i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today
things pirates of the caribbean got right:
1. will and elizabeth’s love story
2. elizabeth becoming pirate king
3. avoiding sexualizing elizabeth or the other female pirate characters in the first 3 films by allowing them to wear period-accurate pirate outfits that aren’t tailored to be revealing and impractical for ‘sex appeal’ just because they’re women
4. hans zimmer’s entire score but especially the iconic ‘he’s a pirate’ main theme
5. When the movie came out, morally-gray characters like Jack were actually not really a thing yet in pop culture, and it’s not Pirates’ fault that there are a ton of stupid shitty copycats out there.
6. I run a corseting panel at cons and literally use Elizabeth’s lace-up scene as a video clip of what historical corseting was actually like, because the only thing they got wrong in this scene is that tightlacing wouldn’t be a thing for about another 200 years (and you couldn’t tightlace with the corset style Elizabeth is wearing anyway). It’s one of the most accurate corseting scenes I’ve ever seen.
7. Will’s hat.
8. That scene with all the pirates on the gallows where that little boy starts singing Hoist the Colours? Yeah, that’s fucking legendary. The rest of AWE was kind of a trash fire, but that scene gave me goosebumps.
9. There’s this great shot in the first one where they really drive home the class differences inherent in this time period by having the governor talking about progress and civilization to Elizabeth in their carriage, and then they cut to a shot outside the carriage where a beggar gets splashed by mud from the wheel. It’s a perfect way to underline that everything is not, in fact, a nice little upper-class fairytale, and to give some weight to Will’s storyline, because he has a lot more in common with that beggar than with the governor.
10. For its time, the CGI was fucking amazing.
11. And let’s not forget the work of the makeup department, which had to actually invent new ways of putting on makeup for this movie.
12. The governor’s death scene. Holy shit.
13. They could have gone with a Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle, but they didn’t. There are some hints Jack is in love (or at least in lust) with Elizabeth, but he recognizes that she loves Will, and that’s that.
14. You’ve got to admit that wedding was unique.
15. The introduction of fantasy elements to historical fiction outside of Tolkein-esque fantasy, and how it contributed to and expanded the Fantasy Media boom we’re still enjoying today.
1. They had a woman of colour play a goddess.
2. They had a woman pirate right in the first film, when the tradition is to only show male ones (hell, the PotC ride at Disney had a wench auction scene until recently). And it was a female pirate of colour at that!
3. Elizabeth may not have known how to fight in the first film, but she wasn’t helpless either. Her first instinct was to fight, but she also had the brains to recognize when it was best to hide instead. Plus when given the chance she stabbed Barbosa that one time.
4. Elizabeth’s lack of fighting ability was not simply because she was a woman, it was clear it was due to her societal circumstances, since we saw other women of different socioeconomic backgrounds being able to fight (and when given the opportunity to learn Elizabeth took to fighting like a duck on water).
5. The Hoist the Colours scene where we see pirates of multiple ethnicities and their varying flags, reminding us that pirates came in all shapes and sizes and weren’t just white men.
6. One of the Pirate Lords being yet ANOTHER woman of colour. She may not have had much of a speaking role if memory serves, but even her presence is already a big deal.
7. The pirates accepting their King is a woman without much fuss.
Pirates is amazing I will not here a bad word
Davy Jones CGI is legendary and a ton better than some of the stuff done today 😄
I’m pretty sure that female Chinese pirate was a nod to a real, documented female pirate king who was Chinese and had a whole fleet of ships at her disposal but I can’t remember her name rn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih
My favorite part about the Bretheren Court voting wasn’t that they were against Elizabeth for becoming King as a woman and newcomer. They were pissed at Jack for being a chaotic neutral who broke the decades long tradition of an egotistical stalemate by voting for someone besides himself.
Also, the deleted scenes from Black Pearl and At World’s End that divulge more of Jack’s troubled past, like how he was branded as a pirate by the East Indian Trading Company because he stole a ship full of slaves and freed them.
“People aren’t cargo, mate.”
Love these movies.
OH OH OH AND ALSO : INDIAN PIRATE LORD SAMBHAJI ANGRIA
Indians almost never get any representation - it’s either poor savages or audaciously rich royalty. And even though the accent was ridiculous, I love the fact that the creators knew and showed Indian pirates (given we’ve had a historically rich history of piracy)
They did have some excellent elements. I personally loved the use of whimsy and absurdity to define Jack’s strangely good luck as his defining characteristic. He wasn’t exactly good at his job, but he was excellent at relying on his luck and his small set of skills. That’s why he didn’t have much trouble relying on others. He had a sort of nuanced idea that everyone has a talent and they can be counted upon to fall into it. I appreciated that. I think I would have liked the subsequent films more, had his character not been increasingly overacted as Depp fell into a niche
