@fred-erick-frankenstein / fred-erick-frankenstein.tumblr.com
pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them
"I think I had about three sessions. And then all of the stunt team [was] working the entire time, so we couldn't then have any more sessions. So we're getting to set and having to learn the fights on set. So Gore is giving us five, ten minutes walk-away, and we are learning the fights there and then."
"We're working on 15 percent, kind of, slope, and you're running uphill doing a sword fight in torrential rain that is literally in your eyes the entire time, and you've got an entire camera crew coming at you, and just trying to see to actually know where to hit, I mean, it's… I wouldn't say it's the safest thing I've ever done."
"It's a different choreography within a battle, and it was complex. It had to be right on. It had to be [Keira and Orlando] most of the time actually doing it, because it's interweaved… For two actors walking into the wedding sequence that we shot without any prior experience, it would've been next to impossible."
Norrington stands, sees her for the first time. They stand back to back — see they are surrounded by assailants. Norrington is fey, ready to take on the world. // All of Jones' men are gathered, ready to attack. Too many to fight. Elizabeth and Norrington stand side by side. // The moment is broken. A lingering look — and then Norrington draws his sword, turns. Elizabeth stands beside him.
Curse of the Black Pearl: Less Than Sincere
After CotBP's release, the writers were disappointed that many people were willing to debate over Jack's gray morality and complexities, but almost entirely ignored Elizabeth's.
Part of what I love about this scene: Pirates is stuffed full of negotiation scenes. Even though this feels like a quieter, character building scenes--and it is one!--it's still a negotiation scene. This is Elizabeth's own proposal, in a way. Their voices are calmer, their acting more subtle, but she's fighting with everything she knows to avoid Norrington leaving Will for dead.
And I love the performances coming through here, especially how Keira's performance contrasts not only against Jack's performance but also against her own performances in other scenes in the trilogy. We see in other scenes how she plays Elizabeth when she's genuinely elated. Here, she makes her smiles forced and fleeting between looks that are much more resigned, while the rest of what she'd said earlier in the movie hangs in the air for us--that Norrington is "the type of man every woman should dream of marrying." It helps convey to the audience that a marriage to Norrington is just transactional for Elizabeth, a necessary sacrifice, while for Norrington it clearly is more than that.
Cutting this scene softens (probably intentionally) the first real look the audience gets at how genuinely ruthless Elizabeth can be, with whatever tools she has at a given time. In the theatrical cut, her actions come across as more in-the-moment. With this uncut, she will eventually go back on the word she deliberately gave Norrington, even after he'd given her the courtesy of a private moment to admit the truth. This scene shows us how much she's willing to commit to a lie, how willing she is to hurt herself and people around her when she wants something badly enough. This is the scene that most directly establishes a basis for her betrayal of Jack to kraken. It makes her less "likeable."
But Elizabeth Swann is a liar. It is a defining character trait for her, as surely as Jack is sly or Will is brash.
They should not have cut this scene.
“It’s sort of like a childhood dream, isn’t it? To be able to be a pirate.”
AN EPIC AT SEA
The Making of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
[ x ]
Jack Davenport as James Norrington in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Little thinking about the main characters of the trilogy and how they all somehow resemble each other.
Like Elizabeth/Barbossa, Will/Jack (not Davy Jones surprisingly) and James/Davy Jones all show the two sides of the same coin (for the last pair I will sadly not elaborate further from this post, which does a better analysis than I ever could).
Everyone always juxtaposes Will and Davy Jones, because there is obvious parallelism to be had: They are two sides of the same coin, showing two different responses to love despite enormous odds—one fails and suffers for it, the other triumphs due to a pure, unbreakable bond.
The more enthralling parallel to me occurs when examining James Norrington and Davy Jones, because they are virtually the same side of the coin.
First, both had their livelihoods wrenched from them, and both felt trapped by the conditions they faced.
Where they differ is in how they respond to their circumstances.
Second, both fell in love with an untamable force of a woman. Both did everything in their power to win said woman. Both failed to either win/keep the love of said woman.
But once again, we see a different response in how each man responds to his heartbreak.
In sum, Jones is a fascinating example of what James could have turned into had he stopped fighting for a better tomorrow, had he retaliated in anger out of his heartbreak, and if he had embraced hate. He didn’t. He embraced love.
The one (non-deleted) scene where these two characters stand off is with James’s dying moments, and it couldn’t be more significant. Jones asks if he fears death, which at surface level sounds just like his typical invitation to join his crew. But it means so much more. He’s asking if James will forsake his living world, the world he’s only shown love and compassion, for Jones’s, a world of hatred and dominance. Even then, with a promise of immortality, James denies him this. And he does it nonverbally. Talk about a power move.
It’s moments like this, and many more I have seen analyzed on this weird little website, that prove to me that Norrington is the best character of the Pirates franchise precisely because of the ways in which he’s not a villain (callout post to CinemaSins who dares suggest otherwise). I want to end this TED talk by reminding you that Norrington was originally written as a character named “Dafoe,” and was going to be a surprise villain who had been working with Barbossa the entire time, revealed at the finale of Curse of the Black Pearl. I don’t know who on the writing team changed this, but I will forever be grateful that they did, because James turned out to be a nuanced tragic hero with a brilliant character arc. He’s not a villain. He never was.
WHERE MY POTC ENJOYERS AT!!!! I adore this series. I don't talk about it ironically but I FUCKING LOVE THESE MOVIES (the first three that is)
currently thinking abt how Geoffrey Rush said that he interpreted Barbossa as seeing himself as the hero of his own story and how he ultimately thought that he’d prevail and break the curse and get his happy ending. he’s such an interesting and tragic character, my god
God the fucking poetry in Jack teaching Will his brand of piracy and Barbossa teaching Elizabeth his brand of piracy and how you see it in both of them during the OG trilogy, how Elizabeth makes the more ruthless deals, how she consistently parrots Barbossa’s “they’re just guidelines anyway!” versus Will copying Jack’s chaotic, on-the-fly thinking and getting by partly on wits and part by sheer luck
Many thoughts head full no words to put them in
thinking constantly abt how potc portrayed the death of the kraken as a loss for pirates everywhere. something they feared, hated even, that could destroy ships and lives and served someone they saw as the devil incarnate. but it was such an intrinsic part of their lives as pirates that its death spelled the death of piracy itself. that was so insanely well written
“Let me go. Let me do this.”
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END – deleted scene (x)
'Tis the season for more pirates art
