Captain Jack Sparrow Hates Cephalopods

[Dan Hipp]

Angelica Malon on Stranger Tides

On Robot 6 last week, I posted some thoughts about letting the audience control artistic output. I used a bunch of quotes from famous writers to show why it’s a bad idea, including an example from Sam Raimi about adding Venom to Spider-Man 3 in spite of Raimi’s not really liking Venom very much. I’d like to add a couple of more examples to the pile.

As was pointed out to me a long time ago, Ocean’s 12 was a failed experiment at a different take on the Ocean’s 11 concept. Audiences reacted badly – and justifiably so – so in retaliation Soderbergh just remade Ocean’s 11 and called it Ocean’s 13. Which is pretty funny, but it doesn’t make Ocean’s 13 something that I’d ever want to watch again.

That also seems to be what’s going on with On Stranger Tides. Fans and critics were pretty vocal about not liking At World’s End and that distaste has colored the entire trilogy. In response, the makers of On Stranger Tides have created the Pirates movie that audiences said they wanted. And while some are pretty satisfied with the result, the movie has some big problems.



It starts out okay. Pretty good, actually. I was all ready for a movie about the new, relatively selfless Jack Sparrow and for a while it looks like that's what Stranger Tides offers. Johnny Depp’s still awesome in the role and the character is still a fun one (if over-reliant on his signature moves and catch phrases). The opening scenes in which Jack has to rescue Gibbs from prison and ends up having to rescue himself from King George's guard-filled palace are mostly awesome. Without having to explain it, the movie presents Jack as the same kind of character as Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes: always fifteen steps ahead of everyone else so that things appear to just fall into place for him.

There was one bit in that opening sequence though that was all wrong and rang the chimes of doom for the rest of the film. Jack rushes by a surprised guard who then gives chase. Jack manages to get away for a moment and as the guard runs past Jack’s hiding place, he inexplicably sets Jack's sword and pistol on a table. I suppose you could argue that the guard thought he could chase faster without them, but it's awfully convenient and of course Jack picks them up. I wish it was the only over-coincidental bit of the movie, but the story’s filled with those moments. Jack’s escapes get more ludicrous, people have superpowers for no reason, and absolutely everyone knows how to find the Fountain of Youth and what to do with it when they get there (except Jack who’s presumably been searching for it longer than anyone else).




The movie is very silly and cartoony, but that might have been forgivable had it actually done what it was supposed to do: continue the story of Captain Jack Sparrow. When last we left Jack, he’d become a kinder pirate and we do see that reflected in On Stranger Tides. But that’s what he grew into in the last trilogy. For his story to be worth continuing, he needs to go somewhere new.

The journey promised by At World’s End is Jack’s quest for immortality. He died in Dead Man’s Chest and was terrified of repeating the experience. It drove everything he did in At World’s End and made sense of his quest for the Fountain of Youth. But as Stranger Tides opens, Jack’s pretty much given up the quest and has to be pulled back into it. There’s no personal urgency to his finding it. Instead, he fills a role much like he did in the original trilogy: running around making things more interesting for the characters who actually have story arcs. Excuse me: the character who has a story arc. Because there’s only one.

Something that On Stranger Tides does have in common with its predecessors is that the actual main character is the female lead, in this case Angelica Malon (Penélope Cruz). She has a very good reason for wanting to find the Fountain of Youth: Her father, Blackbeard has been prophesied for death (a second time, since the movie takes place after his historical death) and Angelica wants to give him more time to repent so that his soul might be saved. She even brings a missionary on the trip in an attempt to reach her dad, but the movie’s never sure what to do with the priest other than throw him into a half-hearted romance with a mermaid who is herself nothing more than an element of the quest. Even Blackbeard – as cool as Ian McShane plays him – is a MacGuffin whose only purpose is to drive Angelica’s story.



Angelica is a complicated character though. Her obsession with saving her father trumps everything else, making her do and agree to some pretty heinous things. But Cruz is beautiful, charming, and injured and I wanted to like her. I didn’t excuse or forgive her for her actions, but I wanted to. That put me in an interesting predicament and is pretty cool.

The movie tries to bring her and Jack together in a meaningful way in order to give Jack’s story some weight, but it fails. To start with, it’s the old, They Were Lovers Way Back When Even Though Jack’s Never Mentioned Her Before ploy. I’d have been okay with that as long as there was some chemistry between the characters to make me believe they really were lovers way back when, but there’s not. If there were, the film wouldn’t need the long-lost lovers back-story. We'd just believe that Jack does what he does for love of Angelica. Instead, in the absence of presenting any real passion between the two characters, the film asks its audience to settle for being told that it exists. That doesn’t work.

On Stranger Tides was written by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the two guys who wrote the original trilogy, so it’s not like Disney hired a bunch of new guys who didn’t know what they were doing to take over. Maybe it really was a case of trying to give the audience what it said it wanted and failing as a result. Whatever the reason, I hope that Pirates 5 manages to put the series back on track and turn On Stranger Tides into an unfortunate speedbump. There are elements in On Stranger Tides that suggest that could be the case and I really am interested in learning more about Angelica. I just don’t want another film like this one.

Elizabeth Swann at World’s End

My theory that Elizabeth Swann is the central character of the first Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy gets into some trouble in At World’s End, but it holds together. The reason it gets into trouble is because At World’s End is very much about all three of the lead characters: Elizabeth, Will, and Jack. We’ve been examining motivations in these articles and how the characters change and grow. All three make some monumental decisions in At World’s End that result in my liking the film even more than I did before.

Let’s start with Jack. Though he was unrepentantly selfish all though The Curse of the Black Pearl, he learned to act selflessly by the end of Dead Man’s Chest. In retrospect, we can see him wrestling with that all through the second film. We’re never told exactly why the compass doesn’t work for him in that movie. What’s he torn between? Obviously, saving his hide from the kraken is a huge motivation, but what’s the other choice that the compass is pointing to? What else does he want?

We could make a decent case that it’s Elizabeth, but knowing the specific object isn’t important. From a broad perspective, Jack is waffling between two desires: selfishness and selflessness. That becomes clear at the end of Dead Man’s Chest and he makes the right decision. It’s not necessary to know the particular thing that represented selflessness for him.



In At World’s End, Jack is lamenting that decision. He says so when we first see him in Davy Jones’ Locker, arguing with himself. One of the Jacks wants to be lenient to another Jack who deserves punishment. A third Jack berates the first, declaring that that kind of thinking is what got them all killed in the first place. The rest of the film has Jack continuing to struggle with that. Picking up on the theme of choices and paths from Black Pearl, Jack’s chosen the path of Selflessness and is now suffering for it. The big question for him in the movie is whether or not he’ll back up and choose the other option.

The way that struggle is played out is through Jack’s fear of death. Having experienced it once, he has no desire to go through it again and spends the rest of the movie trying to manipulate his way onto The Flying Dutchman where he can kill Davy Jones and replace him as the immortal ferryman of souls. Of course, by the end, he willingly gives up that desire in order to save Will. He’s chosen Selflessness, and the suffering that goes with it. That’s a hell of a character arc.

Meanwhile, Will seemed to be going nowhere in Dead Man’s Chest. His motivation in Black Pearl was to save a loved one; namely Elizabeth. His goal in Dead Man’s Chest hadn’t changed. He was still all about saving those he loves, though that was expanded to include his dad. However, At World’s End presents him with an interesting choice by making him choose between those two people. Suddenly Will is back in the story.



We shouldn’t take his choosing of Elizabeth too lightly. Bootstrap Bill needs Will much more than Elizabeth does, because she’s become quite self-sufficient over the course of the trilogy. Also, Will’s relationship with Elizabeth has become very rocky as a result of Elizabeth’s choices. The smart, safe choice is for Will to continue trying to save his dad, but that’s not what he does. He picks Elizabeth and asks her to marry him on the spot. I understand why a lot of people don’t care for Will – he spends all of Dead Man’s Chest and two-thirds of At World’s End not being very likeable – but he won me back when – against all reason – he chose a girl over biological family. It’s not as impressive as Jack’s transformation (after all, it’s the choice everyone makes when they fall in love), but it’s a decent character arc.

Elizabeth’s half of the love story is more powerful. Having chosen a life of adventure over safety in Black Pearl and having followed that path to a frightening place at the end of Dead Man’s Chest, Elizabeth – like Jack – is lamenting that decision at the beginning of At World’s End. She’s gone too far, been seduced by the Dark Side, and now she wants to take it back. If they can bring Jack back to life, she thinks she has a shot at doing that.

Oddly enough, it sort of works. A realistic story would force Elizabeth to realize that once you go down a path like that, there’s no turning around. But Elizabeth doesn’t live in a realistic world. She lives in a world of roguishly charming pirates, sea monsters, and ocean goddesses. She’s successful in rescuing Jack and returning to a state of relative innocence.



The word “relative” is important because of course she’s not washed completely clean. Jack never does completely forgive her and she can’t “take back” what she did. But she’s able to come to terms with what she did and have some peace about it, which is a kind of return to innocence.

Once she’s done that, she’s able to move down the path again, but with a proper sense of balance. Having that, she achieves more than any adventurous, pirate-loving person could hope for by becoming the Pirate King herself and leading the nine Pirate Lords and their men into battle against the entire East India Trading Company. Which she then gives up for Will.

The fanboy in me hates that. He’d much rather see a whole series of movies about Elizabeth Swann the Pirate King than know that she wound up on a deserted coast waiting for her man to come home once every ten years. But there’s some touching nobility in that sacrifice that overpowers the fanboy. It’s not very feminist, but it’s awfully human and romantic. She and Will were both willing to make sacrifices for each other: he gave up his dad and she gave up her life of adventure.



Of course, Will didn’t actually end up having to give up his dad at all, but it’s impossible to call the situation unfair. It’s unilaterally tragic. Will wanted to be with Elizabeth more than he wanted to save his dad. That he can’t have it that way isn’t a blessing. If anything, Elizabeth is in the better spot because as her son grows older, she’ll have the option of taking him on all sorts of adventures. But neither she nor Will is getting what they wanted when they chose each other over their other desires. It’s a heartbreaking situation. Or would be if we liked Will more.

As much as I like At World’s End, it’s certainly got some serious flaws. Will’s not being as cool as he could be is only part of them. There are a lot of confusing red herrings for one thing (whether or not Elizabeth is Calypso, all of Will and Jack’s double-crossing, etc.), but the final battle between the pirates and the East India Trading Company also fails in a big way to live up to its promise.

One of the high points of the movie is when Elizabeth rallies the pirates to war with a speech, inspiring them to raise their colors as the music swells. It’s extremely anti-climactic then when the Black Pearl faces the Flying Dutchman in an undeclared clash of champions to determine the winner of the entire battle. It doesn’t feel anti-climactic at the time, because it’s a great contest, but once it’s over and the weather clears, it makes no sense at all for Cutler Beckett to sail his ship alone to meet the Pearl. Flying Dutchman or no Flying Dutchman.



Here’s the thing though. What Cutler Beckett does or doesn’t do isn’t important. The story’s not about him. He’s not even the real antagonist. He’s there to keep the characters moving, but they’re not actually fighting him. The same goes for Davy Jones. Jack and Elizabeth’s antagonists are their own selfishness; Will’s is his father. Everything else is a distraction to drive the plot. Seen that way, it’s much less offensive that the filmmakers chose a shorthand method of finishing off the Cutler Beckett thread. The real story was about Elizabeth’s being in the position to inspire a nation of pirates, not what the pirates did or didn’t do with that inspiration.

And in the end, I still believe this was Elizabeth’s story. All three characters have their big, defining moments in At World’s End, but Elizabeth is the only one who consistently moves forward through all three films. That each of them also opens and closes on her is telling in a huge way as well.

The question is: where’s the series to go without her? Fortunately, Jack hasn’t been as unchanging as I originally remembered. He’s had a story too and that’s what continues in On Stranger Tides. Or should have.

But that’s another article.

Elizabeth Swann and the Dead Man’s Chest

Thematically, Dead Man’s Chest carries right on from Curse of the Black Pearl. The first film is all about Elizabeth and Will’s choosing their paths. Elizabeth chooses a life of adventure over safety; Will nominally chooses a life of piracy over a more respectable career as a blacksmith. “Nominally” because he certainly isn’t a pirate as Dead Man’s Chest begins.

He’s living safely in Port Royal and is about to marry the governor’s daughter when Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company shows up to squash those plans. For that matter, Elizabeth’s not exactly struggling either, but at least she’s living the life she chose at the end of Black Pearl. It was a brave choice for her considering expectations of women in that time and culture, but still less dangerous than the path that Will claimed to be choosing. Since he’s not a pirate though, her choosing to be with him also loses some of its risk. A disappointing opening.

As Dead Man’s Chest progresses though, the situation gets more perilous and complicated for Elizabeth as she learns just where the path that she chose in Black Pearl leads. More on that in a minute. First let’s talk about Will and how the story all but abandons him.



At first glance it seems like Dead Man’s Chest is very much about Will. It reveals a lot of information about his father and dedicates a ton of time to showing how Bootstrap’s fate affects Will and his decisions. But by the end of the movie, Will hasn’t actually grown as a character. His motivation at the closing credits is the same as it was at the opening ones: to save the people he cares about (first Elizabeth, then his father). That’s the same motivation he had in the first movie. Once he made the decision to enter a life of piracy (even if he didn’t completely follow through on it), his growth is pretty much done at the end of Black Pearl. Following that, we’re just learning his back-story and watching him complicate the lives of the two characters that actually are experiencing some growth.

A quick note about Will before we move on though: He’s easily the most heroic character in the trilogy and we should like him a lot more than we do. However, he has a tendency to glower and brood, and that makes him unpleasant. Even though he’s doing very admirable things, he does them resentfully. He takes everything very seriously and wears his selflessness on his sleeve. Self-conscious martyrdom is never attractive.

Also before we move on to the important characters, I feel like I should at least mention Norrington, even though he’s not really growing in Dead Man’s Chest. His motivation is the same that it was in Black Pearl: to advance his naval career. He’s just starting from farther behind in this movie. Still, he becomes more important in At World’s End, so we shouldn’t lose track of him.



It’s Jack and Elizabeth who experience real growth in Dead Man’s Chest. I know I described Jack as an unchangeable, Bugs Bunny-like character in Black Pearl, but it’s not quite as simple as that. One of the interesting things about him in Black Pearl was that you were never really sure what he was going to do. He was only out for himself and that made him fickle. That seems like a contradiction in an “unchangeable” character, so let’s pull that apart a little.

“Unchangeable” doesn’t have to mean “predictable.” Jack is just predictably unpredictable, if that makes sense. This is in spite of what he tells Barbossa at the end of Black Pearl about dishonest men being predictable. He claims that it’s the honest men whom you never know what they’re going to do. There’s probably some truth to that from a certain point of view. Dishonest men will always do what’s in their best interest, while honest men will surprise you by acting for the benefit of others. But what Jack doesn’t say is that particularly clever dishonest men will find all sorts of surprising ways to get what they want. Which he immediately illustrates by freeing Will and attacking Barbossa.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of turning Jack into a hero though. Not in Black Pearl at least. He always acts selfishly in that film; it’s just that his goals tend to align with Will and Elizabeth’s. He’s a good guy by association. And because we like him.



That begins to change in Dead Man’s Chest though. Even before the movie’s begun he seems to be changed by his experiences in Black Pearl. He has his ship now and doesn’t know what he wants next. He’s conflicted and it’s messing with him and his crew. He continues to behave selfishly though until the end of the film, after his talk with Elizabeth in which she convinces him that he wants to try being a good man for once. He demonstrates this by giving up his flight from the Pearl and returning to the doomed ship to be with his crew and help them escape the kraken. When he does this though, we also see how much Elizabeth has changed as well.

Elizabeth’s barely in the first act of the film, but her character arc through the movie is the most interesting. As Jack is struggling with becoming a better man, Elizabeth wrestles with becoming a worse woman. Her lifelong interest in pirates and the path she chose in Black Pearl are leading her to some dark places. She never truly becomes romantically interested in Jack as a person, but she’s devilishly attracted to what he represents: complete freedom to do whatever she likes.

But with complete freedom comes a price. She learns this when she shackles him to the Pearl in order to save herself and the others. Pretty it up however you like, but it’s a selfish thing she does and she knows it. That’s why she’s so upset in the final scene. She doesn’t want to rescue Jack because she loves him; she wants to rescue him in order to undo her mistake in forcing him to die so that she and the others could live. She wants to be able to back up from where her path has taken her.



Jack, meanwhile, stays on his new path. When Elizabeth shackles him to the ship, he tries to escape, but he never calls for help. That seems like the instinctive thing for a truly selfish man to do. His crew is easily within earshot and would rescue him in seconds, so the only thing that makes sense is that he’s still being selfless. He wants to be unchained so that he has a fighting chance, but he knows that Elizabeth’s right. It’s even more selfless and heroic than his returning to the Pearl in the first place.

What’s going to be interesting about At World’s End is seeing how Elizabeth and Jack continue to change. Or if they both continue to change. I don’t think that both of them do, which is why I’m titling these posts the way I am.

Elizabeth Swann and the Curse of the Black Pearl

As we get closer to On Stranger Tides, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films for some context. Though Stranger Tides is the first of three more Pirates movies, reports are that it’s not beginning a new trilogy. Each of the films will stand on its own without directly leading into the next. I’m curious to see how audiences will receive that in comparison to the first set. Most everyone loved Black Pearl, opinions were divided about Dead Man’s Chest, and At World’s End was generally hated. The new films are designed so that each stands or falls on its own.

Personally, I like At World’s End a lot, but it took me two or three viewings to figure out what was going on. Or – more accurately – how much I needed to care about everything that was going on. The world of the Pirates movies is so thought-out and complex that by At World’s End there are so many characters with so many unique motivations and agendas that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. Which is why so many people threw their hands up and declared that it wasn’t worth it.

I don’t really blame them. When even the jilted love-interest of the female lead in the first movie has become a fully-realized, developing character with his own story arc, some overload is to be expected. The trick is to realize who the protagonists really are and follow her (oops, gave it away) story. Everyone else exists only to support her story, regardless of how interesting and diverting he may be. Jack, I'm looking at you.



Curse of the Black Pearl opens on Elizabeth Swann and At World’s End closes on her. It’s pretty clear to me that the trilogy is about her. I’m not saying though that seeing the films from that perspective is going to fix everyone’s problems with them. A lot of people simply don’t care for Elizabeth – I don’t understand that, but I acknowledge it’s true – so identifying her as the main character is only going to make those folks less satisfied with the films. So I’m not trying to defend the first three Pirates films as universally great cinema (even though I think they are); I just say that if they’re going to be criticized, they should be criticized for what they are: Elizabeth Swann movies.

Part of the trouble in identifying whose movies these really are is that it’s impossible to tell until the entire trilogy is done. Again, this is because all the characters are so fleshed out that you don’t know who to focus on. Black Pearl’s opening on Elizabeth doesn’t really tell us anything. Harry Potter isn’t about Dumbledore just because he’s the first person to show up onscreen. And even once Black Pearl is finished, you can’t tell that Elizabeth was the primary antagonist.

Judging from Black Pearl alone, Pirates of the Caribbean has three main characters: Elizabeth, Will Turner, and Captain Jack Sparrow. They all have their own agendas and at first glance, Elizabeth’s is actually the weakest. Her primary goal throughout the film is to keep Will safe. She steals his cursed necklace because she doesn’t want him identified as a pirate by Norrington and her father, then – after a brief diversion in which she seeks to save all of Port Royal from Barbossa’s men – she spends the rest of the movie trying to protect Will from the Black Pearl’s crew. And that’s pretty much all she does.



In contrast, Jack – who I’m going to argue is the least important character – seems to have the strongest agenda: reclaiming his ship. Most of the film seems to be about that and even the name of the movie appears to reinforce the idea that this is where we should be keeping our attention. And because Johnny Depp is so freaking charismatic in the role, we certainly want to keep our attention on him.

Will lies somewhere in between. His motivation plays exactly the role in the story that it appears to. He’s in love with Elizabeth and wants to rescue her (again making her appear to be a plot device), but that changes as he learns about his father. If we’re only looking at Curse of the Black Pearl, Will is the protagonist. Though his motivation is no more or less strong than Elizabeth’s (both are trying to protect each other) or Jack’s, Will is the only character who appears to grow or change in the course of the film. At least at first look.

Elizabeth is a strong, independent character from the first moment we see her and she stays that way throughout. She bucks convention as often as she can. She loves pirates, hates corsets, and never actually consents to marry Norrington.

Meanwhile, Jack is Jack. He’s unchangeable and we love it that way. He’s Bugs Bunny. You can drop him into any situation and it instantly becomes more interesting, but there’s no story to be told about him. That would require growth and we like Jack just the way he is when we first meet him.



Will, on the other hand, learns a valuable lesson about prejudice and stereotypes. It’s interesting. After watching Black Pearl this last time, I realized that my son’s probably the right age now to appreciate these movies, so I started watching it again with him. He quickly had some questions about pirates: Are they good guys or bad guys? If they’re good, why does everyone want to put them in jail and hang them? If they’re bad, why are we rooting for Jack? It was nice not to have to stop the movie and explain this myself, because those are exactly the questions that Will’s asking. I just told David that his answers were coming. (The answer, of course, is that it’s much more complex than that. Not everyone in a group is going to be just like everyone else in that group. I’m pretty pleased with and grateful for the teaching opportunity.)

But even though Will is the most overt protagonist in Black Pearl, Elizabeth joins him in a subtle way. The movie talks a lot about choosing paths. Mostly in reference to Will, who chooses to become a pirate at the end, but Elizabeth also chooses a new path for herself. Though she never agrees to marry Norrington and live out the traditional life of an English governor’s daughter, she sure does wait a long time to announce that she’s not going to do that either. She keeps her options open, not because she’s torn about which choice to make, but because what she really wants to do is pretty damn scary. It’s a choice between safety and adventure, and though the repercussions of her decision aren’t as dramatic as Will’s, her choosing to help free Jack and proclaim her love for Will is an important development in her character.

Helping to drive that decision is Elizabeth’s discovery of just how powerful she has the potential to be. In Jamaica, her influence is extremely limited, but at sea she’s able to control events in very cool ways, including mounting rescues and leading a crew of pirates into battle. That makes her integral to the theme of piracy-as-freedom. In fact, that central theme – though directly talked about by Jack – is seen most clearly in Elizabeth’s story.

So that's why there are two main characters in Black Pearl. I suppose you could argue that the rest of the trilogy focuses on them equally, but I’m not going to. Instead, I'll suggest that by the end of Dead Man’s Chest, Will’s starting to drop out of the contest and into a supporting role, even while the movie appears still to be focused on him. But that's a post for another day.