Depp’s Jack Sparrow is still a charming inebriated fellow, with Geoffrey Rush delivering an excellent cursed-villain counterpart. The great action set pieces are still thrilling. While I don’t particularly care for the bloated and often tiresome sequels, this first film still holds up. It’s also rather weird that this was the movie that more or less made audiences take Johnny Depp seriously as a character actor after delivering great performances since the 80s. While I may hold Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in much higher regard, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a hugely entertaining thrill ride. Even more miraculous, The Curse of the Black Pearl is one of the few recent high-concept Hollywood insta-blockbusters that saw both critical and commercial love in equal measure - the reviews were almost as good as the grosses.”įor my part, 2003 was a hell of a fun year for period naval adventure films.

The Curse of the Black Pearl ended up reaping over $500 million in worldwide booty (the follow-up Dead Man's Chest made even more), and Bloom, Knightley and especially Depp are now household names.

Now here we are, only a few days away from the premiere of the film's second sequel (and purported trilogy-capper) At World's End, and Pirates of the Caribbean has earned its place as one of the biggest phenomenons in recent cinema history. Indeed, Pirates of the Caribbean seemed like a recipe for disaster. How do you turn a cheesy, '50s-era boat ride into a blockbuster movie franchise? What's more, aside from Johnny Depp (who was not yet the Oscar-nominated box office draw he is today), there were no other A-list stars in the cast, only relatively unknown British actors with funny names like Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. When it was first announced that Disney was turning its beloved theme park attraction into a motion picture, it was met with plenty of skepticism. “It may be hard to fathom in retrospect, but Pirates of the Caribbean was never supposed to happen.

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