Mission

http://www.comics.com/comics/frazz/archive...z-20050109.html

That was the one thing that scared me when I first saw the previews for POTC - the director. Other than that, my previewing suggested that it had lots of things to like - pirates, the undead, references to the ride, rousing music, Jonathan Pryce... And that was before I saw Depp's turn as the goofy Captain Jack! Still, Jerry did a fair job of it - but the cartoon is still humorously accurate.

We should demand fair hiring and wage standards.

I also like the one that says "Chewie is my co-pilot." (It's sort of pirate-related...)

Hip hop pirates.

That's the second recent pop culture reference I've seen recently to oriental pirates. That's interesting.

Admittedly, it was a bit of a multi-cultural mix throughout the video, but there were several scenes with two specifically oriental piratesses. Are we reprogramming the pop-pirate paradigm?

Ok, Charity, I'll bet you there's no mention or reference in the next two movies to the scene with the monkey crawling up the treasure pile in association with Rush's character's alleged disappearance. PM me to discuss terms of the wager.

If you try searching for the Barbarossa brothers instead of Redbeard and you'll probably miss the Lego sites. (Which is basically what Black John's link tells you.)

Try this link.

Be aware that Gosse doesn't site his sources for his book, so you can't completely trust the material to be 100% factual. For example, he lists the the Cobhams as being real; their background info is rather dubious from my research.

Still, I'd say it contains fewer inaccuracies from my experience than some of the wild entries in Rogozinski's Pirates A-Z, An Encyclopedia (see his imaginative entry on pirate homosexuality for a sampling). Although, in his defense, Rogozinski does try to cover a lot more ground. (And he says that the Cobhams are fictional fluff from a 1920's Canadian tourism brochure.)

That thing about the monkey is awful thin. If I remember right he was shown in close-up, the background was fuzzy and you don't exactly see where he was climbing except in reference to where he was going. It sounds like a bunch of fan-generated hoo-ha to me. I'll bet there's no reference to this in the next movie regardless of the rationale. This is my experience with these sorts of "in the know fan" generated one scene background wonder sorts of rumors. (You should have seen the garbage generated before Episode I was released. I was a mod over at TF.N at that time. Thank God I wasn't a mod for the Prequel "Rumors" board. Gawd, what nightmare.) Besides, the real reason Barbossa wasn't shown was probably so they didn't have to pay Jeffrey to lay there while they tried to get the stupid monkey to hit its marks. I'm surprised they showed him when the monkey was crawling up that damned board in the water.

They explained the order of precedence regarding the ability with a sword in the director's voiceover. I believe it was Will, Barbossa, Jack. If I recall correctly (and I may not) Will had a large lead over the other two because he practiced so much. Going off into theory, Jack probably gets by more on his charm and wit than Barbossa does. Ergo, he would not get in as many battles as Barbossa and not be as good a swordsman. Although, one could argue that by relying on force, a traditional movie 'boss' character might get soft and often rely on their henchmen to apply the force for them once they have reached the esteemed role of boss. (Of course, one could argue lots of silly things. This is part of the reason the internet is so popular.)

Regardless, if you're going to play the game using Disney's DVD supplied material, the official word from the director (I think it was the director) is: Will, Barbossa, Jack. Makes sense to me. If you're going to be more strict and try to apply canon rules (what we see in the movie is the only thing that matters), we can debate it all day. Even the director is not lofty enough to be able to change a rabid fan's mind.

As for the characters, from my experience and the info on the DVD, it was originally set up like this: Hero - Will. Villain - Barbossa. Anti-hero - Jack. Or, to borrow another (excellent) sequel's terminology: Good - Will. Bad - Barbossa. Ugly - Jack.

Jack and Barbossa would be an unlikely pairing in standard Hollywoodese. Barbossa's the villain. Jack can team up with him (as we saw), but in the end must dispose of the villain. Unless a more powerful villain comes along and they have to unite against him/her/it. Then the villain must switch sides or at least soften.

As for the Vader comment - well, the Star Wars trilogy does suffer a bit from character nepotism, doesn't it? The original three movies are basically Han, Leia and Luke verses Vader and the Emperor throughout. As I hinted elsewhere, Jedi is nothing more than a flimsy re-hash of Star Wars (or A New Hope if you buy that bit of historical marketing rewriting.) This makes the initial trilogy weaker IMHO. Still, Lucas always intended to make the story about the life death and progeny of Anakin Skywalker. That was the framework he chose for the (originally) 9 movie multi-trilogy. I consider Indiana Jones to be a stronger trilogy than SW personally, because it isn't quite so reliant on certain characters. But we're not here to debate SW, so I'll shut up now.

It's something i wonder about though, when the monkey climbes the mount and takes the coin...Barbossa is already gone, and the chest wide open...so he must've woken up or been risen or whatever..before Jack the monkey became cursed again...

?? In my copy of the DVD, in the only scene where Barbossa would be visible, he's shown sprawled across the treasure as the monkey approaches. Someone even comments on this in the Director's/Depp's voiceover track.

BTW, Charity, you are another one of the people to which I apologized in my first thread. I liked Rush's portrayal, too. However, just as you are a fan of this character, I am a fan of expanding the series so that it's more self-sustaining.

Also, please don't slap a Captain Jack/Johnny Depp Fan label on me. I'm a fan of what he did with an otherwise pat role. I do maintain that Captain Jack and the curse are the only truly original things this movie offered us. As I've said several times, it was these things that kept it from being just another typical pirate movie that would have normally barely cleared its production and marketing costs. Pirate movies have not usually fared very well since the 50's and early 60's and have long been relegated to "kid's entertainment". I don't think we'd have seen the swell of interest in piracy amongst the groundlings had the two elements I mentioned not been present. (I consider this interest a good thing - I'm aware that some others do not.)

I've seen a lot of sequels and I'm hoping they don't go the typical route. Based on their decision to include all the actors, it looks to me that's what we're going to get. I'm hoping for something better than a Butch and Sundance: The Early Days prequel or a Die Hard II or a The Sting II sequel.

I DO want to see a series that can continue beyond giving the "hardcore fans" a quick and dirty follow up where we can all get our warm fuzzies seeing the same people in new, but very similar situations. Bruckheimer is typically considered by industry professionals to be a mediocre director who follows certain trends. POTC was a wonderful departure from his norm. Given that he will probably have more input into the sequels, I am crying for a good sequel instead of the normal 'here's all the people doing the things you expect once again' sequel.

All that being said, the sequels cannot be just Jack. Jack alone wouldn't be interesting enough for most people to identify with in the same way that Austin Powers is less interesting to most people than the more peccable Dr. Evil. Similarly, the ever-flawed Chuck Jones version of Daffy Duck is riotious in his fight with the unseen animator in Duck Amuck while the more staid, anti-heroic Bugs Bunny can't quite pull it off to good effect in Rabbit Rampage. A movie of Jack alone would be dull to extreme and would head off in another wrong direction. (No worries, though, Bruckheimer would almost certainly never do this.)

A comment on comedians...this sort of movie lives and dies by the humor they use. Same with Indiana Jones and Back to the Future and most other action/adventure movies. If you want a really enlightening exposure to how important humor is to these sorts of movies, check out Zemeckis' voice over for the first BTTF movie. The whole movie is basically one long stream of gags, set ups for gags and closure to gags hung on a skeleton of time travel in a Delorean. Ditto POTC if you look carefully. Rush is suitably villainous, but he's also quite funny and and integral part of the gags. Humor is crucial.

Why don't ya write to Hollywood and ask them to make a show for all of ye Jack Sparrow lovers...

Touché! (Er, setting the 'Jack Sparrow lovers' comment aside - I've already addressed that.) I do agree that discussing this with you all is not exactly going to change the path these sequels are already treading. My letter to Hollywood would get barely a glance. (It has to be more of a group demand - and even that typically only gets us a few nods from the directors.)

Yeah, I liked Barbossa too. But like OriginalCinn said, he's your stock pirate villain. Rush and the costume people went way out of his way to make Barbossa a standard pirate movie villain - from the rotting teeth and dirty nails to the era-appropriate language the the stock pirate villain "Arrrr!"

Nothing wrong with all that, it was a fine bit of acting. However, they now have the stage from which to jump into some creative new pirate villains instead of giving us more of same. The could build upon the genre and expand its horizons some. I say give us the pirate version of a creative new villain like Goldfinger and Oddjob (who were new in their era and are still excellent villains) or a crafty Belloq.

Also, I say brush up on or replace Elizabeth's role and appearance so we can get a Marion Ravenwood or Princess Leia-style heroine. Even better, give us a Red Sonja (er, as portrayed in the books, not in the poor excuse for a movie) or Xenia from Goldeneye. Either that, or upgrade and build Anna-Maria's role so we have a fiesty complement Depp's role. (Plus they could then add one of those intriguing David & Maddie "are they or aren't they" relationships if they wanted to).

BTW, I believe it's Jack's cartoony side that makes him so interesting. As OriginalCinn pointed out, you never quite know what he's doing and that makes it interesting. As I mentioned in a previous post, if it weren't for the Jack Sparrow character, I suspect this would have been another bargain bin pirate movie with no sequel in the offing for us to debate.

The writers don't have THAT much say; Hollywood is a group effort designed to protect the studio from taking risks...I mean from making mistakes! POTC had...what? Three? Four? sets of writers before they'd agree to make it? From what I understand, in films like this one, they are given a set of parameters and told to write something. That's what a script treatment is, if I get this right. And my complaint is that their parameters are: we got these people on board, so make sure the script includes them. Blah.

Also, I never said, "Barbossa's dead, we can't possibly bring him back." I said, he's shown as dead, why bring him back? Move on to new villians that are a outside the standard Hollywood pirate villian mold. (I'll bet most people aren't even aware of the existance of Chinese or Maltese pirates. Outside of China and Malta, that is.) I'd like to see a series along the Indiana Jones or James Bond line. Give us new villians with ingenious new ideas and horrifically enticing evil purposes. It adds spice to the mix.

I also said something along the lines of 'sorry to all you Barbosa fans.' I was thinking specifically of you and one or two others, Lady Barbossa. I knew you'd disagree with me (which I have no issue with; we all have our favorite characters). :)

Jack just seems like the perfect character around which to create a series of interesting adventures involving the curse. Bringing Barbosa back is just treading sea water in my mind. We know that story already. Why not take Depp's fascinating take on the writer's character and really exercise him?

BTW, I don't see Keith Richards being the horrible addition that is being discussed elsewhere. I'll bet he'll be like 'Q' in the James Bond series: a short but humorous role.

The movie biz, however, caters to the general population's interests.

Now, c'mon Steele, you know that's not true. The movie biz caters to what they think they know about the general population's interests - and they don't think much of our ability to embrace new material.

Star Wars was turned down by over twenty studios. Stallone received over 100 rejections for application as an actor and his script for Rocky. The Lord of the Rings concept was turned down by almost every studio to which Jackson presented it. Instead of original movies like these, which struggle mightily to get into production, they green light unimaginative movies like Seed of Chucky, Catwoman and AvP. What a fine job Hollywood does catering to our interests...

OriginalCinn, the monkey was alive at the end of the movie, but not cursed. He only cursed because he took another coin out of the chest at the end.

___________

"Making a good film means bringing together exactly the right talents with exactly the right material. Not an easy job."

"I don't see how any business...can run with such a high failure ratio."

"There are many ways this business operates. The simple answer to your question is that just often enough the right materials come together with the right talents. The miracle of art happens. Even people like you put down your barbells and rush out, money in hand, to see what mammon has wrought. And it's payday for the hindustry. A single flash of light in the night makes safe the dark."

-Fletch and Frederick Mooney, Fletch's Moxie

No, SS, it's about a ride at Disney Theme Parks called Pirates of the Caribbean. But they've milked the ride for a lot of its gags and now must go somewhere else.

Barbossa is your standard Hollywood pirate villain with a monkey and a twist - the curse. His crew, likewise. Other than the ingenious curse it was pretty typical stuff. (The curse was ingenious in that it allowed them to create animated skeletons as seen in the ride.) Will is your standard Hollywood straight pirate hero with a millennial facelift. Elizibeth is your standard nineties "strong" heroine in an 18th century bodice. Take those characters alone, even with the curse, and you probably have, at best, a fair run in the theatres with a quick release to video. And, as many of you know, NONE of these characters are really true to actual pirate legend, so that's clearly irrelevant here. They're true to pirate movies.

But Depp upset the standard movie fodder apple cart with his take on the anti-heroic pirate character. They had intended to give us an Errol Flynn-style pirate character. But Johnny don't play that game and he started designing this off-the-wall take on a pirate by injecting self-admitted liberal doses of Bugs Bunny, Pepé LePew, Kid Shelleen and, of course, Keith. He gold-capped four of his teeth so they'd let him keep at least two or three. (And they didn't even want to let him keep those.)

Sparrow is an original and interesting pirate character creation. It's what keeps this movie out of the discount bin with Muppet's Treasure Island, Cutthroat Island and several other modern pirate movies. If you don't believe me, go read all the movie reviews (you can check many of them out here) - whether they loved the character or hated him it was a primary point of consideration in most of their reviews. As one reviewer put it, "...in fact, Depp's performance here is so riveting that when Jack does not appear in a scene, the film almost drags."

Now, I like the background characters and the cliché pirate movie characters as much as anyone on this forum, but you have to admit that we've seen them all before. That's why I think they could apply any name and good actor to the roles of the straight-man, the evil pirate and the fiesty female archetypes and have it work. Keep Depp as Sparrow and keep the curse because those are unique properties to this series. But I'd like to see them give us some new characters that incorporate some of other pirate legends and ideas. (A Stede Bonnet type character for example - too funny in Sparrow's hands.)

As good a villian as Barbosa made, I would personally rather they not use him in II or III. (Sorry to all you rabid fans - it's only MHO) Barbosa died in the first movie - I think they should move on to other villians and continue the story from where they left it. Otherwise it sounds like a forced sequel created to involve all the old characters and try and cash in on a remake in disguise. (Kinda' like the weak link Return of the Jedi in SW series - it could have been such a great film...)

The key strong points to this series are Depp's character and the curse. I say get great writers to build on these. (It wouldn't bother me much if they wrote Will and Elizabeth into background roles either - unfortunately Hollywood usually hasn't got that much confidence or imagination.) Give us Cheung Po Tsai for a villain instead mysteriously resurrecting the dead or doing a prequel. (I'll bet they don't do that with Yun-Fat's character either - bet he starts off being questionably villainous and turns out to be a secretly heroic or another anti-heroic character like Depp. Either that or he's an old pal of Captain Jack's.)

Nice work on the flags page. Hopefully Tony, Marcus and that lot will check it out and help fill in some questionmarks.

The proven false pirates page looks very familiar. Caroline McTaggert, huh? Who'da thunk it?

Yeah, the punishment for piracy was pretty clear and it was a whole lot more drastic than branding...however, pirates might have gotten themselves branded for committing crimes other than piracy.

As for tattoos, I'm with Foxe and Joshua Red. Most pirates probably would have avoided them as that was not the style at the time.

There used to be a chandlery in Key West called Perkins and Son that carried all sorts of sea-going stuff. Being in tourist central, they also carried Tommy Bahama and similar wear.

Perkins was originally into wrecking thereabouts (a fine Key West tradition). I think they operated tugs when I remember going in there. It's gone these many years, however. Alas.

Give him an authentic Spanish coin from Mel Fisher's Atocha salvage. (If you really want to spend some money, that is. You can pick some of them up for about $200- $400. Maybe you can e'en do better on eBay.)

You know...for kids!

Just like the child-friendly and "naughty" version of the Austin Powers sound chips in the figs. (So long as the kids we're protecting don't stay up past 8pm and watch TV, that is.)

You know, I really WANTED to like it, but it started out implausibly and added implausability to implausability. The previews looked great, but the film strayed too far from the reality it was supposed to be established in for me. The thought "that wouldn't happen" or "that COULDN'T happen" kept interfering with my enjoyment of the film. I don't mind films that are set up in such a way that the plot holes are part of the environment (the very similar, but vastly superior Indiana Jones trilogy comes to mind), but this was supposed to be set in today's reality.

Plus, what the heck was Justin Barth's character doing? Did I miss something? He was just shy of USELESS! There was enough Jar Jar in Episodes I and II, he didn't need to pop up here.

Harvey Keitel was great, but underused. Then again, Harvey is always great. Like John Goodman and Sean Connery, you can depend on him no matter what movie he's in.

Hmm. I like your quotes better. You get "Savvy?"

But those teeth! As good as the fig is, they just don't have sculpting and painting teeth down to a science yet. Even in 18" scale.

You know, I was on another pirate board where they talked incessantly about POTC and they never mentioned figures! I'm glad I stopped in here. I found at least 3 each of both Smilin' and Serious Jack (18" version) at Media Play. I bought the serious version as even when he's supposedly serious, Depp is clearly not serious.

While I wouldn't call it beautiful (for some reason), I will say it's beautifully RENDERED with great attention to detail. The weapons are rather cheap, though, so be careful with them. I broke the gun guard putting it in his hand the first time.

To those thinking about pre-ordering the smaller figures...I sort of advise against it from personal experience. You often pay more and sometimes end up waiting longer, so unless the figures are going to be HTF (like short packed or high demand...and I personally don't see that happening for POTC figs released almost two years after the movie), I'd wait for the actual release.

For series 2, I'd like a cursed Jack and Barbossa. And a cursed Pintel & Ragetti. Come to think of it, a cursed anyone would be just fine. An Elizabeth would be nice I suppose. (Most likely she'll be in series 3 or beyond if series' 1 and 2 sell well enough to justify more figs...female AFs generally don't sell as well as male AFs.)

OryginalCinn, Serious Jack PROBABLY says the same things as this looks like your typical AF variation knock off to suck collectors in to buying two figures based mostly on one mold. For the record, however, he says:

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." (WHAT?! No "Savvy"?!)

"Can you sail under the command of a pirate...or can you not?"

"I'm going after the Black Pearl. I know where it's going to be...and I'm gonna take it."

"I swear on pain of death, I shall take you to the Black Pearl."

"Do you have the courage and fortitude to follow orders and stay true in face of almost certain death?"

"To the Black Pearl!"

Didn't Foxe find evidence on a relevant chamber of commerce website that Gasparilla was fictional?

Well...it IS a movie. They're probably just beating on the most likely thing that the movie-makers could come up with and using the most interesting tools a movie-maker could think of putting into an undead sailor's hands.

I've never seen a cooper wail on the top of a closed barrel like that before. (Not that I've seen a lot of coopers...)