10 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Pirates Of The Caribbean’s Original 2003 Movie

While 2003’s original Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a fun ride, re-watching the blockbuster two decades after its release highlights a lot of issues that viewers might have missed out on. The Curse of the Black Pearl seemed destined to fail when the movie was announced. An adaptation of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean theme park attraction, the movie’s biggest star was Johnny Depp. Depp wasn’t an A-list name back in the early ‘00s despite a few hits, and the rest of the movie’s cast were relative unknowns. Meanwhile, the swashbuckling sub-genre had been home to a string of flops in the decades before the franchise began.

It might be tough to believe now that viewers eagerly await news of Pirates of the Caribbean 6’s potential release date, but there was a time when pirates were infamously unprofitable. High-profile flops like Cut-throat Island and 1982’s Pirates had producers convinced that the sub-genre was dead in the water and the fact that The Curse of the Black Pearl’s tone could be too silly for adults and too scary for kids didn’t help. However, the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie became a massive success and spawned an entire franchise, even though this outing also set up many of that franchise’s failings.

10 Pirates of the Caribbean Never Recaptured Its Original Tone

Re-watching The Curse of the Black Pearl, it is tough to ignore the fact that the original movie is light and funny but has stakes and scares. The next two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels were too dark as the series attempted to give its story a more epic scope but ended up just breaking the hearts of fans. Meanwhile, the final two movies were too silly as they overcorrected the mistakes of the original trilogy. Each Pirates of the Caribbean sequel went wrong in its own unique way, but none of them managed to recapture the effortless balance between comedy, romance, action, and horror found in the original movie.

9 Pirates of the Caribbean Never Needed Its Lore

Looking back on it, the original movie’s levity highlights just how much the connections between all the franchise’s characters and their complicated backstories all got in the way of solid storytelling. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies didn’t need to outline just how Cutler Beckett’s beef with Jack Sparrow began for viewers to care about the rebellious pirate defeating the stuffy bureaucrat. A lot of what makes The Curse of the Black Pearl so exciting is the fact that, despite the story’s twists and turns, the plot is pretty simple. In contrast, the later Pirates of the Caribbean movies became bogged down by byzantine backstory.

8 Pirates Of The Caribbean Always Had Plotting Problems

That said, Jack’s connection to the Black Pearl’s crew proves that the series was always reliant on offscreen lore. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies featured references to unseen character history since the series began, but this became more of an issue as the series introduced more characters to its cast. In the first movie, it was not too annoying to realize that Jack and Captain Barbossa had a dark past that viewers couldn’t have possibly known about. However, discovering that Barbossa was brought back to life so that he could bring Jack back to life, so they could both settle a score with Davy Jones, was a touch too much.

7 Pirates of the Caribbean Could Have Worked As An Anthology Series

If the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was an anthology series that changed its entire cast with each new movie, the movies might have been stronger as a result. Later sequels introduced underused Pirates of the Caribbean villains like Blackbeard, a character who had plenty of potential but never lived up to it. The main issue was that the sequels were so focused on Jack, Will, and other existing characters that they never got to showcase these new antagonists effectively.

6 Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner Was Never Interesting

Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner was the ostensible hero of The Curse of the Black Pearl, but he added nothing to the movie and relied on Elizabeth and Jack to carry the story. Bloom’s performance is perfectly solid, but the character isn’t compelling in his own right. Of the original trilogy’s leading trio, he is clearly the weak link.

5 Elizabeth Swan’s Character Was Wasted

Although she did become a Pirate Lord by the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Elizabeth Swann never got to have much fun after the original movie thanks to her downbeat love triangle. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise let down Elizabeth by centering her romantic life over her adventures as a pirate, resulting in a disappointing character arc for a potentially great heroine.

RELATED: Why Will Turner & Elizabeth Swan Should Return For Pirates of the Caribbean 6

4 Pirates of the Caribbean Missed Out On Zoe Saldaña

Zoe Saldaña’s minor Pirates of the Caribbean character Anamaria would have been a welcome addition to the overstuffed sequels, but she never returned after the original movie. According to Saldaña herself, this was because she never felt valued during the production. Since Saldaña has proven indispensable to both the Avatar and the Guardians of the Galaxy franchises, her presence could clearly have helped the sequels.

The Curse of the Black Pearl moves at a brisk, satisfying pace with one supernatural villain in the Black Pearl’s crew and one human antagonist in Norrington’s navy. Thus, it is clear that there was no need for Cutler Beckett, the Pirates Lords, Davy Jones, Sao Feng, the Kraken, and Calypso, and that’s just in the original trilogy. The many Pirates of the Caribbean villains slowed down the progress of the franchise’s story without adding anything new or fresh to the mix.

2 Jack Sparrow Was Always Better Off As A Supporting Character

Jack Sparrow was hilarious in The Curse of the Black Pearl, but this is precisely because the movie doesn’t rely on him all that much. Although he is the most memorable character, he gets much less screen time than viewers might expect after his inflated role in the later sequels. The Pirates of the Caribbean series came to massively over-rely on Depp’s charismatic performance in its later years, but The Curse of the Black Pearl took the opposite approach and succeeded as a result.

1 Pirates Of The Caribbean’s Original Ending Is Its Best

The original trilogy’s bittersweet ending is better than Pirates of the Caribbean 5’s terrible final scene, but the best finale in the franchise is the last scene of the original movie. The triumphant final kiss between Elizabeth and Jack, Jack’s hilarious escape, and even Norrington’s surprising admission that he has been bested all play better than the more complicated, sadder endings the franchise attempted later. Thus, as surprising as it might seem, the Pirates of the Caribbean series may have been better if the series had ended with The Curse of the Black Pearl.