Wednesday, 3 June 2009
We all know about the famous Pirates of the Caribbean movie series and its characters, don't we? Based on Disney's theme parks, the movie has been made in three parts; the first one was the amazing 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl', followed by two superb sequels - 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'. This movie series has managed to earn big millions of dollars for its makers, and with millions of fans growing rapidly worldwide, they have launched a complete range of Pirate of the Caribbean goodies, merchandise and costumes.
“The Curse of the Black Pearl”
Plot
As Governor Weatherby Swann and his twelve-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, sail to Port Royal, Jamaica, their vessel, HMS Dauntless encounters a shipwreck with a sole survivor, the young Will Turner, floating among the wreckage. Elizabeth finds and hides a gold medallion she found around the unconscious Will's neck, fearing he would be accused of piracy. She then glimpses a ghostly pirate ship (the Black Pearl), disappearing into the mist.
Eight years later, Captain James Norrington of the British Royal Navy is promoted to Commodore. At his ceremony, he proposes to Elizabeth. Before she is able to answer, her corset causes her to faint and fall off the rampart, tumbling into the bay. The medallion she is wearing emits a mysterious pulse through the water.
Meanwhile, pirate Captain Jack Sparrow has arrived in Port Royal to commandeer a ship. Seeing Elizabeth fall, he rescues her, but is promptly arrested for piracy. He escapes and ducks into a blacksmith shop where he encounters Will Turner, now a blacksmith's apprentice and self-taught expert swordsman. Following a swordfight with Turner, Sparrow is knocked unconscious and jailed, set to be hanged the next day. That night, Port Royal is besieged by the Pearl, answering the medallion's mysterious call. Elizabeth is captured and invokes parley— an agreement ensuring one's safety until meeting and negotiating with the opposing side. Not wishing to reveal that she's the Governor's daughter, Elizabeth tells Captain Barbossa her surname is Turner. She negotiates for the pirates to cease the attack on Port Royal in exchange for the medallion. Barbossa agrees but, employing a loophole in their agreement, keeps Elizabeth prisoner, believing she is the key to breaking an ancient curse they are under.
When Commodore Norrington refuses to take immediate action, Will, who loves Elizabeth, persuades Captain Jack Sparrow to help him rescue her in exchange for freeing him from jail. Jack agrees only after learning Will's last name is Turner. After commandeering the HMS Interceptor Jack and Will recruit a crew in Tortuga with help from Jack's old friend, Gibbs, a former boatswain in the Royal Navy. They set sail for Isla de Muerta, a mysterious island Jack knows the pirates will go to in order to break the curse.
While en route, Will learns about Jack's past. He was once the captain of the Pearl, but when he shared the bearings to a hidden chest of Aztec gold coins, First Mate Barbossa instigated a mutiny and marooned Jack on an island. Jack escaped three days later. The pirates found and spent the treasure, but soon learned it was cursed—turning them into immortal skeletal beings whose true forms are only revealed in moonlight. The curse can only be lifted when every coin and each pirate's blood is returned to the chest. William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Jack's only supporter, sent a coin to his son, Will, believing the crew should remain cursed for what they did to Jack. Barbossa had Bootstrap tied to a cannon and thrown overboard, only to realize later that his blood is also needed to break the curse; a Turner relative must now take his place.
In a cave full of treasure on Isla de Muerta, Barbossa, believing Elizabeth is Bootstrap's child, anoints the last coin with her blood and drops it into the chest—unsurprisingly, the curse remains unbroken.
Reaching the island, Will suspects Sparrow may betray him and knocks him out. He rescues Elizabeth, and they escape to the Interceptor. Jack barters with Barbossa—he will reveal Bootstrap's real child in exchange for the Pearl. Jack's negotiations come to naught, however, when the Pearl pursues the Interceptor, sinking her and taking the crew captive. Will reveals that he is Bootstrap Bill's son and demands that Elizabeth and the crew be freed, or he will shoot himself and fall overboard, lost forever. Barbossa agrees but craftily applies another loophole and maroons Elizabeth and Jack on a deserted island (the same island Jack was on ten years before) and throws Jack's crew into the brig. Will is taken to Isla de Muerta for the ritual.
Elizabeth burns an abandoned cache of rum to create a signal fire that is spotted by Norrington. She convinces Norrington to rescue Will by accepting his earlier marriage proposal. Returning to Isla de Muerta, Norrington sets an ambush outside the cave while Jack goes inside and persuades Barbossa to form an alliance. He tells him to delay breaking the curse until after they have taken the Dauntless and killed the crew. Jack then removes a coin from the chest, rendering himself immortal. But whatever Jack's actual intent is, his plan goes awry when Barbossa orders his crew to infiltrate the Dauntless from underwater. Jack's true allegiance is revealed when he attacks and then shoots Barbossa. Jack tosses his bloodied coin to Will, who returns the last two medallions to the chest, breaking the curse. No longer immortal, the wounded Barbossa falls dead. Realizing they are no longer cursed, the now-mortal pirates surrender to the navy.
Back in Port Royal, Jack is about to be executed. Believing Jack deserves to live, Will rescues him. Both are quickly captured, but Elizabeth lends her support and declares her love for Will. Norrington releases her from their engagement, and Will is pardoned. Meanwhile, Jack escapes by falling into the bay. His crew, who escaped with the Pearl, rescues him. Norrington is impressed enough to allow him one day's head start before giving pursuit. After the credits, Jack the monkey swims back to the treasure chest and steals a gold coin, becoming cursed once again.
As Governor Weatherby Swann and his twelve-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, sail to Port Royal, Jamaica, their vessel, HMS Dauntless encounters a shipwreck with a sole survivor, the young Will Turner, floating among the wreckage. Elizabeth finds and hides a gold medallion she found around the unconscious Will's neck, fearing he would be accused of piracy. She then glimpses a ghostly pirate ship (the Black Pearl), disappearing into the mist.
Eight years later, Captain James Norrington of the British Royal Navy is promoted to Commodore. At his ceremony, he proposes to Elizabeth. Before she is able to answer, her corset causes her to faint and fall off the rampart, tumbling into the bay. The medallion she is wearing emits a mysterious pulse through the water.
Meanwhile, pirate Captain Jack Sparrow has arrived in Port Royal to commandeer a ship. Seeing Elizabeth fall, he rescues her, but is promptly arrested for piracy. He escapes and ducks into a blacksmith shop where he encounters Will Turner, now a blacksmith's apprentice and self-taught expert swordsman. Following a swordfight with Turner, Sparrow is knocked unconscious and jailed, set to be hanged the next day. That night, Port Royal is besieged by the Pearl, answering the medallion's mysterious call. Elizabeth is captured and invokes parley— an agreement ensuring one's safety until meeting and negotiating with the opposing side. Not wishing to reveal that she's the Governor's daughter, Elizabeth tells Captain Barbossa her surname is Turner. She negotiates for the pirates to cease the attack on Port Royal in exchange for the medallion. Barbossa agrees but, employing a loophole in their agreement, keeps Elizabeth prisoner, believing she is the key to breaking an ancient curse they are under.
When Commodore Norrington refuses to take immediate action, Will, who loves Elizabeth, persuades Captain Jack Sparrow to help him rescue her in exchange for freeing him from jail. Jack agrees only after learning Will's last name is Turner. After commandeering the HMS Interceptor Jack and Will recruit a crew in Tortuga with help from Jack's old friend, Gibbs, a former boatswain in the Royal Navy. They set sail for Isla de Muerta, a mysterious island Jack knows the pirates will go to in order to break the curse.
While en route, Will learns about Jack's past. He was once the captain of the Pearl, but when he shared the bearings to a hidden chest of Aztec gold coins, First Mate Barbossa instigated a mutiny and marooned Jack on an island. Jack escaped three days later. The pirates found and spent the treasure, but soon learned it was cursed—turning them into immortal skeletal beings whose true forms are only revealed in moonlight. The curse can only be lifted when every coin and each pirate's blood is returned to the chest. William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Jack's only supporter, sent a coin to his son, Will, believing the crew should remain cursed for what they did to Jack. Barbossa had Bootstrap tied to a cannon and thrown overboard, only to realize later that his blood is also needed to break the curse; a Turner relative must now take his place.
In a cave full of treasure on Isla de Muerta, Barbossa, believing Elizabeth is Bootstrap's child, anoints the last coin with her blood and drops it into the chest—unsurprisingly, the curse remains unbroken.
Reaching the island, Will suspects Sparrow may betray him and knocks him out. He rescues Elizabeth, and they escape to the Interceptor. Jack barters with Barbossa—he will reveal Bootstrap's real child in exchange for the Pearl. Jack's negotiations come to naught, however, when the Pearl pursues the Interceptor, sinking her and taking the crew captive. Will reveals that he is Bootstrap Bill's son and demands that Elizabeth and the crew be freed, or he will shoot himself and fall overboard, lost forever. Barbossa agrees but craftily applies another loophole and maroons Elizabeth and Jack on a deserted island (the same island Jack was on ten years before) and throws Jack's crew into the brig. Will is taken to Isla de Muerta for the ritual.
Elizabeth burns an abandoned cache of rum to create a signal fire that is spotted by Norrington. She convinces Norrington to rescue Will by accepting his earlier marriage proposal. Returning to Isla de Muerta, Norrington sets an ambush outside the cave while Jack goes inside and persuades Barbossa to form an alliance. He tells him to delay breaking the curse until after they have taken the Dauntless and killed the crew. Jack then removes a coin from the chest, rendering himself immortal. But whatever Jack's actual intent is, his plan goes awry when Barbossa orders his crew to infiltrate the Dauntless from underwater. Jack's true allegiance is revealed when he attacks and then shoots Barbossa. Jack tosses his bloodied coin to Will, who returns the last two medallions to the chest, breaking the curse. No longer immortal, the wounded Barbossa falls dead. Realizing they are no longer cursed, the now-mortal pirates surrender to the navy.
Back in Port Royal, Jack is about to be executed. Believing Jack deserves to live, Will rescues him. Both are quickly captured, but Elizabeth lends her support and declares her love for Will. Norrington releases her from their engagement, and Will is pardoned. Meanwhile, Jack escapes by falling into the bay. His crew, who escaped with the Pearl, rescues him. Norrington is impressed enough to allow him one day's head start before giving pursuit. After the credits, Jack the monkey swims back to the treasure chest and steals a gold coin, becoming cursed once again.
Production
Shooting began on October 9, 2002 and wrapped by March 2003. The quick shoot was only marred by two accidents: as Jack Sparrow steals the Interceptor, three of the ropes attaching it to the Dauntless did not break at first, and when they did snap debris hit Depp's knee, though he was not injured, and the way the incident played out on film made it look like Sparrow merely ducks. A more humorous accident was when the boat Sparrow was supposed to arrive in at Port Royal sank. In October the crew was shooting scenes at Rancho Palos Verdes, by December they were shooting at Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in January they were at the cavern set at Los Angeles The script often changed with Elliott and Rossio on set, with additions such as Gibbs (Kevin McNally) telling Will how Sparrow escaped from an island, strapping two turtles together with rope made of his back hair, and Pryce was written into the climactic battle to keep some empathy for the audience.
Because of the quick schedule of the shoot, Industrial Light & Magic immediately began visual effects work. While the skeletal forms of the pirates revealed by moonlight take up relatively little screentime, the crew knew their computer-generated forms had to convince in terms of replicating performances and characteristics of the actors, or else the transition would not work. Each scene featuring them was shot twice: a reference plate with the actors, and then without them to add in the skeletons, an aesthetic complicated by Verbinski's decision to shoot the battles with handheld cameras. The actors also had to perform their scenes again on the motion capture stage. With the shoot only wrapping up four months before release, Verbinski spent eighteen-hour days on the edit, while at the same time spending time on 600 effects shots, 250 of which were merely removing modern sailboats from shots. He also had to quickly manage the score with Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer, who headed 15 composers to finish the score quickly. Alan Silvestri, who had collaborated with Verbinski on Mouse Hunt and The Mexican, was set to compose the score, but Bruckheimer decided to go with Zimmer's team as he felt more comfortable with them, and Silvestri respectfully left the production before he recorded anything.
Photo Gallery
Shooting began on October 9, 2002 and wrapped by March 2003. The quick shoot was only marred by two accidents: as Jack Sparrow steals the Interceptor, three of the ropes attaching it to the Dauntless did not break at first, and when they did snap debris hit Depp's knee, though he was not injured, and the way the incident played out on film made it look like Sparrow merely ducks. A more humorous accident was when the boat Sparrow was supposed to arrive in at Port Royal sank. In October the crew was shooting scenes at Rancho Palos Verdes, by December they were shooting at Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in January they were at the cavern set at Los Angeles The script often changed with Elliott and Rossio on set, with additions such as Gibbs (Kevin McNally) telling Will how Sparrow escaped from an island, strapping two turtles together with rope made of his back hair, and Pryce was written into the climactic battle to keep some empathy for the audience.
Because of the quick schedule of the shoot, Industrial Light & Magic immediately began visual effects work. While the skeletal forms of the pirates revealed by moonlight take up relatively little screentime, the crew knew their computer-generated forms had to convince in terms of replicating performances and characteristics of the actors, or else the transition would not work. Each scene featuring them was shot twice: a reference plate with the actors, and then without them to add in the skeletons, an aesthetic complicated by Verbinski's decision to shoot the battles with handheld cameras. The actors also had to perform their scenes again on the motion capture stage. With the shoot only wrapping up four months before release, Verbinski spent eighteen-hour days on the edit, while at the same time spending time on 600 effects shots, 250 of which were merely removing modern sailboats from shots. He also had to quickly manage the score with Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer, who headed 15 composers to finish the score quickly. Alan Silvestri, who had collaborated with Verbinski on Mouse Hunt and The Mexican, was set to compose the score, but Bruckheimer decided to go with Zimmer's team as he felt more comfortable with them, and Silvestri respectfully left the production before he recorded anything.
Photo Gallery
“Dead Man's Chest”
Plot
The East India Trading Company arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica, to extend its monopoly in the Caribbean and purge piracy from its waters. Leading the expansion is Lord Cutler Beckett, a powerful and ruthless EITC agent who arrests Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner as they are about to be married. Beckett threatens to execute them and the absent ex-Commodore James Norrington for aiding Captain Jack Sparrow's escape, but he offers clemency if Will agrees to hunt for Sparrow and his magical compass which points to what its possessor wants most. An informant in Tortuga leads Will to the Black Pearl run aground on Pelegosto, a cannibal-inhabited island where Jack and his crew are captive. Jack hid there after "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Jack's former crewmate and now an indentured sailor aboard Captain Davy Jones' ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman, delivered Jack the Black Spot, a mark signifying his debt to Jones is due. Thirteen years before, Jones raised the Pearl from the ocean depths and made Jack its captain. In exchange, Jack must now serve aboard the Dutchman for 100 years, or be hunted by Jones' beasts, the Kraken.
Will, Jack, and a few crew members escape their captors, unexpectedly recruiting Pintel and Ragetti along the way, and head for sea. Will learns that Jack has been searching for a particular key. He agrees to give Will the compass if he helps him find the key and the object it unlocks. Seeking assistance from Tia Dalma, an obeah priestess, Jack learns the compass fails to work because he does not know what he truly wants. The key, Tia tells him, unlocks the Dead Man's Chest containing Davy Jones' still-beating heart—to avoid lost love's pain, Jones carved the heart from his chest and buried it. Whoever possesses the heart controls Davy Jones, thereby controlling the world's oceans. Back at sea, the Dutchman encounters Sparrow, who deviously attempts to barter Will in exchange for himself. Jones demands 100 souls within three days in exchange for Jack's freedom and keeps Will as a "good faith payment," leaving Jack only 99 more souls to harvest.
In Port Royal, Governor Weatherby Swann frees Elizabeth. Confronting Beckett at gunpoint, she forces him to validate a Letter of Marque—a royal document with which Beckett intends to recruit Sparrow as a privateer, and which Elizabeth wants for Will. Posing as a cabin boy on a merchant vessel, Elizabeth lands in Tortuga where she finds Jack and Gibbs desperately recruiting unsuspecting sailors in a pub to pay off his blood debt. A disheveled Norrington also applies. Blaming Sparrow for his ruin, he tries to shoot him and ignites an angry brawl, but Elizabeth knocks Norrington out and saves Sparrow. At the pier, Jack reveals the compass' secret to Elizabeth; it points to what the holder wants most in the world. When he convinces her that she can save Will by finding the chest, she gets a bearing. Once the ship is underway, however, an attraction arises between Jack and Elizabeth.
On Isla Cruces, Jack, Norrington, and Elizabeth find the Dead Man's Chest. Will, who has escaped the Dutchman with help from his father, Bootstrap Bill, arrives with the key he stole from Davy Jones. Will wants to stab the heart to free his father, but Jack fears that with Jones dead, the Kraken will continue hunting him as there will be no one to call it off, while Norrington desires the heart to bargain back his naval career. As a three-way swordfight erupts, the arrival of Jones' crew and Pintel and Ragetti's attempt to make off with the chest complicate matters even more. Norrington ultimately escapes with the heart and the Letters of Marque while Jones' crewmembers retrieve the now-empty Dead Man's Chest.
The Dutchman pursues the Pearl but, with the wind behind them, the Pearl outruns her. Jones summons the Kraken. Jack escapes the Pearl in the last longboat; but unable to desert his crew, he returns in time to save them. After a fierce battle that kills every crew member except for Will, Jack, Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti, Marty, Cotton, and Elizabeth, he gives the order to abandon ship before the Kraken makes its final assault. Realizing the Kraken is only hunting Jack, a deceptive Elizabeth kisses him while handcuffing him to the mast as bait. Wracked with guilt over her betrayal, Elizabeth tells the others Jack chose to remain behind, unaware that Will now believes she loves Sparrow. Jack escapes the shackles just as the Kraken resurfaces: Jack draws his cutlass and goes down fighting as the Kraken lunges for him; the colossal beast drags him and the Pearl to a watery grave.
Davy Jones declares Jack's debt settled, although he becomes enraged when he discovers an empty Dead Man's Chest. Meanwhile, Norrington makes his way to Port Royal and delivers the heart and the Letters of Marque to Cutler Beckett. Elizabeth, Will, and the surviving Pearl crew seek refuge with Tia Dalma, who asks if they would be willing to save Jack from Davy Jones' Locker. When all agree, Tia Dalma sends them on a journey to World's End to rescue Jack, saying they will need a captain who knows those waters—the resurrected Captain Barbossa.
Production
Following the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the cast and crew signed on for two more sequels to be shot back-to-back, a practical decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio decided not to make the sequels new adventures featuring the same characters, as with the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, but to retroactively turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to explore the reality of what would happen after Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann's embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the Fountain of Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing Davy Jones, the Flying Dutchman and the Kraken, a mythology only mentioned once in the first film. They also introduced the historical East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates.
Planning on the film began in June 2004, and production was much larger than The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was only shot on location in St. Vincent. This time, the sequels would require fully working ships, with a working Black Pearl built over the body of an oil tanker in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. By November, the script was still unfinished as the writers did not want director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to compromise what they had written, so Verbinski worked with James Byrkit to storyboard major sequences without need of a script, while Elliott and Rossio wrote a "preparatory" script for the crew to use before they finished the script they were happy with. By January 2005, with rising costs and no script, Disney threatened to cancel the film, but changed their minds. The writers would accompany the crew on location, feeling that the lateness of their rewrites would improve the spontaneity of the cast's performances.
Filming
The two bone cages used in one of the opening scenes of the film. The cages are now located on an attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Dead Man's Chest began on February 28, 2005, in Palos Verdes, beginning with Elizabeth's ruined wedding day. The crew spent the first shooting days at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, including the interiors of the Black Pearl and the Edinburgh Trader which Elizabeth stows away on, before moving to St. Vincent to shoot the scenes in Port Royal and Tortuga. Sets from the previous film were reused, having survived three hurricanes, although the main pier had to be rebuilt as it had collapsed in November. The crew had four tall ships at their disposal to populate the backgrounds, which were painted differently on each side for economy. One of the ships used was the replica of the HMS Bounty used in the 1962 film adaptation of Mutiny on the Bounty.
On April 18, 2005, the crew began shooting at Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. That was exactly the problem during production: the Dominican government were completely unprepared for the scale of a Hollywood production, with the 500-strong crew occupying around 90% of the roads on the island and having trouble moving around on the underdeveloped roads. The weather also alternated between torrential rainstorms and hot temperatures, the latter of which was made worse for the cast who had to wear period clothing. At Dominica, the sequences involving the Pelegosto and the forest segment of the battle on Isla Cruces were shot. Verbinski preferred to use practical props for the giant wheel and bone cage sequences, feeling long close-up shots would help further suspend the audience's disbelief. Dominica was also used for Tia Dalma's shack. Filming on the island concluded on May 26, 2005.
The crew moved to a small island called White Cay in the Bahamas for the beginning and end of the Isla Cruces battle, before production took a break until August, where in Los Angeles the interiors of the Flying Dutchman were shot. On September 18, 2005, the crew moved to Grand Bahama Island to shoot ship exteriors, including the working Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman. Filming there was a tumultuous period, starting with the fact that the tank had not actually been finished. The hurricane season caused many pauses in shooting, and Hurricane Wilma damaged many of the accessways and pumps, though no one was hurt nor were any of the ships destroyed. Filming of the second film was completed on February 7, 2006.
Special effects
The Flying Dutchman's crew members were originally conceived by writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as ghosts, but Gore Verbinski disliked this and designed them as physical creatures. Their hierarchy is reflected by how mutated they were: newcomers had low level infections which resemble rosacea, while the most mutated had full-blown undersea creature attributes. Verbinski wanted to keep them realistic, rejecting a character with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various David Attenborough documentaries to study the movement of sea anemones and mussels. All of the crew are computer-generated, with the exception of Stellan Skarsgård, who played "Bootstrap" Bill Turner. Initially his prosthetics would be augmented with CGI but that was abandoned. Skarsgård spent four hours in the make-up chair and was dubbed "Bouillabaisse" on set.
Captain Davy Jones himself had originally been designed with chin growths, before the designers made the move to full-blown tentacles; the skin of the character is based on a blurred version of the texture of a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup. To portray Jones on set, Bill Nighy wore a motion capture tracksuit that meant the animators at Industrial Light & Magic did not have to reshoot the scene in the studio without him or on the motion capture stage. Nighy wore make-up around his eyes and mouth to splice into the computer-generated shots, but the images of his eyes and mouth were not used. Nighy only wore a prosthetic once, with blue-colored tentacles for when Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) steals the key to the Dead Man's Chest from under his "beard" as he sleeps. To create the CG version of the character, the model was closely based on a full-body scan of Nighy, with Jones reflecting his high cheekbones. Animators studied every frame of Nighy's performance: the actor himself had blessed them by making his performance more quirky than expected, providing endless fun for them. His performance also meant new controls had to be stored. Finally, Jones' tentacles are mostly a simulation, though at times they were hand-animated when they act as limbs for the character.
The Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla which had a real octopus crawling over miniatures. On the set, two pipes filled with 30,000 pounds of cement were used to crash and split the Edinburgh Trader: Completing the illusion are miniature masts and falling stuntmen shot on a bluescreen stage. The scene where the Kraken spits at Jack Sparrow does not use computer-generated spit: it was real gunge thrown at Johnny Depp.
The East India Trading Company arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica, to extend its monopoly in the Caribbean and purge piracy from its waters. Leading the expansion is Lord Cutler Beckett, a powerful and ruthless EITC agent who arrests Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner as they are about to be married. Beckett threatens to execute them and the absent ex-Commodore James Norrington for aiding Captain Jack Sparrow's escape, but he offers clemency if Will agrees to hunt for Sparrow and his magical compass which points to what its possessor wants most. An informant in Tortuga leads Will to the Black Pearl run aground on Pelegosto, a cannibal-inhabited island where Jack and his crew are captive. Jack hid there after "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Jack's former crewmate and now an indentured sailor aboard Captain Davy Jones' ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman, delivered Jack the Black Spot, a mark signifying his debt to Jones is due. Thirteen years before, Jones raised the Pearl from the ocean depths and made Jack its captain. In exchange, Jack must now serve aboard the Dutchman for 100 years, or be hunted by Jones' beasts, the Kraken.
Will, Jack, and a few crew members escape their captors, unexpectedly recruiting Pintel and Ragetti along the way, and head for sea. Will learns that Jack has been searching for a particular key. He agrees to give Will the compass if he helps him find the key and the object it unlocks. Seeking assistance from Tia Dalma, an obeah priestess, Jack learns the compass fails to work because he does not know what he truly wants. The key, Tia tells him, unlocks the Dead Man's Chest containing Davy Jones' still-beating heart—to avoid lost love's pain, Jones carved the heart from his chest and buried it. Whoever possesses the heart controls Davy Jones, thereby controlling the world's oceans. Back at sea, the Dutchman encounters Sparrow, who deviously attempts to barter Will in exchange for himself. Jones demands 100 souls within three days in exchange for Jack's freedom and keeps Will as a "good faith payment," leaving Jack only 99 more souls to harvest.
In Port Royal, Governor Weatherby Swann frees Elizabeth. Confronting Beckett at gunpoint, she forces him to validate a Letter of Marque—a royal document with which Beckett intends to recruit Sparrow as a privateer, and which Elizabeth wants for Will. Posing as a cabin boy on a merchant vessel, Elizabeth lands in Tortuga where she finds Jack and Gibbs desperately recruiting unsuspecting sailors in a pub to pay off his blood debt. A disheveled Norrington also applies. Blaming Sparrow for his ruin, he tries to shoot him and ignites an angry brawl, but Elizabeth knocks Norrington out and saves Sparrow. At the pier, Jack reveals the compass' secret to Elizabeth; it points to what the holder wants most in the world. When he convinces her that she can save Will by finding the chest, she gets a bearing. Once the ship is underway, however, an attraction arises between Jack and Elizabeth.
On Isla Cruces, Jack, Norrington, and Elizabeth find the Dead Man's Chest. Will, who has escaped the Dutchman with help from his father, Bootstrap Bill, arrives with the key he stole from Davy Jones. Will wants to stab the heart to free his father, but Jack fears that with Jones dead, the Kraken will continue hunting him as there will be no one to call it off, while Norrington desires the heart to bargain back his naval career. As a three-way swordfight erupts, the arrival of Jones' crew and Pintel and Ragetti's attempt to make off with the chest complicate matters even more. Norrington ultimately escapes with the heart and the Letters of Marque while Jones' crewmembers retrieve the now-empty Dead Man's Chest.
The Dutchman pursues the Pearl but, with the wind behind them, the Pearl outruns her. Jones summons the Kraken. Jack escapes the Pearl in the last longboat; but unable to desert his crew, he returns in time to save them. After a fierce battle that kills every crew member except for Will, Jack, Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti, Marty, Cotton, and Elizabeth, he gives the order to abandon ship before the Kraken makes its final assault. Realizing the Kraken is only hunting Jack, a deceptive Elizabeth kisses him while handcuffing him to the mast as bait. Wracked with guilt over her betrayal, Elizabeth tells the others Jack chose to remain behind, unaware that Will now believes she loves Sparrow. Jack escapes the shackles just as the Kraken resurfaces: Jack draws his cutlass and goes down fighting as the Kraken lunges for him; the colossal beast drags him and the Pearl to a watery grave.
Davy Jones declares Jack's debt settled, although he becomes enraged when he discovers an empty Dead Man's Chest. Meanwhile, Norrington makes his way to Port Royal and delivers the heart and the Letters of Marque to Cutler Beckett. Elizabeth, Will, and the surviving Pearl crew seek refuge with Tia Dalma, who asks if they would be willing to save Jack from Davy Jones' Locker. When all agree, Tia Dalma sends them on a journey to World's End to rescue Jack, saying they will need a captain who knows those waters—the resurrected Captain Barbossa.
Production
Following the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the cast and crew signed on for two more sequels to be shot back-to-back, a practical decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio decided not to make the sequels new adventures featuring the same characters, as with the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, but to retroactively turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to explore the reality of what would happen after Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann's embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the Fountain of Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing Davy Jones, the Flying Dutchman and the Kraken, a mythology only mentioned once in the first film. They also introduced the historical East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates.
Planning on the film began in June 2004, and production was much larger than The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was only shot on location in St. Vincent. This time, the sequels would require fully working ships, with a working Black Pearl built over the body of an oil tanker in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. By November, the script was still unfinished as the writers did not want director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to compromise what they had written, so Verbinski worked with James Byrkit to storyboard major sequences without need of a script, while Elliott and Rossio wrote a "preparatory" script for the crew to use before they finished the script they were happy with. By January 2005, with rising costs and no script, Disney threatened to cancel the film, but changed their minds. The writers would accompany the crew on location, feeling that the lateness of their rewrites would improve the spontaneity of the cast's performances.
Filming
The two bone cages used in one of the opening scenes of the film. The cages are now located on an attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Dead Man's Chest began on February 28, 2005, in Palos Verdes, beginning with Elizabeth's ruined wedding day. The crew spent the first shooting days at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, including the interiors of the Black Pearl and the Edinburgh Trader which Elizabeth stows away on, before moving to St. Vincent to shoot the scenes in Port Royal and Tortuga. Sets from the previous film were reused, having survived three hurricanes, although the main pier had to be rebuilt as it had collapsed in November. The crew had four tall ships at their disposal to populate the backgrounds, which were painted differently on each side for economy. One of the ships used was the replica of the HMS Bounty used in the 1962 film adaptation of Mutiny on the Bounty.
On April 18, 2005, the crew began shooting at Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. That was exactly the problem during production: the Dominican government were completely unprepared for the scale of a Hollywood production, with the 500-strong crew occupying around 90% of the roads on the island and having trouble moving around on the underdeveloped roads. The weather also alternated between torrential rainstorms and hot temperatures, the latter of which was made worse for the cast who had to wear period clothing. At Dominica, the sequences involving the Pelegosto and the forest segment of the battle on Isla Cruces were shot. Verbinski preferred to use practical props for the giant wheel and bone cage sequences, feeling long close-up shots would help further suspend the audience's disbelief. Dominica was also used for Tia Dalma's shack. Filming on the island concluded on May 26, 2005.
The crew moved to a small island called White Cay in the Bahamas for the beginning and end of the Isla Cruces battle, before production took a break until August, where in Los Angeles the interiors of the Flying Dutchman were shot. On September 18, 2005, the crew moved to Grand Bahama Island to shoot ship exteriors, including the working Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman. Filming there was a tumultuous period, starting with the fact that the tank had not actually been finished. The hurricane season caused many pauses in shooting, and Hurricane Wilma damaged many of the accessways and pumps, though no one was hurt nor were any of the ships destroyed. Filming of the second film was completed on February 7, 2006.
Special effects
The Flying Dutchman's crew members were originally conceived by writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as ghosts, but Gore Verbinski disliked this and designed them as physical creatures. Their hierarchy is reflected by how mutated they were: newcomers had low level infections which resemble rosacea, while the most mutated had full-blown undersea creature attributes. Verbinski wanted to keep them realistic, rejecting a character with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various David Attenborough documentaries to study the movement of sea anemones and mussels. All of the crew are computer-generated, with the exception of Stellan Skarsgård, who played "Bootstrap" Bill Turner. Initially his prosthetics would be augmented with CGI but that was abandoned. Skarsgård spent four hours in the make-up chair and was dubbed "Bouillabaisse" on set.
Captain Davy Jones himself had originally been designed with chin growths, before the designers made the move to full-blown tentacles; the skin of the character is based on a blurred version of the texture of a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup. To portray Jones on set, Bill Nighy wore a motion capture tracksuit that meant the animators at Industrial Light & Magic did not have to reshoot the scene in the studio without him or on the motion capture stage. Nighy wore make-up around his eyes and mouth to splice into the computer-generated shots, but the images of his eyes and mouth were not used. Nighy only wore a prosthetic once, with blue-colored tentacles for when Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) steals the key to the Dead Man's Chest from under his "beard" as he sleeps. To create the CG version of the character, the model was closely based on a full-body scan of Nighy, with Jones reflecting his high cheekbones. Animators studied every frame of Nighy's performance: the actor himself had blessed them by making his performance more quirky than expected, providing endless fun for them. His performance also meant new controls had to be stored. Finally, Jones' tentacles are mostly a simulation, though at times they were hand-animated when they act as limbs for the character.
The Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla which had a real octopus crawling over miniatures. On the set, two pipes filled with 30,000 pounds of cement were used to crash and split the Edinburgh Trader: Completing the illusion are miniature masts and falling stuntmen shot on a bluescreen stage. The scene where the Kraken spits at Jack Sparrow does not use computer-generated spit: it was real gunge thrown at Johnny Depp.
Photo Gallery
"At World's End"
Plot
Lord Cutler Beckett executes anyone suspected of or associated with piracy. Beckett, who now possesses Davy Jones's heart, orders Jones to destroy all pirate ships. Condemned prisoners sing a song to compel the nine pirate lords comprising the (fourth) Brethren Court to convene at Shipwreck Cove. However, Captain Jack Sparrow, pirate lord of the Caribbean, never appointed his successor, and therefore must attend. Captain Barbossa leads Will, Elizabeth, Tia Dalma, and the Black Pearl crewmen to rescue Jack. Sao Feng, pirate lord of the South China Sea, possesses a map to the entrance to Davy Jones's Locker, where Jack is imprisoned. The British Royal Navy, led by Mercer, attack Feng's bathhouse. During the battle, Will bargains with Feng for the Pearl in exchange for Sparrow, so Will can rescue his father from The Flying Dutchman.
The crew journeys into the Locker and successfully retrieves Sparrow. As The Black Pearl seeks an escape route, dead souls are seen floating by underwater. Tia Dalma reveals that Davy Jones was appointed by Calypso, Goddess of the Sea and his lover, to ferry the dead to the next world. In return, Jones was allowed to step upon land for one day every ten years to be with his love; but when she failed to meet him, the scorned captain abandoned his duty and transformed into a monster. Governor Swann, now dead, reveals that whoever stabs Jones's heart becomes the Dutchman's immortal captain.
After returning to the living world, The Black Pearl is ambushed by Sao Feng, who reveals his agreement with Will. However, he betrays Will, having made another deal with Beckett to hand over the crew and keep The Black Pearl. The Endeavor arrives, and takes Sparrow aboard, although he refuses to divulge to Beckett where the Brethren Court will convene: instead, Jack makes a deal to lead Beckett to the Court and lure them out for Beckett to destroy, in exchange for Beckett protecting him from Jones. When Feng is double-crossed by Beckett, he bargains with Barbossa to release the Pearl in exchange for Elizabeth, who he believes is Calypso trapped in human form. Feng attacks the Endeavor, allowing Jack to escape. Aboard his warship, Feng tells Elizabeth that the first Brethren Court trapped Calypso in human form so men could rule the seas. Davy Jones attacks Feng's ship. The mortally wounded Feng appoints Elizabeth as the new captain and the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea. She and the crew are then imprisoned in The Flying Dutchman's brig. Also aboard is Admiral James Norrington, who frees Elizabeth and her crew. They escape to their ship, although Norrington is killed by a crazed Bootstrap Bill Turner.
Will leaves a trail of corpses for Beckett's ship to follow. Jack catches Will and tosses him overboard after giving him his magical compass so Beckett can find Shipwreck Cove. Will is rescued by Beckett's ship, and Davy Jones reveals that he masterminded Calypso's imprisonment by the first Brethren Court. At Shipwreck Island, the pirate lords introduce themselves and present the nine pieces of eight, but disagree over freeing Calypso. Barbossa calls upon Captain Teague to confirm that only a Pirate King can declare war. Elizabeth is elected Pirate King after Sparrow's vote for her breaks a stalemate. She orders the pirates to go to war. During a parley with Beckett and Jones, Elizabeth and Barbossa swap Sparrow for Will.
Barbossa tricks the pirate lords into yielding their "pieces of eight", which he needs to free Calypso, who is bound in human form as Tia Dalma. As she is released, Will discloses that it was Davy Jones who betrayed her to the Brethren Court. Her fury unleashes a violent maelstrom. Sparrow escapes The Flying Dutchman's brig and steals the Dead Man's Chest. Davy Jones kills Mercer and obtains the key to the chest, which Jack then steals from Jones during a duel. The Black Pearl and The Flying Dutchman face off near the center of the maelstrom. Will proposes to Elizabeth, and Captain Barbossa marries them in the midst of battle. Will boards the Dutchman to retrieve the chest, but is mortally wounded by Davy Jones. Sparrow places his sword in Will's hand and helps him stab Jones's heart, killing him. Jack and Elizabeth escape The Flying Dutchman as the crew carve out Will's heart and place it into the Dead Man's Chest; the ship disappears into the whirlpool. Beckett, never intending to honor his agreement with Jack, moves to attack The Black Pearl. The Flying Dutchman resurfaces with Will as the captain and the crew now human. The Flying Dutchman and The Black Pearl destroy The Endeavor and kill Beckett. The surviving armada retreats.
Will is bound to sail the sea as The Flying Dutchman's captain. Will and Elizabeth have one day together where they consummate their marriage. He departs at sunset, but first gives Elizabeth the Dead Man's Chest. Barbossa commandeers the Pearl, stranding Jack and Gibbs in Tortuga. Having anticipated Barbossa's deception, Sparrow removed the map's middle that shows the path to the Fountain of Youth. Jack departs the trilogy just as he entered, alone in a dinghy on the open sea. Ten years later, Elizabeth and her son Will, stand atop a seacliff; The Flying Dutchman appears on the horizon with Will Turner aboard.
Production
Following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl's success in 2003, the cast and crew signed on for two sequels to be shot back-to-back. For the third film, director Gore Verbinski wanted to return the tone to that of a character piece after using the second film to keep the plot moving. Inspired by the real-life confederation of pirates, Elliott and Rossio looked at historical figures and created fictional characters from them to expand the scope beyond the main cast. Finally embellishing their mythology, Calypso was introduced, going full circle to Barbossa's mention of "heathen gods" that created the curse in the first film.
Parts of the third film were shot during location filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, a long shoot which finished on March 1, 2006. During August 2005, the Singapore sequence was shot. The set was built on Stage 12 of the Universal backlot, and comprised 40 structures within an 80 by 130-foot (24 by 40-m) tank that was 3½ feet (1 m) deep. As 18th century Singapore is not a well-documented era, the filmmakers chose to use an Expressionist style based on Chinese and Malaysian cities of the same period. The design of the city was also intended by Verbinski to parody spa culture, with fungi growing throughout the set. Continuing this natural feel, the floorboards of Sao Feng's bathhouse had to be cut by hand, and real humidity was created by the combination of gallons of water and the lighting equipment on the set.
Filming resumed in August 2006 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and continued until early 2007 for 70 days off the California coast, as all the shooting required in the Caribbean had been conducted in 2005. Davy Jones' Locker was shot at Utah, and it was shot in a monochromatic way to represent its different feeling from the usual colorful environment of a pirate. The climactic battle was shot in a former air hanger at Palmdale, California, where the cast had to wear wetsuits underneath their costumes on angle-tipped ships. The water-drenched set was kept in freezing temperatures, to make sure bacteria did not come inside and infect the crew. A second unit shot at Niagara Falls. Industrial Light & Magic did 750 effects shots, while Digital Domain also took on 300. They spent just five months finishing the special effects. The film posed numerous challenges in creating water-based effects.
Filming finished on January 10, 2007 in Molokai, and the first assembly cut was three hours. Twenty minutes were removed, not including end credits, though producer Jerry Bruckheimer maintained that the long running time was needed to make the final battle work in terms of build-up. Hans Zimmer composed the score as he did for the previous film, composing eight new motifs including a new love theme for the At World's End soundtrack. He scored scenes as the editors began work, so as to influence their choice of cutting to the music. Gore Verbinski helped on the score. He played the guitar in the parley scene between Barbossa, Sparrow, Elizabeth and Will, Davy Jones, and Cutler Beckett. He also co-wrote the song "Hoist the Colours" with Zimmer.
Photo Gallery
Lord Cutler Beckett executes anyone suspected of or associated with piracy. Beckett, who now possesses Davy Jones's heart, orders Jones to destroy all pirate ships. Condemned prisoners sing a song to compel the nine pirate lords comprising the (fourth) Brethren Court to convene at Shipwreck Cove. However, Captain Jack Sparrow, pirate lord of the Caribbean, never appointed his successor, and therefore must attend. Captain Barbossa leads Will, Elizabeth, Tia Dalma, and the Black Pearl crewmen to rescue Jack. Sao Feng, pirate lord of the South China Sea, possesses a map to the entrance to Davy Jones's Locker, where Jack is imprisoned. The British Royal Navy, led by Mercer, attack Feng's bathhouse. During the battle, Will bargains with Feng for the Pearl in exchange for Sparrow, so Will can rescue his father from The Flying Dutchman.
The crew journeys into the Locker and successfully retrieves Sparrow. As The Black Pearl seeks an escape route, dead souls are seen floating by underwater. Tia Dalma reveals that Davy Jones was appointed by Calypso, Goddess of the Sea and his lover, to ferry the dead to the next world. In return, Jones was allowed to step upon land for one day every ten years to be with his love; but when she failed to meet him, the scorned captain abandoned his duty and transformed into a monster. Governor Swann, now dead, reveals that whoever stabs Jones's heart becomes the Dutchman's immortal captain.
After returning to the living world, The Black Pearl is ambushed by Sao Feng, who reveals his agreement with Will. However, he betrays Will, having made another deal with Beckett to hand over the crew and keep The Black Pearl. The Endeavor arrives, and takes Sparrow aboard, although he refuses to divulge to Beckett where the Brethren Court will convene: instead, Jack makes a deal to lead Beckett to the Court and lure them out for Beckett to destroy, in exchange for Beckett protecting him from Jones. When Feng is double-crossed by Beckett, he bargains with Barbossa to release the Pearl in exchange for Elizabeth, who he believes is Calypso trapped in human form. Feng attacks the Endeavor, allowing Jack to escape. Aboard his warship, Feng tells Elizabeth that the first Brethren Court trapped Calypso in human form so men could rule the seas. Davy Jones attacks Feng's ship. The mortally wounded Feng appoints Elizabeth as the new captain and the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea. She and the crew are then imprisoned in The Flying Dutchman's brig. Also aboard is Admiral James Norrington, who frees Elizabeth and her crew. They escape to their ship, although Norrington is killed by a crazed Bootstrap Bill Turner.
Will leaves a trail of corpses for Beckett's ship to follow. Jack catches Will and tosses him overboard after giving him his magical compass so Beckett can find Shipwreck Cove. Will is rescued by Beckett's ship, and Davy Jones reveals that he masterminded Calypso's imprisonment by the first Brethren Court. At Shipwreck Island, the pirate lords introduce themselves and present the nine pieces of eight, but disagree over freeing Calypso. Barbossa calls upon Captain Teague to confirm that only a Pirate King can declare war. Elizabeth is elected Pirate King after Sparrow's vote for her breaks a stalemate. She orders the pirates to go to war. During a parley with Beckett and Jones, Elizabeth and Barbossa swap Sparrow for Will.
Barbossa tricks the pirate lords into yielding their "pieces of eight", which he needs to free Calypso, who is bound in human form as Tia Dalma. As she is released, Will discloses that it was Davy Jones who betrayed her to the Brethren Court. Her fury unleashes a violent maelstrom. Sparrow escapes The Flying Dutchman's brig and steals the Dead Man's Chest. Davy Jones kills Mercer and obtains the key to the chest, which Jack then steals from Jones during a duel. The Black Pearl and The Flying Dutchman face off near the center of the maelstrom. Will proposes to Elizabeth, and Captain Barbossa marries them in the midst of battle. Will boards the Dutchman to retrieve the chest, but is mortally wounded by Davy Jones. Sparrow places his sword in Will's hand and helps him stab Jones's heart, killing him. Jack and Elizabeth escape The Flying Dutchman as the crew carve out Will's heart and place it into the Dead Man's Chest; the ship disappears into the whirlpool. Beckett, never intending to honor his agreement with Jack, moves to attack The Black Pearl. The Flying Dutchman resurfaces with Will as the captain and the crew now human. The Flying Dutchman and The Black Pearl destroy The Endeavor and kill Beckett. The surviving armada retreats.
Will is bound to sail the sea as The Flying Dutchman's captain. Will and Elizabeth have one day together where they consummate their marriage. He departs at sunset, but first gives Elizabeth the Dead Man's Chest. Barbossa commandeers the Pearl, stranding Jack and Gibbs in Tortuga. Having anticipated Barbossa's deception, Sparrow removed the map's middle that shows the path to the Fountain of Youth. Jack departs the trilogy just as he entered, alone in a dinghy on the open sea. Ten years later, Elizabeth and her son Will, stand atop a seacliff; The Flying Dutchman appears on the horizon with Will Turner aboard.
Production
Following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl's success in 2003, the cast and crew signed on for two sequels to be shot back-to-back. For the third film, director Gore Verbinski wanted to return the tone to that of a character piece after using the second film to keep the plot moving. Inspired by the real-life confederation of pirates, Elliott and Rossio looked at historical figures and created fictional characters from them to expand the scope beyond the main cast. Finally embellishing their mythology, Calypso was introduced, going full circle to Barbossa's mention of "heathen gods" that created the curse in the first film.
Parts of the third film were shot during location filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, a long shoot which finished on March 1, 2006. During August 2005, the Singapore sequence was shot. The set was built on Stage 12 of the Universal backlot, and comprised 40 structures within an 80 by 130-foot (24 by 40-m) tank that was 3½ feet (1 m) deep. As 18th century Singapore is not a well-documented era, the filmmakers chose to use an Expressionist style based on Chinese and Malaysian cities of the same period. The design of the city was also intended by Verbinski to parody spa culture, with fungi growing throughout the set. Continuing this natural feel, the floorboards of Sao Feng's bathhouse had to be cut by hand, and real humidity was created by the combination of gallons of water and the lighting equipment on the set.
Filming resumed in August 2006 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and continued until early 2007 for 70 days off the California coast, as all the shooting required in the Caribbean had been conducted in 2005. Davy Jones' Locker was shot at Utah, and it was shot in a monochromatic way to represent its different feeling from the usual colorful environment of a pirate. The climactic battle was shot in a former air hanger at Palmdale, California, where the cast had to wear wetsuits underneath their costumes on angle-tipped ships. The water-drenched set was kept in freezing temperatures, to make sure bacteria did not come inside and infect the crew. A second unit shot at Niagara Falls. Industrial Light & Magic did 750 effects shots, while Digital Domain also took on 300. They spent just five months finishing the special effects. The film posed numerous challenges in creating water-based effects.
Filming finished on January 10, 2007 in Molokai, and the first assembly cut was three hours. Twenty minutes were removed, not including end credits, though producer Jerry Bruckheimer maintained that the long running time was needed to make the final battle work in terms of build-up. Hans Zimmer composed the score as he did for the previous film, composing eight new motifs including a new love theme for the At World's End soundtrack. He scored scenes as the editors began work, so as to influence their choice of cutting to the music. Gore Verbinski helped on the score. He played the guitar in the parley scene between Barbossa, Sparrow, Elizabeth and Will, Davy Jones, and Cutler Beckett. He also co-wrote the song "Hoist the Colours" with Zimmer.
Photo Gallery
The film is…
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by: Ted Elliott
Terry Rossio
Stuart Beattie
Jay Wolpert
Music by: Klaus Badelt
Hans Zimmer
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by: Ted Elliott
Terry Rossio
Stuart Beattie
Jay Wolpert
Music by: Klaus Badelt
Hans Zimmer
• Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow.
An eccentric pirate noted for a slightly drunken swagger, accompanied by slurred speech and awkwardly flailing hand gestures. His obsession for rum is only matched by his obsession with regaining the Black Pearl, which he captained ten years before. Jack uses his wits rather than weapons, and has gained a reputation with made up stories of how he escaped from the deserted island he was put on. The actor found the script quirky: rather than trying to find treasure, the crew of the Black Pearl were trying to return it in order to lift their curse; also, the traditional mutiny had already taken place. Initially Sparrow was, according to Bruckheimer, "a young Burt Lancaster, just the cocky pirate." At the first read-through, Depp surprised the rest of the cast and crew by portraying the character in an off-kilter manner. After researching 18th century pirates, Depp compared them to modern rock stars and decided to base his performance on Keith Richards.Although Verbinski and Bruckheimer had confidence in Depp, partly because it would be Bloom who was playing the traditional Errol Flynn-type, Disney executives were confused, asking Depp whether the character was drunk or gay, and Michael Eisner even proclaimed while watching rushes, "He's ruining the film!" Depp answered back, "Look, these are the choices I made. You know my work. So either trust me or give me the boot."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
