In a conference room in southern California, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was pitching to the Walt Disney Company CEO (at the time) Michael Eisner a pirate film similar to those swashbuckling stories starring Burt Lancaster in the 1950s. That resulted in an irrevocable no from the head of the Disney company. But Bruckheimer persisted, saying the film would be based on a known quantity, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Eisner still apprehensive did not believe this film would be a success because the pirate and historical costume genres were dead. The most recent pirate film at the time was the 1995 Cutthroat Island, a major flop that resulted in the stunting of Geena Davis’s career. Additionally, Eisner had produced a film about King David starring Richard Gere that also failed at the box office influencing Eisner to place blame on the genre of historical dramas rather than the fact that he made a bad film. It wasn’t until the screenwriters of Pirates of the Caribbean added the ‘zombie pirate’ element that the film was greenlit with Bruckheimer as the producer and Gore Verbinski as the director. However, once the 2002 film The Country Bears, a film based on the Country Bears ride in the Walt Disney World park, completely flopped Eisner almost shut down production of Pirates of the Caribbean for fear of failing once again. Luckily, he chose to see the movie through to the end resulting in a box-office smash with resounding reviews from critics alike. The film was able to bring a dead genre back to life because of relatable characters, cogent narrative structure, and consistent tone – not because it was historically accurate.
To argue this film is historically inaccurate is a safe bet. However, the film is based on theme park ride, and much of its sensibilities come from adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Goonies. It’s unfair to compare this film to any historical text because that was not the goal of the film and filmmakers didn’t care. This is not to say the movie doesn’t acknowledge the social and political intricacies of real-life pirates; the filmmakers end up making it their own. For example, throughout the film Captain Jack, Mr. Gibbs and even Elizabeth Swann bring up the pirate’s code, a set of rules that all pirates must abide by to be considered a pirate. While pirates in the eighteenth century had their own set of rules, those rules varied by each crew. Once they acquired a new vessel and captain, everyone in the crew had a say on what standards they must abide by. Unlike Pirates of the Caribbean, pirates in the eighteenth-century were much more democratic and allowed everyone to have a voice instead of a code that was created only by captains in the Brethren Court (a reference to the third film). Additionally, mutinies were only executed when the crew felt the captain was being cruel or unjust, rather than what the film played out as a betrayal between Captain Jack Sparrow and Barbossa. There would have had to be a reason for Jack to be marooned on an island, a punishment known as ‘Governor of the Island,’ therefore, this mutiny would have not even happened on the seas in the 1700s.
The depiction of how colonists perceived pirates in the film was not unlike what it was in reality. The scene where Captain Jack is trying to salvage his sinking ship, and he comes upon three pirates hanged with the warning ‘Pirates ye be warned’ is something that the English did in the 1700s. Pirate’s corpses were used to set a precedent if you were to engage in pirate behavior this would happen to you too. When Will Turner and Captain Jack acquiesce the Interceptor, they have a conversation in which Jack admits he knew Will’s father and called him a ‘good man, good pirate.’ Will becomes infuriated unable to believe his father was pirate because he understood his father to be a good man. It isn’t until the end of the film when Jack is about to hang in the gallows that Will saves him admitting to Commodore Norrington that Captain Jack Sparrow is, in fact, a good man and pirate. The idea of an honest, good man was prevalent in how pirates saw themselves in the eighteenth century. While they knew they were outlaws, they saw themselves more as Robin Hood’s then villains of the sea. Pirates cared about honor and how they treated one another, so much in fact, when they plundered merchant ships, they would not kill the captain of the ship if his crew believed him to be a good man. It seems once Will Turner saw himself as a pirate he also saw himself as a good man.