Hacker Cinema
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2003 · Film · 143 min
Part of Pirates of the Caribbean Collection
Directed by Gore Verbinski
When wily pirate Captain Barbossa seizes Jack Sparrow’s beloved ship, the Black Pearl, and kidnaps the governor’s daughter, Elizabeth Swann, blacksmith Will Turner reluctantly teams up with the unpredictable pirate Jack to rescue her—only to uncover a terrifying curse that turns Barbossa’s crew into the undead.
7 positive4 negative20 neutralfrom 31 commenters
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32 comments on Hacker News
'Movies' at Blockbuster level pivoted to ersatz carnival rides post-'Pirates of the Caribbean', focusing on safe IPs and simple plots designed to aid comprehension of the major story beats in the SEA markets without the need to resort to subtitles or dubbing.
'True' Cinema has been going from strength to strength the last decade, with even Netflix putting out Fincher spectacles like 'Mank' on streaming, and A24 bringing introducing a new audience to phenomenal Korean Cinema like 'Parasite' and 'Minari'.
Even in the traditional studio system we have been spoilt in recent years by a succession of Palm D'Or and Oscar winners like Anatomy of a Fall, Triangle of Sadness, Zone of Interest, The Brutalist, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Except American movies(and entertainment in general) haven't been good for about 10 years now, it's all slop based on established IP from 20-30 years ago.
When I was a kid growing up in the post communist 90-00s, we were going nearly weekly to the cinema to watch the latest American movies: Blade, Shrek, Toy Story, The Matrix trilogy, LotR trilogy, American Pie, Batman trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Fast & Furious, X-Men, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Scary Movie, Rush Hour, etc
We couldn't get enough of US entertainment, while now everyone here avoids the new US releases like the plague since it's only cash grabs injected with $CURRENT_DAY identity politics, diversity box ticking based on focus group testing, resulting in sterile, predictable, zero-humor, zero-edge, zero-creativity slop that's not even worth pirating.
Americans have no idea how much soft power they lost worldwide by forcing their identity politics and ideologies in entertainment. Japanese anime and Koran movies and TV shows now run rings around the US entertainment industry.
> At the end of films they say 10000 jobs were created making a film or some such, so.. even if it's not the best, people were paid.
Fun fact: More people worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise than there were pirates in the Caribbean.
I'm really surprised a Monkey Island movie hasn't been made yet.
Yes, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie originally started as a Monkey Island screenplay. But that franchise is basically dead now, and with the popularity of sassy, fourth-wall breaking sendup movies I think it would do gangbusters.
The lore and the humor and the characters are already there - it's a shame they are locked to this increasingly small audience of people who have patience for point and click adventure games.
A more compelling thesis would be that the MCU films presided over a vacuum of good blockbusters during a period of decline in American cinema, brought about by risk-averse studios during the mortgage crisis.
The legacy of the films—technical achievements, continuity and coherence of narrative, ambition, etc.—are laudatory in some respects. Obviously, they made an enormous amount of money. But it's worth examining their "critical" success. Putting my personal opinions aside, do any of these films hold up to the standard bearers of early 90s and 00s blockbusters? I'm not convinced.
The MCU films are inherently derivative works with little dramatic tension; we already know the characters and that they will win. The narrative and dialogue is paint-by-numbers, and the action sequences are exhausting, low-stakes, and sterile.
That's fine for a theme park ride—get some thrills if that's your cup of tea—but it's not enough for a critically good blockbuster film. That's fine for teen boys and young adults, but it's not enough for a more diverse, discerning audience. Does anyone think any of these films, let alone their entirety, hold a candle to Jurassic Park, The Matrix, or The Pirates of the Caribbean? They're equally blockbusters, but they will be remembered long after the MCU films are forgotten.
I'm not sure of what are you exactly picturing in your mind about how the experience is of downloading a pirated movie. But opening up the qBittorrent application in your PC or Mac, clicking on the "search" tab, and writing "Pirates of the Caribbean", doesn't feel at all as interesting and creepy as walking at night through the red lights district of amsterdam. That'd be awesome!
Trivia: The Vasa served as role-model for "The Flying Dutchman" in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies — also a ship that sunk and was risen again.
The ships in the movies were inspired by real-world ships, and the team was helped by an expert on tall ships. When given the plans for one ship, the expert exclaimed: "This design does not look seaworthy. Is it really based on a real ship?". "Yes, it is called the Vasa".
The Bourne Identity, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.
It does not have to be original. And I don't mean only the intro but the entire soundtrack. Often, the theme song is reused over and over during the film with many variations to set the tone of a scene.
Bad movies skimp on soundtracks.
> They're still making good ones: Frozen, Moana, Encanto. Just watch those and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Probably the most objective way to view this is to actually look at the list of films from any given decade and see how many flops they had [1]. There's a bias at play here: the only movies we remember Disney making a decade+ ago are the hits. We don't often remember the misses.
Apparently Disney's "Renaissance" ended with Tarzan in 1999; but here are a list of movies that have come out since the end of this golden era:
- Monsters, Inc.
- Lilo and Stitch
- Treasure Planet (a personal favorite)
- Finding Nemo
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- The Incredibles
- Ratatouille
- WALL-E
- Up
- Tangled
- Brave
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Frozen
- Inside Out
- Encanto
I'm sure there's many great ones that you might love that I'm missing. But I'd say this lineup is potentially better than the list of movies spanning The Little Mermaid to Tarzan. To the author's credit, I will say there's part of me that's nostalgic for the traditional style of 2d character animation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Pictures_films
While I agree with the sentiment, this isn’t “Bezos pushing it”. Look at any big movie franchise — this is just standard pre release merchandizing tie ins.
You want to make a release like this “a cultural event”. The latest Jurassic Park was everywhere. They even partnered with Walmart and decorated the outside of their buildings with giant posters of dinosaurs. I’m also remembering one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films: posters, buses, soda drinks, commercials, and even the snack Pirates Booty we’re all for a limited time only covered in the film logo.
Your'e being downvoted, but I for one agree wholly with the point you make.
I don't doubt filmmaking has always, in the end, been about business or they wouldn't be made. But the captains of the film industry, perhaps in optimizing profit, seem to be all circling the same kind of flashy, effects-laden action film.
I've heard people suggest it's a result of the "globalization of the industry", that action films with "effects > dialog" sells to a Chinese audience, for example. Perhaps there is some truth to it (if so, it suggests again studios optimizing for profit).
I've been on a "1001 Films To See Before You Die" tear for a few years now and it is hard not to see many of these old films and sigh, "When would Hollywood ever make a film like this today?"
Please, can we have another, another "new wave"? More indie cinema please. This market has been ripe for disruption since the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise took root.
> Games are far more products like movies than they are "art"
Says whom? You demonstrate your points by showing that blockbusters make money, which says nothing about whether they are art. They're entirely different dimensions of the same work, and hard to compare. Obviously the accounting department will have a different point of view than the creative director.
You're also arguing that people making new films on an existing franchise should stick to giving the fans what they want. But who's to say the fans even know what they want? They might not care, they might be mistaken, they might misremember things. For example, people clamoring for World of Warcraft Classic or a back-to-the-roots Sonic game back in the day weren't really hoping for a product per se, but rather to go back to a time when the product was more culturally relevant (and they were younger).
A new direction can also capture a new audience, which might make fans negligible. For instance the Star Wars prequel are still divisive but a large, younger portion of the fandom likes them very much.
And what fans are we talking about anyway? You give Spider-man as an example. But there have been thousand of pieces of Spider-man media, with wildly different art styles and tones. Which one is "what the fans want"? Disney went with the Marvel formula precisely because it's a lowest-common denominator style of film, accessible to non-fans.
And finally another obvious problem with your thesis is that nothing new can be made if it is required to give to the masses what they want for sure. Almost by definition, it is unknown whether any new concept, style, tone, or property are what people want. At the same time it is known that the public at least somewhat values originality, so companies take risks and release films such as Pirates of the Caribbean or games like Assassin's Creed.
> Pirates of the Caribbean had a similar spirit.
The film? Did you see the (at least one) Monkey Island reference in it?
Ya know in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean films the character Captain Jack Sparrow is essentially pursuing eternal life in each movie. I wouldn’t say he’s the “bad” guy that kills others but he does make some questionable ethical choices at times.
Havent read the article, but this title reminds me of the dialogue between the two guards in front of Jack Sparrow in The Curse of The Black Pearl:
Murtogg: [shoots Mullroy a confused look] The Black Pearl is a real ship.
Mullroy: [turns to Murtogg] No. No, it's not.
Murtogg: Yes it is; I've seen it.
Mullroy: You've seen it?
Murtogg: Yes.
Mullroy: You haven't seen it.
Murtogg: Yes, I have.
Mullroy: You've seen a ship with black sails, that's crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out?
Murtogg: ...No.
Mullroy: No.
Murtogg: But I have seen a ship with black sails.
Mullroy: Oh! And no ship that's not crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out could possibly have black sails, therefore could possibly be any other ship but the Black Pearl? Is that what you're saying?
Murtogg: [thinks, then smiles] ...No.
Mullroy: Like I said, there's no real ship as can match the Interceptor...
(taken from https://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/pirates-of-the-caribbean-the-curse-of-the-black-pearl/quote_18085.html )
Hmmm.... I guess it is when you grew up? I thought the 70's were king for U.S. filmmakers. And 70's sci-fi was some of the best. Until "Star Wars" came along and killed it.
I loved "Star Wars" when it came out, was blown away. But in hindsight I am sad to see it was marked the end of 70's sci-fi.
And then "Raiders of the Lost Ark", which I loved, was more or less the modern blueprint for all the crap that has come out since. It represents a storyboard approach to the screenplay/film: basically action sequences tied together with a thin thread of plot.
The various "Pirates of the Caribbean" are classic examples of the rot that followed as are every superhero film, every "Fast and Furious" film, "Transformers", etc.
I don't have the cycles to spend on all the "streamed content" that HBO, Netflix, etc. are cranking out now so I can't comment on whether "TV" is better these days.
Wreck-it-Ralph kind of cheated, but... how many different styles of 3D animation did you see in that film alone? (Wreck-it-Ralph is sort of the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" of this generation, so it makes sense. No one will say that Betty Boop has a similar drawing style to Woody Woodpecker, even if both are characters in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit")
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Thanos (Avengers: Endgame), Shrek, Davy Jones (Pirates of the Caribbean), the Na'vi (Avatar), Spiderman (Into the Spiderverse), and the recreation of Princess Leia (Rogue One) are all 3d animation. Would you argue that they're the same style?
What are the reasons why Hollywood hasn’t yet mined the old Lucasarts games for movie ideas? They seem such natural source material.
Are there IP ownership complications?
Are the games themselves too derivative of movies (e.g. Monkey Island being inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and thus reverse-retrospectively derivative of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies)?
Would it be too hard to adapt them as comedies, or would they be too boring as non-comedies?
Is the built-in audience actually not as large as I imagine it would be?
Are there some gaming-ignorant egos involved? i.e. what lead to the 4th Indiana Jones using the lame Crystal Skull story instead of the great Fate of Atlantis story?
Is the world simply not ready for Day of the Tentacle on Disney+?
I thought the story went that the ride was an inspiration for the game, which was then an inspiration for the movie. I’ve not been on the original ride but some Pirates characters are straight out of the game.
I think it would be supercool if Lucasarts made a “Pirates of the Caribbean and the Secret of Monkey Island” game that is essentially a Monkey Island adventure, somehow incorporating Guybrush, Marley etc in the POTC universe and then giving them a cameo in the next movie.
>I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other.
Ok. Piracy will be made harder and harder, to the point where it will be inaccessible to mainstream. This also means that the tech savvy pirates will be more exposed.
>If studios weren't greedy and produced objectively garbage content I would buy a product on faith but in a world where there are how many Pirates of the Caribbean movies, I'll be more skeptical.
That entire paragraph is weirdly nonsensical. You don't have an ineliable right to watch movies, you aren't the universal judge of movie quality (lots of people like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), and you aren't entitled to dictate how you want the business of media to operate (i.e. you get to pick how much or how little you pay). It's one thing to pirate, it's another to think you're a 'good guy'.
>Age of piracy is going to end as well.
I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other.
>You are dreaming if you think media and production companies are going to leave $90/mo on the table. You will see prices rise.
Then so do my sails
>Talk about entitled!
Not really, I'm willing to pay you something for it, just not the scalpers price you want me to pay to test the waters. If a show is really good I buy it on blueray because I value the show and want more of it/want to reward the quality of the show. If studios weren't greedy and produced objectively garbage content I would buy a product on faith but in a world where there are how many Pirates of the Caribbean movies, I'll be more skeptical.
They did make a good video game movie: it's called "Pirates of the Caribbean", and it's an adaptation of Monkey Island.
I know, I know, it's the other way around. But it should be proof that a good videogame movie is at least possible - you would have to change surprisingly little.
As this article points out, Zimmer "scores more movies than he actually does" because he's built a kind of film score workshop where dozens of collaborators turn out scores in his style by the bushel.
I first discovered this when Pandora spun up a rousing number from Klaus Badelt's Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and I swore I was listening to Gladiator. Badelt is a longtime Zimmer collaborator.
It's interesting that Zimmer himself took credit for composing the music for the Pirates sequels once the franchise was an (unexpected) smash.
And of these 31 remaining almost half are missing in the Swedish Netflix:
5. Back to the Future 6. Gladiator 7. Sunset Boulevard 8. Cinema Paradiso 9. Django Unchained 12. Reservoir Dogs 13. Braveheart 17. Amadeus 21. Trainspotting 24. There Will Be Blood 25. Spotlight 26. The Princess Bride 27. Zootopia 29. Jaws 31. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
And yet Netflix want the same monthly cost for less of a service. Why?
It's a common refrain that films based on other stuff are always worse, but I think it's sampling bias. When a movie is based on a mediocre source, people often just don't realize that the movie isn't original. The fact that a movie is "based on" is more likely to be known if the source is good, and reversion to the mean means that these are likely to have movies that aren't as good.
For one example, Forrest Gump is based on a pretty crappy book. It's mildly entertaining but it's pretty wacky and definitely not the amazing classic that the movie was. For another one that turns up a lot, The Godfather is said to be a lot better than the book, although I haven't read it myself. One more, Pirates of the Caribbean, while not exactly deep and meaningful, is a pretty fun movie based on a pretty mediocre amusement park ride.
I will admit that I can't come up with any good movies based on a video game.
Another source of trouble, I think, is that a movie based on something well known can survive on name recognition, so it doesn't have to be good. A Warcraft movie could be good in theory, but they probably haven't bothered.
They may give him a license, but Disney is an IP black hole, they wont sell it back. And considering its very close to Pirates of the Caribbean, there's even less chance of that happening any time soon.
In my opinion, what Disney should be doing, is contact Ron, and make Guybrush and LeChuck appear in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, to introduce them to a new generation who does not have any idea of who they are (Guybrush being a young naive boy again would fit pretty well for this job). After all, PotC and MI universes are pretty compatible, it should be easy to make it look like they are both in the same universe/time.
Then, they could either make MI a spin-off (preferably), or make Guybrush be a new sidekick to Sparrow (but please, dont make him a silly Robin).
And then, give Ron full freedom to work with that IP as he wishes... (and pay him accordingly, or better, give him a nice % of royalties).
If they don't want to sell the IP, at least, this way they could make some money with it (instead of letting it rot in a drawer), without risking their PotC franchise, letting Ron continue the story, and making us fans happy in the process!!
<insert funny joke about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies not being positive>
"Piracy" is a negative term for "sharing of media". I don't see how sharing books between friends is a bad thing. Why is sharing music and movies suddenly "evil"?
> I can't subscribe to the flawed philosophy that a developer shouldn't have to know how an application is talking to his database, or the fine details of what goes on in the underlying system or storage cluster. Those people are like ticking time bombs for some company to hire to build out their platform. They'll get your prototype out the door at light speed, but put any traffic on it and prepare yourself for a bill the size of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
This. A billion times this. We should have "Law of minimal needed abstractions" :
Look at every abstraction as global variable accessed only from lines with goto on them. It better have a good reason for existing.
I seem to recall there being an R-rated movie called "Pirates" at the same time as and with a cover that looked remarkably similar to that of "Pirates of the Caribbean." I never watched it, but IIRC the cover was confusing enough that Blockbuster had to put "Contains content not suitable for children" stickers on it.
I consider this practice just as unethical as hosting adult content on squatted domain misspellings of common sites.
most movie goers would just wait
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Moviegoers love to go to movies, and movie downloaders are the same guys that wait a week in line for the new Star Wars. Perfect customers, in other words.
Did you know our town had a second-run movie theater until last year? One of the last towns to have one. They were packed all the time - but the new owners of all the theaters in town closed it because people could watch movies on the cheap instead of paying eight bucks at the plex. Now everything's only open for about five weeks and is then gone forever.
I'm a busy man. My schedule often required going to the second-run because I literally cannot focus on chunks of time of five weeks to see a movie. Now, my only recourse is to wait a year or so for the studios to release a version of that movie I can buy, or pirate it. Sometimes I pirate it, even though I freaking loathe Bittorrent and the hassle involved in finding a good pirate copy.
But I don't have a choice. And I love movies. I love Pirates of the Caribbean - my wife actually saw the first one in the cinema nearly thirty times. Once she showed up five minutes late for the evening showing and the attendant just laughed and waved her into the theater instead of opening up the cash register again, knowing she'd be back the following night. So after it closed in the movie theater, I downloaded it to continue watching it - then we bought it as soon as they decided to sell it to us, wore out one copy, and bought another.
Do you think I'm atypical? Yet Hollywood thinks I cheated them by downloading Pirates of the Caribbean.
If movie attendance is down, it's not because people are waiting to see a pirated videocam version they downloaded, it's because real prices have doubled or tripled and people simply no longer have the money to go to the movies as often. In a recession, no less. Next the MPAA is just going to garnish everybody's wages on suspicion of piracy.
(If they actually do that, please don't blame me for thinking of it first...)
Are hollywood movies really motivating career decisions? I like Pirates of the Caribbean, but Im not about to start a career as a privateer. Im thrilled that enrollment in CS classes are finally increasing, but I temper my excitement when I hear the example Ms Fong. Some advise for all new CS students: don't pursue a degree in CS because its glamorous, but because you enjoy programming and problem solving. Life is too short to do something you do not enjoy.
Well, Pirates of the Caribbean has been a Disneyland staple attraction since the 1950's, so they've got nearly 50 years of data to go on, on whether they should continue it or not - it's exactly why they made the first film.
When you consider how much the first film made, given it's actual cost (and the acclaim Depp got for his character) - the 2nd and 3rd weren't really that much of a gamble, but one that ultimately paid off.
The film industry isn't entirely an exact science, WALL-E for example had an entirely different ending which Pixar redid after it's first screening, after Andrew Stanton realised he had made an error in the way the story flows.
You also have major blunders - Waterworld anyone? It cost nearly double the budget that was set aside for it and it's gross revenue was barely more than that. The budget doesn't take into account the marketing costs, so money was lost on that film.