other zaniness. These metaphysics grow confused as we dwell upon them, making the film more convoluted (not complex) than it has any right to be.
It’s also too long. All this falls back to the script, which revels in talk for its own sake, every action underpinned by some former event – because god forbid a summer blockbuster simply be a light entertainment. Within these constraints, it’s amazing what successes still occur – Depp, naturally, and Verbinski’s visuals command the picture. The swashbuckling, when it simply comes to that – sword fights and ship-to-ship battles lifted and dummified from Master and Commander – is entertaining, and not too heavily indebted to special effects even towards the finale when skeletons run rampant, all Harryhausen-like.
There’s a tonal conflict underlying Pirates of the Caribbean, as it still shows signs of the underachieving (yet self-serious) movie it was conceived as by wicked Eisner. That screenplay, with its monologues peppering scenes up to and including the climax, it sorta ain’t too good. But trapped within there (even in some of the dialogue, for all of Pirates’ bipolarity) is a lightly funny amusement. It is this film which Depp inhabits, and some of his supporting pirates (Pintel, Ragetti, Gibbs, a monkey) occupy it too. Verbinski is also in on that mode, one which escaped his production superiors. In my aim to make this an “all anti-Eisner blog entry,” let it be known Eisner was 100% against Depp’s shenanigans – “You’re ruining the movie!” Excuse me, but what movie would that be without Jack?! What blandly underperforming piece of forgotten pop culture would you prefer?
Well, we know how this turned out. Pirates of the Caribbean (ugh, sigh, The Curse of the Black Pearl) was a success, well beyond anyone’s expectations – better made than we could’ve hoped, and easily justifying its price tag. Certainly among my circle of friends, this became a major touchstone on video…a once-a-week (yeah, we were nuts) excuse to drink rum. Ah yes, drunkenness, the perfect justification for any movie habit! In such circumstances, naturally drinking games arise. This isn’t the world’s cleverest such example, but for each reference to the Disneyland ride, we’d imbibe delicious rum.
And that brings things back to the park, where it all started. My fool roommate, in his myopia, disbelieved that this movie was based on anything – to him, it was a standalone pirate movie (as I suspect it is to most folks). We’d argue, oh so loudly, about if a Pirate ride even existed – he couldn’t recall one from Orland, and a curse upon him for holding that place up as the Disney park gold standard.
Nope, I can attest otherwise. Upon Pirates’ release, confident in the film unseen, I went down to Disneyland after work (reeking of ash and sweat and foam) to see it as close to the ride as possible. What a great crowd, one of the best I’ve seen! There was no doubt there an attraction existed – At each visual shot-out to the attraction (which number roughly 18, if I recall), a glorious cheer would arise. And to be sure, post-screening we made it on into the park, to ride for ourselves.
Man, what a great ride! No mere roller coaster, but a fully immersive fiction, perfect for its medium. As an adaptation, Pirates of the Caribbean is triumphant, because it gets the tone right (at least partly), and ignores what cannot be transferred over. The ride, contrary to thought, does have a narrative. It’s even told in flashback (those waterfall drops mean something)! It’s just not the essential sort of narrative a mainstream movie demands – mediums, man. A shame, then, the Pirates ride is somewhat compromised now, with new animatronics of Jack (etc.) incorporated into the mix – not a gigantic problem, and expected from riders who know the flicks first, and, well…Well, it’s the sort of synergy which lead to this franchise, which must necessarily inform back onto the original Marc Davis source. It must’ve been worth the production time in the wilderness, and for every Eddie Murphy-starring misfire like The Haunted Mansion, getting one successful multi-billion dollar media enterprise is pretty good. And easier by far than shepherding some sub-“Harry Potter” Lightning Thief nonsense to the screen, that’s for sure.
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