Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is one of my favorite films of all-time. I also think of it as one of the best films ever made, savvy? Where it resides on that list is debatable (which is why I rarely give a film a specific spot on the list).
Director of the original Pirates trilogy, Gore Verbinski told Collider how many in the industry believed the film was destined for Davy Jones’ Locker. You can check out what he had to say below.
“I remember pitching [the film] to [composer Hans] Zimmer and he said, ‘You’re mad! You’re making a pirate movie? Nobody’s going to see a pirate movie.’ It was resoundingly, ‘that’s the worst idea ever.’ And there was something exciting about that. It was so doomed to fail. You’re setting out to go make a genre that literally doesn’t work, or there’s so much historical proof that it will not work. So, you’re making everybody nervous. The studio’s nervous. Everybody’s nervous about Johnny Depp’s performance. Everybody’s nervous about the story. It’s convoluted – they’re returning the treasure, wait they’ve taken the treasure back, they’re cursed? Everything about that had a spirit of madness to it.”
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In every other adventure on the high seas-themed film, the pirates are searching for a treasure. I assume they are anyway. I mean, I’ve never actually seen another pirate film because I hear most of them are awful, (except Hook). But this time the pirates were trying to put the treasure back. While I think most aspects of the first film are near-perfect, the treasure-switch, or should I say reversal of fortune, has always stood out to me.
It is true that swashbuckling films are incredibly difficult to pull off. The 1995 film, Cutthroat Island, which starred Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, was a major flop, grossing a mere $10 million on a $115 million budget, leaving the genre all but dead.
Can you name a pirate movie that’s better than Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl? Let us know in the comments down below!
Source: Collider