What made the original Pirates trilogy so much better than On Stranger Tides? The secret to its appeal isn’t in the elaborate action sequences, or the witty humor, or the actors’ good looks — it’s in Jack Sparrow’s struggle with morality.
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have received mixed feedback over the years. While some people love it for its action sequences and dislike the love stories, others watched it mainly for Will and Elizabeth. Some think it’s unnecessarily epic in scope, while others are disappointed that it isn’t epic enough. In the end, the one thing everyone can agree with is that it’s Jack Sparrow that keeps us watching.
But Pirates’ charm resides in more than just Jack’s ability to make us laugh. The comedy certainly wasn’t enough to make critics love On Stranger Tides, which didn’t manage to live up to its predecessors. What was it that made The Curse of the Black Pearl so beloved, led audiences to Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End… and now, even after On Stranger Tides, gives us hope for Dead Men Tell No Tales?
The Curse of the Black Pearl introduces Jack to us for the first time; utterly unpredictable, half-drunk and/or half-insane (to such an extent that even the filmmakers themselves were confused about Johnny Depp’s state of mind), yet somehow incredibly charming. He seems driven purely by selfish motives, caring only about his fame as a pirate and getting back his ship. It’s not until Elizabeth gets to know him better that we understand what Jack is really after: freedom.
Jack pushes people away at every turn in favor of his own success, and deliberately makes dangerous decisions — which often works in his favor, because he has the advantage of surprise, but can also go terribly wrong. In making himself into a larger-than-life character, he’s ultimately sacrificed a part of his humanity.
Or that’s what he thinks. Maybe it’s what he wants to think. Somehow, despite his intention to be a selfish, greedy pirate, Jack always finds himself doing the right thing. Maybe he’s not quite the bad person he thinks he is.
Dead Man’s Chest tackles this dilemma head-on. With the Kraken at his heels, Jack faces the direct consequences of his deal with Davy Jones… and his old decision to go against Beckett “People aren’t cargo, mate.” He’s faced with a morbid question: how many souls are you worth?
But of course, this level of character development is difficult to visualize when it comes to Jack. So instead, we see his journey through Elizabeth and her own struggles with morality. She’s the one who challenges the persona Jack portrays. “You’re a good man,” she tells him — and Jack refuses to believe it; he’s still manipulating everyone in pursuit of his own survival. While he won’t abandon his companions, he struggles to take the next step. Will he sacrifice himself for the benefit of his companions, or drag them all to his death with him?
Ultimately, it’s Elizabeth that makes the decision for him. And while it does seem to represent Jack’s ultimate failure to do the right thing, it also leaves us wondering if he would have eventually made the decision to stay anyway.
At World’s End, then, is the conclusion of Jack’s struggle with himself. Feeling wronged by Elizabeth’s betrayal, he seems to unravel somewhat. His quirky, wild nature sometimes even takes on a vicious undercurrent. But in a war that has every man for himself, Jack is the first to do the right thing, voting for Elizabeth as Pirate King; effectively choosing to be the first to take a step back.
It’s a surprisingly selfless act from a character that seems to demand to be the center of attention at every turn. Jack never wanted money or a powerful position (which is why he is never too upset at losing either), but he did want freedom, and that desire for freedom was pushing him towards Davy Jones’ heart.
But yet again, Jack underestimates his own nobility; he has come too far, and made too many friends. In this journey, he has discovered that not even his own ambition can stop him from being a good man.
The first 3 movies did an excellent job at pitting Jack’s own desire for power against that of his adversaries, so that it was stripped away of surface-level greed and became something much more profound. Under all the comedy and the perhaps, at times, formulaic nature of the story, there’s an impressive amount of character development being done, slowly but surely.
It takes careful writing to keep Jack’s story within the right measures of mysterious, lovable and poignant, but the trilogy achieved it. That wasn’t the case with On Stranger Tides, which, separate from the movies before it, didn’t really examine Jack’s character the way they did through Elizabeth and Will’s eyes.
While the actors, the sets, and of course the music of Pirates of the Caribbean are all amazing, they aren’t what gives the franchise the power it has. Even when we’re focused on other storylines, and on the awesome visuals, it’s the much subtler message that makes us really feel it. Because at its heart, Pirates is a story about morality: Jack Sparrow’s morality, and the noble spirit that resides beneath the show he puts on… which continues to exist, despite his own best attempts to ignore it.
He isn’t a perfect man, but he’s a good one, after all. And it’s that gradual development that’ll keep us rooting for him until the very end.
Let’s hope that Dead Men Tell No Tales remembers that.
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