Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2018

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's hard to believe that it's been fifteen years since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was released. It's even hard to believe that a movie based on a theme park ride turned out to be this good. That was exactly the sort of cynicism facing the film when it became a sleeper hit in the summer of 2003. Initially dismissed as a misguided cash grab, Pirates went on to become a global phenomenon - based almost entirely on Johnny Depp's jaw-dropping performance as Jack Sparrow.

A lot's changed since then though. Even as audiences grew weary of Captain Jack and this franchise, Disney kept churning out sequels. It's difficult to separate this original film from the diminishing returns of its successors and from the real life antics of Depp - but we're going to try. This original film is worth celebrating on its own terms and it's worth pointing out how this one succeeds where its follow-ups fail.

Topics include: the lack of enthusiasm surrounding this project that nearly sent it straight-to-video, the panic at the studio over Johnny Depp's performance, how the sequels retroactively turned this into an intricately connected trilogy instead of treating it as the further adventures of these characters, why this was Zoe Saldana's first and last trip aboard The Black Pearl, the reason the final act feels a little too long, a round of Role Reversal, and much much more!

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About The Show

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember Pirates of the Caribbean?
0:07.0	Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:31.8	I'm Chris.
0:32.5	I'm Donna.
0:33.2	And I'm Carlos.
0:34.0	And today we're revisiting Pirates of the Caribbean.
0:53.2	Yeah. I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Pirates of the Caribbean. With so many successful attractions in their theme parks based on movies, the top brass at Disney wondered if the reverse scenario might prove to be just as lucrative.
1:02.0	They had actually been circling the prospect of turning their iconic Pirates of the Caribbean ride into a film for quite some time.
1:08.0	There are even rumblings that Steven Spielberg briefly flirted with the idea
1:11.2	at some point in the 90s. But their plans got more serious in 2001. Two different writers were hired
1:16.9	to flesh out a very loose outline that some of the executives had put together. In this version,
1:21.3	Will Turner was a prison guard who releases Jack Sparrow from his cell on the condition that Sparrow
1:25.7	will lead him to Captain Blackheart,
1:31.3	an evil pirate who's holding Will's love interest Elizabeth for ransom money.
1:34.3	No ghosts, no Black Pearl, no curse.
1:39.0	It was a fairly straightforward adventure story, and relatively small in scale as well.
1:42.4	In fact, the original plan was to do this as an animated film.
1:44.3	And even when they made the switch to live action, Disney initially remained on the fence about whether or not this would be a theatrical
1:48.2	or straight to video release. Somehow the notion of this Pirates movie had persisted, despite the
1:53.4	fact that no one at Disney really seemed that excited by it. Except Dick Cook, the newly minted
1:58.8	chairman of the company whose own life was something of a fairy tale.
2:01.9	He had started out as a ride operator at Disneyland in 1970. Now he was the guy calling the shots.
	...

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