'Pirates' Aims to Defy Buccaneer Curse
28 minutes ago
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES - Ahoy, me buckos! Be thar a pirate curse on them seeking treasure from movie tales of seafaring thieves? A look at the scurvy history of many pirate-themed films would be enough to shiver the timbers of even the most resolute Hollywood moviemaker. But Disney is still taking its second gamble in two years on a big-budget buccaneer story.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" sails into theaters on a strong gust of nostalgia from fans of the longtime Disney amusement park ride. Coupled with its supernatural special-effects battles and satiric take on the genre's conventions, that could be enough to, well ... turn the tide in its favor.
The film stars Johnny Depp (news) as the sauntering, dark-eyed rapscallion Capt. Jack Sparrow, bent on reclaiming his vessel from a crew of ghostly, backstabbing ruffians led by Geoffrey Rush (news) as a captain so wicked he transforms into a skeleton in the moonlight.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer described the task of making a pirate film as an act of derring-do: "I always like to tackle film genres that have failed in the past."
It's been a long time since pirate stories were surefire box-office hits, when Douglas Fairbanks (news) Sr. slid down the sail of a ship on his knife in 1926's "The Black Pirate" or Errol Flynn (news) fenced with glee in "Captain Blood" (1935) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940).
Dozens of imitators followed, but many suffered from a lack of innovation.
"They took these fantasies and then made them very sexual," said historian Jan Rogozinski, author of the book "Pirates!: Brigands, Buccaneers, and Privateers in Fact, Fiction and Legend." "They all had lots of men with naked chests, women with almost naked chests, and they always had a good flogging scene. Everything was stereotyped and I guess it just bored people."
Eventually, pirates became a joke, he added, citing such spoofs as 1944's "The Princess and the Pirate," with Bob Hope (news) as a sailor named Sylvester the Great, and 1946's "Three Little Pirates," in which the Three Stooges annoyed a villain named Black Louie. "They became really campy and really dumb ... which sort of killed it off for a while," Rogozinski said.
There is so much misfortune connected with the genre that DreamWorks refuses to acknowledge that its new cartoon, "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas," is a pirate movie, even though the hero fits the profile — a rascally sailor who snatches treasure from rival ships. (What else would you call that?)
It also fits the box-office profile of most pirate films: it sank. DreamWorks rejected interview requests for this story.
Among the wreckage of other pirate movies from the past rests the recent hulk of Disney's animated "Treasure Planet," a retelling of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel "Treasure Island" with high-tech Spanish galleons wafting through outer space with alien crews and mechanical-armed pirates.
The movie, with a reported budget of $140 million, debuted weakly last November and sank quickly from the box office, earning only about $38 million — a loss so severe Disney later downgraded its earnings estimate for the last quarter of 2002.
Before that came Carolco Picture's mammoth 1995 failure "Cutthroat Island," starring Geena Davis (news) as a sword-wielding woman trying to recover part of a treasure map from a villainous pirate uncle. At a reported cost of $80 million to $100 million, it earned a devastating $10 million at the box office. The debacle helped bankrupt Carolco and earned "Cutthroat Island" a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the costliest movie flops in history.
David Stapleton, a history buff who created an online compendium of pirate movies, said many of Hollywood's recent takes on the genre lacked heart, focusing too much on costumes, sets and action.
"From a historical standpoint virtually every pirate movie that has been made is trash. They pay absolutely no homage to history whatsoever, but that's not why we go to see them. We go to see because we're enamored with the mythology," said Stapleton, a 42-year-old software engineer from Orange County.
The image of the pirate retains a paradoxical place in American lore — at once revered as a hero and reviled as a scoundrel. Have pirate stories lost favor because America has a stricter moral standing about such thieves? Not necessarily.
Think of Internet piracy — the illegal downloading of music and movies — and the way many justify its practice because it's stealing from big companies. Meanwhile, corporate pirates, like some executives at Enron and Adelphia, are reviled.
We still love pirates — and we still love to hate them.
"We all have these frustrations and things we don't want to do," Bruckheimer said. "But a pirate goes through life and he does what he wants to do when he wants to do it."
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i think this is the movie to break the curse.
28 minutes ago
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES - Ahoy, me buckos! Be thar a pirate curse on them seeking treasure from movie tales of seafaring thieves? A look at the scurvy history of many pirate-themed films would be enough to shiver the timbers of even the most resolute Hollywood moviemaker. But Disney is still taking its second gamble in two years on a big-budget buccaneer story.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" sails into theaters on a strong gust of nostalgia from fans of the longtime Disney amusement park ride. Coupled with its supernatural special-effects battles and satiric take on the genre's conventions, that could be enough to, well ... turn the tide in its favor.
The film stars Johnny Depp (news) as the sauntering, dark-eyed rapscallion Capt. Jack Sparrow, bent on reclaiming his vessel from a crew of ghostly, backstabbing ruffians led by Geoffrey Rush (news) as a captain so wicked he transforms into a skeleton in the moonlight.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer described the task of making a pirate film as an act of derring-do: "I always like to tackle film genres that have failed in the past."
It's been a long time since pirate stories were surefire box-office hits, when Douglas Fairbanks (news) Sr. slid down the sail of a ship on his knife in 1926's "The Black Pirate" or Errol Flynn (news) fenced with glee in "Captain Blood" (1935) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940).
Dozens of imitators followed, but many suffered from a lack of innovation.
"They took these fantasies and then made them very sexual," said historian Jan Rogozinski, author of the book "Pirates!: Brigands, Buccaneers, and Privateers in Fact, Fiction and Legend." "They all had lots of men with naked chests, women with almost naked chests, and they always had a good flogging scene. Everything was stereotyped and I guess it just bored people."
Eventually, pirates became a joke, he added, citing such spoofs as 1944's "The Princess and the Pirate," with Bob Hope (news) as a sailor named Sylvester the Great, and 1946's "Three Little Pirates," in which the Three Stooges annoyed a villain named Black Louie. "They became really campy and really dumb ... which sort of killed it off for a while," Rogozinski said.
There is so much misfortune connected with the genre that DreamWorks refuses to acknowledge that its new cartoon, "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas," is a pirate movie, even though the hero fits the profile — a rascally sailor who snatches treasure from rival ships. (What else would you call that?)
It also fits the box-office profile of most pirate films: it sank. DreamWorks rejected interview requests for this story.
Among the wreckage of other pirate movies from the past rests the recent hulk of Disney's animated "Treasure Planet," a retelling of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel "Treasure Island" with high-tech Spanish galleons wafting through outer space with alien crews and mechanical-armed pirates.
The movie, with a reported budget of $140 million, debuted weakly last November and sank quickly from the box office, earning only about $38 million — a loss so severe Disney later downgraded its earnings estimate for the last quarter of 2002.
Before that came Carolco Picture's mammoth 1995 failure "Cutthroat Island," starring Geena Davis (news) as a sword-wielding woman trying to recover part of a treasure map from a villainous pirate uncle. At a reported cost of $80 million to $100 million, it earned a devastating $10 million at the box office. The debacle helped bankrupt Carolco and earned "Cutthroat Island" a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the costliest movie flops in history.
David Stapleton, a history buff who created an online compendium of pirate movies, said many of Hollywood's recent takes on the genre lacked heart, focusing too much on costumes, sets and action.
"From a historical standpoint virtually every pirate movie that has been made is trash. They pay absolutely no homage to history whatsoever, but that's not why we go to see them. We go to see because we're enamored with the mythology," said Stapleton, a 42-year-old software engineer from Orange County.
The image of the pirate retains a paradoxical place in American lore — at once revered as a hero and reviled as a scoundrel. Have pirate stories lost favor because America has a stricter moral standing about such thieves? Not necessarily.
Think of Internet piracy — the illegal downloading of music and movies — and the way many justify its practice because it's stealing from big companies. Meanwhile, corporate pirates, like some executives at Enron and Adelphia, are reviled.
We still love pirates — and we still love to hate them.
"We all have these frustrations and things we don't want to do," Bruckheimer said. "But a pirate goes through life and he does what he wants to do when he wants to do it."
---------------------------------
i think this is the movie to break the curse.