Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 adventure film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the sequel to the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The film was directed by Gore Verbinski, writen by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) discovers his debt to the villainous Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) is due, while Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) are arrested by Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) for helping Jack Sparrow escape execution.
The
film was shot back-to-back with the third film, and was released in Australia
and the United Kingdom on July 6, 2006, and in the US and Canada on July 7, 2006.
The movie set several records in its first three days, with an opening weekend
of $136 million. As of its date of close, December 7, 2006, the film made $423
million in the US and became the third film to reach the $1 billion worldwide
mark. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End followed on May 24, 2007.
Directed
by Gore Verbinski
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by Characters:
Ted
Elliott
Terry Rossio
Stuart Beattie
Jay Wolpert
Screenplay:
Ted
Elliott
Terry Rossio
Starring Johnny Depp
Orlando Bloom
Keira Knightley
Bill
Nighy
Stellan Skarsgård
Jack Davenport
Tom Hollander
Naomie
Harris
Music by Hans Zimmer
Cinematography Dariusz Wolski
Editing
by Stephen E. Rivkin
Craig Wood
Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures
Buena
Vista Pictures
Info and Spoiler
Plot
The East India Trading Company
arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica to extend a monopoly in the Caribbean and eradicate
piracy. Leading the expansion is Lord Cutler Beckett, a powerful and ruthless
EITC agent who arrests Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner before their wedding. Beckett
threatens to execute them and the absent ex Commodore James Norrington for aiding
Captain Jack Sparrow's escape, but he offers clemency if Turner will agree to
search for Sparrow and his magical compass.
An informant in Tortuga leads Will to the Black Pearl run aground on Pelegosto, a cannibal-inhabited island where Jack and his crew are captive.
Jack hid there after he was visited
by his former crewmate, "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, who is now an indentured
sailor aboard Captain Davy Jones' ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman. Bootstrap delivered
Jack the Black Spot, a mark that his debt to Jones is due. 13 years before, Jones
raised Black Pearl from the ocean depths and made Jack her captain. In exchange,
Jack must now serve aboard the Dutchman for 100 years. Will, Jack, and the crew
escape their native captors, unexpectedly recruiting Pintel and Ragetti as they
are attempting to commandeer the Pearl, and head for sea. Jack was searching for
a key that leads to untold riches, but his magical compass has failed. He agrees
to give Will the compass if he helps him find the key and what it unlocks. Seeking
assistance from Tia Dalma, a voodoo priestess, Jack learns the compass will not
work because he does not know what he truly wants—or he knows but is unable
to claim it as his own. The key, Tia tells him, unlocks the Dead Man's Chest containing
Davy Jones' beating heart. When the pain of lost love became too much to bear,
Jones carved the heart from his chest, burying it in a secret location. Whoever
possesses the heart controls Davy Jones, thereby controlling the world's oceans.
Back at sea, the Flying Dutchman encounters Sparrow, who deviously attempts to
barter Will in exchange for himself. But Jones demands 100 souls within three
days for Jack’s freedom and keeps Will as a good faith payment.
In Port Royal, Governor Weatherby Swann frees the jailed Elizabeth. Confronting Beckett at gunpoint, she forces him to validate a Letter of Marque—a royal document with which Beckett intends to recruit Sparrow as a privateer and that Elizabeth wants for Will. Stowing away on a merchant vessel, Elizabeth lands in Tortuga where she finds Jack and Gibbs desperately recruiting unsuspecting sailors in a pub. A fallen James Norrington also applies. Blaming Sparrow for his ruin, he tries to shoot the captain and ignites a brawl. Elizabeth knocks him out to save him from the angry mob. At the dock, Jack reveals a compass' secret to Elizabeth; it points to what the holder wants most in the world. When he convinces her that she can save Will by finding the chest, she gets a bearing. Once the ship is underway, tension arises between Jack and Elizabeth when each discovers the compass now points to the other.
On Isla Cruces, Jack, Norrington, and Elizabeth
find the Dead Man's Chest. Will, who has escaped the Dutchman with help from his
father, Bootstrap Bill, arrives with the key that he stole from Davy Jones. Will
wants to stab the heart to free his father, but a three-way duel erupts between
Jack, Norrington, and Will, each claiming it; the arrival of Jones' crew and Ragetti
and Pintel trying to make off with the chest further complicate matters. It is
Norrington who ultimately escapes with the heart and the Letters of Marque while
Jones’ crewmen unknowingly retrieve the now empty Dead Man's Chest.
The Flying Dutchman pursues the Black Pearl, but with a wind behind them, the Pearl outruns her. Jones ends the pursuit and instead summons the Kraken. In a moment of cowardice, Jack abandons the Pearl in a longboat, but unable to desert his crew, he returns in time to save them. He gives the order to abandon ship before the Kraken makes its final assault. ?Realizing the Kraken is only hunting Jack, a deceptive Elizabeth passionately kisses him while handcuffing him to the mast. Racked with guilt over her deceit, she tells the others Jack chose to remain behind, unaware Will witnessed the scene and now believes she loves Sparrow. Freeing himself from the shackles, Jack bravely charges the Kraken, but the colossal beast drags him and the Pearl to a watery grave. Watching from his ship, Davy Jones declares their debt settled, although he soon discovers the chest is empty. Norrington, meanwhile, makes his way to Port Royal and delivers a heart and Letters of Marque to Cutler Beckett in a bid to regain his career. Elizabeth, Will, and the surviving Black Pearl crew arrive at Tia Dalma's shack. She reveals that the formerly dead Barbossa has been resurrected and can lead them to World's End to fetch back Jack and the Black Pearl.
Cast
Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow: Captain
of the Black Pearl. He is hunted by the Kraken because he owes a blood debt to
Davy Jones. He is searching for the Dead Man's Chest to free himself from Jones'
servitude.
Orlando Bloom as Will Turner: A blacksmith turned pirate who must
find Jack Sparrow and compass so he can free himself and his fiancé Elizabeth
from execution.
Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann: The governor's daughter
and Will's fiancé who is arrested on her wedding day for helping Jack escape.
Escaping jail, she meets up with Jack Sparrow in Tortuga and joins his crew to
search for Will.
Bill Nighy as Davy Jones: Captain of the Flying Dutchman,
Davy Jones was human long ago. Unable to live with pain of losing the woman he
loved, he carved out his heart and put it into the Dead Man's Chest, then buried
it in a secret location. He has become a bizzare creature, part octopus, part
rab, part- man, and collects the souls of dead or dying sailors to serve for one
hundred years aboard his ship.
Jack Davenport as James Norrington: He resigned
his commission as a Commodore in the Royal Navy after losing his ship in a hurricane
and failing to capture Jack Sparrow. Falling on hard times and into alcoholism,
he joins the Black Pearl crew and seeks to regain his honor and his career.
Stellan
Skarsgård as "Bootstrap Bill" Turner: A pirate and Will Turner's
father. He was cursed by the Aztec gold on Isla de Murta. Thrown overboard by
Barbossa, he spent years bound to a cannon beneath the crushing ocean. Found by
Captain Davy Jones, he joined the Flying Dutchman crew to escape a watery fate.
Kevin McNally as Joshamee Gibbs: The Black Pearl's first mate and Jack's loyal
friend.
Tom Hollander as Lord Cutler Beckett: Chairman of the East India Trading
Company, he has been sent to Port Royal to capture Jack Sparrow. What he really
desires is Davy Jones' heart, he can rule the seas with Jones' commanded servitude.
Lee Arenberg as Pintel: A pirate and former Black Pearl crew member under
Captain Barbossa. He was imprisoned after the Aztec curse was broken, but escapes
to rejoin Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl crew.
Mackenzie Crook as Ragetti: Pintel's
inseperable crewmate. He has a wooden eye, and despite being illiterate, has begun
"reading" the Bible.
Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma: A voodoo priestess
who bartered Jack Sparrow his magic compass. She also explains the legend of Davy
Jones and owns a similar locket to his.
Jonathan Pryce as Governor Weatherby
Swann. Elizabeth's father and governor of Port Royal.
Production
Following
the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003),
cast and crew signed on for two more sequels to be shot back-to-back, a practical
decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer
Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio decided not to make the sequels new adventures featuring
the same characters, as with the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, but to retroactively
turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to
explore the reality of what would happen after Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann's
embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the Fountain of
Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing Davy Jones, the Flying Dutchman
and the Kraken, a mythology only mentioned once in the first film. They also introduced
a historical East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint
to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates.
Planning on the film began in June 2004, and production was larger than The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was only shot on location in St. Vincent. This time, the sequels would require fully working ships, with a working Black Pearl built over the body of an oil tanker in Bayou la Balse, Alabama. By November, the script was still unfinished as the writers did not want director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to compromise what they had written, so Verbinski worked with James Byrkit to storyboard major sequences without need of a script, while Elliott and Rossio wrote a preparory script for the crew to use before they finished the script they were happy with. By January 2005, with rising costs and no script, Disney threatened to cancel the film, but changed their minds. The writers would accompany the crew on location, feeling that the lateness of their rewrites would improve the spontaneity of the cast's performances.
Filming
Filming for
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest began on February 28, 2005, in Palos
Verdes, beginning with Elizabeth's ruined wedding day. The crew spent the first
shooting days at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, including the interiors of
the Black Pearl and the Edinburgh Trader which Elizabeth stows away on. before
moving to St. Vincent to shoot the scenes in Port Royal. The sets used in the
previous film were reused, having survived three hurricanes, although the main
pier had to rebuilt as it had collapsed in November. The crew had four tall ships
at disposal to populate the backgrounds, which were painted differently on each
side for economy.
On April 18, 2005, the crew began shooting at Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. That was exactly the problem during production: the undeveloped Dominican government were completely unprepared for the scale of a Hollywood production, with the 500-strong crew occupied around 90% of the roads on the island and having trouble moving around on the undeveloped roads. The weather also alternated between torrential rainstorms and hot temperatures, the latter of which was made worse for the cast who had to wear period clothing. At Dominica, the sequences involving the Pelegosto and the forest segment of the battle on Isla Cruces were shot. Verbinski preferred to use practical props for the giant wheel and bone cage sequences, feeling long close up shots would help further suspend the audience's disbelief. Dominica was also used for the exterior of Tia Dalma's shack, and filming on the island concluded on May 26, 2005. The crew moved to a small island called White Cay in the Bahamas for the beginning and end of the Isla Cruces battle, before production took a break until August, where in Los Angeles the interiors of the Flying Dutchman were shot.
On September 18, 2005, the crew moved to Grand Bahama Island to shoot ship exteriors, including the working Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman. Filming there was a tumultuos period, starting with the fact that the tank had not actually been finished. The hurricane season caused many pauses in shooting, and Hurricane Wilma damaged many of the accessways and pumps, though no one was hurt nor were any of the ships destroyed. Filming finished of the second film was completed on February 7, 2006.
Special effects
The Flying
Dutchman's crew were originally concieved by writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio
as ghosts, but Gore Verbinski disliked this and designed them as physical creatures.
Their hierarchy is reflected by how mutated they were: newcomers had low level
infections which resemble rosacea, while the most mutated had full-blown undersea
creature attributes. Verbinski wanted to keep them realistic, rejecting a character
with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various David Attenborough documentaries
to study the movement of sea anemones and mussels. All of the crew are computer
generated, with the exception of Stellan Skarsgaard, who played Bootstrap Bill
Turner, who wore so much make up that he was dubbed Bouillabaisse on set.
Captain Davy Jones himself had originally been designed with chin growths, before the designers made the move to full-blown tentacles, the skin of the character is based on a blurred version of the texture of a coffee stained styrofoam cup. To portray Jones on set, Bill Nighy wore a motion capture tracksuit that meant the animators at Industrial Light & Magic did not have reshoot the scene in the studio without him or on the motion capture stage. Nighy wore make-up around his eyes and mouth to splice into the computer-generated shots, but they were never used, and Nighy only ever wore a prosthetic once, with blue-coloured tentacles for when Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) steals the key to the Dead Man's Chest from under his beard as he sleeps. To create a CG version of the character, the model was closely based on a full body scan of Nighy, with Jones reflecting his high cheekbones. Animators studied every frame of Nighy's performance: the actor himself had blessed them by making his performance more quirky than expected, providing endless fun for them. His performance also meant new controls had to be stored. Finally, Jones' tentacles are mostly a simulation, though at time they were hand-animated when they act as limbs for the character.
The Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla which had a real octopus (Oodako) crawling over miniatures. On set, two pipes filled with 30,000 pounds of cement were used to crash and split the Edinburgh Trader: completing the illusion are miniature masts and falling stuntmen shot on a bluescreen stage. The scene where the Kraken spits at Jack Sparrow does not use computer generated spit: it was real gunge thrown at Johnny Depp.
Reception
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Man's Chest premiered at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on June 24, 2006. It
was the first Disney film to use the new computer-generated Disney production
logo.
Box office
The film grossed $55.8 million in North America
on its opening day, setting a new record for the largest opening day gross for
a film, beating the previous year's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
by 11%. The opening day record would be surpassed by the following year's Spider
Man 3. The film grossed $135.6 million over its opening weekend, also a record,
this time beating 2002's Spider-Man. This record was also eclipsed later by Spider
Man 3 which had an opening weekend gross of $151.1 million. The film set 15 other
box office records, including fastest film to reach $200 and $300 million, the
highest ten-day gross, and the fastest film to reach $1 billion worldwide.
The film ended with $423.0 million domestically and just over $1 billion worldwide, becoming the 6th highest grossing film domestically and the third highest worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, the film is the 44th highest grossing domestically.
Critical reaction
After months of anticipation and industry hype, reviews for
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest were mixed. The completely computer
generated Davy Jones turned out to be so realistic many reviewers mistakenly identified
Nighy as wearing prosthetic makeup.
Controversy
Walt Disney Pictures
has been questioned by the National Garifuna Council, a representative body of
the Garifuna people, for what they feel is a racist portrayal of the Calinago,
or Caribs, as cannibals in Dead Man's Chest. The Council called for what they
considered to be a fair and accurate representation, and Disney responded that
the script could not be altered. No known changes were made.
Awards
At
the 79th annual Academy Awards, visual effects supervisors John Knoll, Hal Hickel,
Charles Gibson and Allen Hall won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The film was
also nominated for Best Art Direction, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The film
also won a BAFTA and Satellite award for Best Visual Effects. The film also won
six awards from the Visual Effects Society.
Winner, Choice Movie: Action
Adventure
Winner, Choice Drama/Action Adventure Movie of the Summer
Winner,
Choice Movie Actor: Drama/Action Adventure, Johnny Depp
Winner, Choice Scream,
Keira Knightley
Winner, Choice Rumble, Will Turner vs. Commodore (Orlando
Bloom & Jack Davenport)
Winner, Choice Hissy Fit, Keira Knightley
Winner,
Choice Sleazebag, Bill Nighy
People's Choice Awards
Winner, Favorite
movie
Winner, Favorite dramatic movie
Winner, Favorite male star (Johnny
Depp)
Winner, Favorite on screen couple (Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley)
2007 Kids Choice Awards
Winner, Favorite Movie
Home video &
iTunes release
The film became available on DVD on December 5, 2006 for Region
1 and sold 10.5 million copies in its first week of sales, thus becoming the biggest
home video debut of 2006. The versions for Regions 2 and 4 had already been released
on November 15, 2006 and November 20, 2006, respectively. The Region 3 two disc
collector's edition disc has been wrongly labeled. The 2 disc special edition
boasts almost four hours of additional features.
The film was presented in its 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The region 2 and 4 release included a DTS soundtrack. ARccOS Protection was used on the Region 1 disc and is incompatible with some Region 1 hardware DVD Players.
The film was released on Blu ray Disc on May 22, 2007.
Dead Man's Chest was also made available as a download from the iTunes Store in the US.
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