Random Thought Table: Pirates of the Caribbean Edition

[jeriendhal]

Okay at the risk of making a piece of "FANFIC THEORY THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!" clickbait, I just got to thinking about the first PotC movie, and realized that the implied threat driving the plot doesn't make any sense.

Okay, consider this:

1. Barbarossa and Co. steal the Aztec treasure, throw the gold around, get cursed, and are turned into a bunch of disguised undead, unkillable skeletons.

Oh, and their boat is kinda undead too.

Along the way they steal the Black Pearl from Jack, and chuck Will's dad overboard.

2. Though this now makes them very effective pirates, they decide the whole Can't Taste Food thing kinda sucks.

3. They then spend the next ten years or so hunting down all the pieces of gold so they can be mortal. Oh and they need to find Bootstrap's kid to complete undoing the curse.

Stop and think about this for a moment. Rather than being unstoppable killing machines, they want to be mortal.

Why the Hell do the heroes fight so hard to stop them from succeeding?

Yeah, there's a blood sacrifice involved, but as Barbarossa very definitely shows when he thinks Elizabeth is Bootstrap's daughter, the amount blood is relatively trivial. At that point in the movie he's demonstrated no particular personal animosity towards Will, so there's no reason to think that he would take any more blood than he does from Elizabeth.

In the climax of the movie the undead pirates are busily curb stomping the Royal Marines. As soon as they're mortal, they're beaten relatively easily. Once they get what they want, they go from the Number One threat on the high seas to just another bunch of mangy pirates.

I realize most popcorn movies don't stand up to close examination (just why did Loki go to all that trouble to be captured in The Avengers?) but even by those standards the plot doesn't make much sense if you think about it.

Comments

[seawasp]

This doesn't qualify as a "BLOW YOUR MIND!" clickbait because to qualify you have to offer a theory that takes the plot holes and makes them make SENSE.

(note: they had the Black Pearl all along. Jack was captain of the Pearl with Barbossa being his first mate. Then Barbossa led a mutiny and threw Jack off, took the crew to get the Aztec gold, and got the curse)

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

...damn, now I want a Pirates of the Caribbean cartoon series about how they had to get all the pieces of gold together again (and what happened to the people who had it meanwhile/how they dealt with the whole temporary curse thing)

[seawasp]

One in the 1980s tradition, where real violence can't happen? Like RAMBO?

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Bite your tongue, man!

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

There's also the bit that the late, much-lamented Roger Ebert pointed out in his review -- the part where Our Heroes spend *how* much time fighting a battle against Beings Who Cannot Die?