@fred-erick-frankenstein / fred-erick-frankenstein.tumblr.com
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.
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.
“You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner… you’re in one!”
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003 | dir. Gore Verbinski.
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
'Tis the season for more pirates art
some potc sketches bc I'm in norribeth hell these days they deserved better.
A Pirates of the Caribbean Take Nobody Asked For:
Will may have learnt How To Pirate from Jack, from the first film and that crazy rescue mission (I mean, the last scene at the gallows says everything to me — the hat, the dramatic sword throw, the teamwork with the rope — he’s Jack’s protégé whether he likes it or not) And for a while I thought the same thing about Elizabeth, only then I realised: she didn’t learn piracy from Jack. She learnt it from Barbossa.
She’s always been more ruthless than Will, more efficient, more fierce. Most of the first film, she spent with Barbossa, and she knew he was dangerous. She was exasperated with Jack and underwhelmed by him when they were marooned, and came up with her own plan, completely without his help. She schemes and lies and plays it smart, she’s proud and dignified and she knows it.
If Will was Jack’s unwitting protégé, Barbossa was Elizabeth’s unwitting mentor.
seeing as I am always here to champion PotC as The Rise of Elizabeth Swan, Pirate King, I am so here for this
Barbossa would be fucking proud.
The day Barbossa realized he had an... Heir. A legacy. He was struck dead in his tracks. And then just about died laughing.
“One of the most interesting things about Elizabeth Turner was her Kiss of Death. Throughout the trilogy, all of the men she locked lips with has died - including Sao Feng in At World’s End, and (if you want to be petty about it) her father, Weatherby Swann. Usually they would die moments after kissing her for the first time. This excludes Will Turner who has kissed her several times before and beat the odds every time. However, even he succumbed to her kiss and died as well minutes after the two were hastily married by Barbossa. This is most likely a just coincidence and not something that was intentional, but years later it’s still fun to point out to friends and watch a dawn of realization hit their face when they realize that Pirate Queen Elizabeth may have also been the Grim Reaper.”
Alot of people seem to miss these two additional details:
When Jack died, he was killed by the Kraken, summoned by Davy Jones.
When Sao Feng died, was by the damage from the canons of the Dutchman
When Norrington died, it was by Bootstrap Bill, a member of it’s crew.
And when Will died, it was directly by the hands of Davy Jones.
One more thing that has struck me as odd is when she interracts with Davy Jones, he acts as if he’s seen her somewhere before. When the Empress crew point her out as the captain he has a sort of “wtf, you, you are their captain?” reaction, now you could just shake that of as Davy Jones being a misogynistic but i don’t doubt he’s seen female pirate captains before, given how long he’s lived. And when they come face to face on the Dutchman, it feels like a meeting between sworn long time enemies (at least to me).
Elizabeth, what the hell are you even and what exactly is your connection to the Dutchman.
[ID 1: a photo of three cups with sayings on them: "she her", "they them" and "cool hat". /end ID].
[ID 2: a screenshot from the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl", showing Elizabeth Swann, Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. /end ID].
I was thinkin' about these movies the other day
and came to the conclusion that I need more pirate-y content in my life
[ID: Two screenshots from the hoist the colours scene in at world's end, with a tumblr post in two parts by user spaceboytoy edited in. The first shows Elizabeth standing on the railing of the black pearl, with its crew visible in frame, and the post reads "Hello bisexual community". The second is a closeup of Elizabeth and the post reads "Begin killing". End ID.]
