‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ Struck Box Office Gold By Blending ‘Star Wars’ With Disney’s Animated Hits

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl blends Star Wars with Walt Disney Animation that, today, plays like a mostly winning live-action remake of a Walt Disney animated classic that never was.

In retrospect, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl came along at an ideal time. Twas July of 2003, in the middle of a somewhat disappointing mid-summer season. Sure, X2: X-Men United kicked things off with a bang and the one-two punch of The Matrix Reloaded and Bruce Almighty kept theatergoers happy, but the word-of-mouth on that second Matrix movie wasn’t quite as ecstatic as the pre-release reviews. The film would earn $278 million domestic and $742 million worldwide (a then-record for an R-rated movie) from its $91 million Fri-Sun/$134 million Thurs-Sun debut, but the big flicks of June and early July (Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine) weren’t quite picking up the (artistic) slack. In that sense, the Walt Disney action spectacular, buoyed by strong reviews, was positioned as “the one you’ve been waiting for.”

Yes, it was a big-budget movie based on a pirate-centric Disney theme park ride. However, the first full trailer was quite impressive. It teased big-scale pirate action, supernatural/fantasy elements and Johnny Depp (then entirely against-type in terms of headlining a summer blockbuster) offering a roguish anti-hero who seemed a bit off-kilter. It looked like a $140 million pirate fantasy from the weirdo who directed The Ring and Mouse Hunt. That Orlando Bloom had just stolen the show in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers via his crowdpleasing Helm’s Deep action stunts just meant that his third-billed turn as the straight-up romantic hero was an added value element. Couple that with solid buzz and robust “Hey, this is really good!” reviews, and, yeah, it snagged a $43 million Fri-Sun/$73 million Wed-Sun domestic debut and then legged out to $303 million domestic and $654 million worldwide.  

It also debuted in theaters when a movie of that size wasn’t a weekly or even monthly occurrence. Curse of the Black Pearl, while almost sparse and thrifty compared to the first two kitchen sink sequels, offered more “movie” than any other big-scale blockbuster of that moment outside of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Throw in crowdpleasing characters, including, yes, Johnny Depp’s brilliantly clumsy (or clumsily brilliant) Han Solo-ish Jack Sparrow, a mythology that felt rich without feeling overwhelming and more than enough moments that bucked genre conventions (Ted Elliott and Terry Russo’s DVD commentary track relished pointing out the various ways in which the movie didn’t follow formula) to feel fresh even as “save the cat” blockbusters were just starting to become normal. It was unique unto itself, both as a Disney movie and as a global would-be tentpole, and it was pretty damn good too. Rewatching the first film for the first time in a decade, it is frankly fascinating when compared to both big Disney movies that followed and Disney’s various (mostly failed) attempts to replicate its success. In terms of tone, it actually resembles the 1989-1999 era of Walt Disney animated features. It is a lively and occasionally frantic story, yet one where characters still take time to sit and have (surprisingly quiet) conversations. Moreover, the pirate baddies follow the classic Beauty and the Beast formula whereby the lead villain (Geoffrey Rush) is genuinely scary and presented as a murderous threat while his hench-pirates, onscreen carnage notwithstanding, are presented as glorified comic relief. The prologue is dark and foreboding, and there are moments (the first-act sacking of the town, the climactic massacre of the British soldiers) which earn that PG-13, but the tone is excessively jovial and almost campy.

That’s not a criticism, as it’s a swashbuckler through-and-through But in terms of Russo and Terrio’s prior blockbuster-y hits, it’s closer in tone to Walt Disney’s Aladdin than the comparatively more serious Mask of Zorro (one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, but I digress). Curse of the Black Pearl is not unlike Mulan in terms of telling a serious and violent adventure story within the realm of a kid-friendly adventure template. The movie was famously Walt Disney’s first PG-13 feature, a rating it earns in terms of (mostly bloodless) violence and macabre imagery (the bad guys are scary skeletons at night), but it also feels like an attempt to replicate Disney’s animated success in a live-action franchise. That’s partially why, up to a point, the story is as much about Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann as it is about Will Turner and Jack Sparrow.  

If the film feels like an attempt by Disney to blend Star Wars with the Waking Sleeping Beauty-era of Walt Disney Animation, it also suffers from the biggest flaw of many of the live-action remakes, namely over plotting, a failure of pacing and an overly long running-time. That the film is narratively redundant, they spend the first half getting to the proverbial “cave of wonders” and then spend the second half circling back to that point again, is not a new criticism. Nor is the idea that the action climax is a big fight between bad guys who can’t be killed and heroes who won’t be harmed, a nitpick repeated by Hellboy: The Golden Army five-years-later. In hindsight, Curse of the Black Pearl feels like a pretty good, but still over-plotted, 135-minute adaptation of a 90’s-era, tight-as-a-drum 85-minute Pirates of the Caribbean animated movie.

To be fair, the issues with Curse of the Black Pearl are not about a need to blatantly spell out plot points and character beats, although there is a little of that here and there, but rather a second half that feels like a checklist of “must-have” moments. The first hour or so, from the prologue to the first time Will and Elizabeth meet up in the cursed cave, is almost perfect, in terms of pacing and content. But after that, we get another hour or so of boxes to be checked. We get a ship versus ship battle scene, a skeletons versus soldiers battle, a conversational moment for Jack and Rush’s Barbosa and a brief digression for Jack and Elizabeth to bicker and flirt, a would-be love triangle that never felt legit but at least paid off at the end of Dead Man’s Chest.

Regarding its resemblance to a stereotypical Walt Disney Animated feature of the so-called Katzenberg era, all that’s missing are the songs. You have the young woman (who is the daughter of a governor) who wants more than this provincial life, a straight-ahead heroic lead who A) who falls for an “uptown girl” while wanting to be more than a street rat and firecracker of a supporting character who provides comic relief as well as an able hand in the action heroics. Yes, Jack Sparrow is Han Solo with an even less predictable moral compass, but he’s also the Disney comic animal sidekick, think the Genie or Mushu. You have the dastardly baddie who presents a very real threat, while his minions are mostly played for action-comedy laughs, you have a decent-hearted romantic rival and just enough in terms of a connection to our heroes’ respective pasts.

Good is not the enemy of perfect, but it now plays like a padded live-action remake of a Disney toon that never existed. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl feels like a (very successful) “Disney pours Star Wars into a Walt Disney Animation glass” concoction, which partially explains why the attempts to replicate its success (John Carter, Prince of Persia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Tron: Legacy, even Gore Verbinski’s own The Lone Ranger) disappointed. They were trying to copy Pirates of the Caribbean without realizing that Pirates of the Caribbean was a hybrid copy of Star Wars and a stereotypical Walt Disney animated classic (including an emphasis on the female lead). It’s no coincidence that Disney took off after they finally stopped trying to copy the Star Wars part of Curse of the Black Pearl and began concentrating on the Mulan part.