12 ч 12 июл 2021 г. - PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN THE TELEGRAPH ‘Like fighting a war’: how hurricanes and mad stunts nearly sunk the POTC films

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‘Like fighting a war’: how hurricanes and mad stunts nearly sunk the Pirates of the Caribbean films

Filming on location meant plenty of offscreen drama for the franchise's second outing, released 15 years ago this month

by Alex Diggins

It was not the most sea-worthy of movie premises. Based on a nearly 50-year-old Disneyland ride with iffy animatronics and iffier depictions of ‘native characters’, hopes for the 2006 original Pirates of the Caribbean film were fuselage-scraping. Though directors including Steven Spielberg had been attached to the franchise since the early Nineties, eventually Gore Verbinski took the plunge.

“There were limited expectations for the first Pirates film,” admitted Jerry Bruckheimer, the franchise’s veteran Hollywood producer, in a behind-the-scenes interview. “Lots of people thought we were making a Disney ride movie for toddlers. The pirate genre had been dead for 40 years, and every attempt to revive it had bombed.”

Yet against the odds, the first film was a smash-and-grab triumph. Helped by its squeaky young leads, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, irreverent wit, and gravity-defying, Errol Flynn-esque stunts, it stormed the box office, taking $653,913,918 worldwide. In particular, Johnny Depp’s gamey performance as Captain Jack Sparrow - part Keith Richards, part collision with a Brighton fancy dress shop - was singled out for praise, despite the fact that Disney execs threatened to fire him for his capering, and considered subtitling his dialogue. But the film netted five Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor nod for Depp.

But it finished on a moment of neat resolution. Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa was dead (again), Knightley’s Elizabeth and Bloom’s Will were married, and Captain Jack was sailing off on the Black Pearl into a blazing Caribbean sunset to roister, drink up and yo-ho. The end?

Not a chance. With swashbuckling alacrity, Disney execs greenlit a new franchise, retrofitting the self-contained Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl as the first instalment. Since then, another four films in the series have been released, with a sixth and a spin-off in the works. Yet even before Depp’s private life put a black spot on his career, the franchise was in the doldrums. The plots had gotten wilder, character arcs frayed, and Depp’s once-fresh shtick had long gone bilgy. What went wrong?

“There is no heavier burden than great potential,” said series writer Ted Elliot, as they embarked on the second film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which was released 15 years ago this month. Seafarers should know better than to tempt fate like that.

For financial sake, it was decided to film the initial two sequels - Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End - back-to-back. This meant production could take advantage of the same locations and sets, and monopolise their increasingly in-demand stars. But while there was plenty of momentum behind the project, as filming began in February 2005, the writers were still casting around for a plot. In an unpromising harbinger, they were taken on location to St Vincent to continue rewrites.

“Whereas in the first film, the theme park attraction was a wellspring of ideas,” recalled screenwriter Terry Russio in a DVD extras interview. “For the second and third films we actually went back to the first movie.”

Will and Elizabeth’s wedding day, it was decided, would be interrupted by the appearance of a new antagonist - the East India Trading Company. And other threats were introduced: the supernatural Davy Jones; his ship, the Flying Dutchman, with its crew of undead unfortunates; and a kraken. The story, stretching over two films, would involve Will’s quest to find his missing father, and Jack Sparrow’s attempts to slip the noose and the prospect of 100 years crewing for Davy Jones.

From the beginning of production, spectacle stomped substance. Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski storyboarded a sequence of outlandish stunts, such as a fight on top of a moving mill wheel and an escape from zorbing bone cages. And a rough script was hung on that bare scaffold.

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