A film based on a theme park ride
Pirates of the Caribbean began as a boat ride at Disneyland, opened in 1967 — the last ride Walt Disney worked on personally. Turning a ride with no story into a film seemed a strange idea, and when The Curse of the Black PEARL came out in 2003, many critics expected a disappointment. It became a huge success, and four more films followed. The second, Dead Man's Chest in 2006, became only the third film ever to earn more than a billion dollars around the world. Keira Knightley, who played Elizabeth, was seventeen when filming on the first film began.
Many small details from the ride appear in the films, including the dog holding the jail keys in its mouth and the song that the pirates sing.
Jack Sparrow was based on a rock star
Johnny Depp built the character of Captain JACK SPARROW partly on Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, with his swaying walk, eyeliner and beads. Disney executives watching early footage were worried he was ruining the film, but audiences loved the performance and Depp was nominated for an Oscar. Keith Richards later appeared in the series himself, playing Jack's father.
Jack's rival, Captain BARBOSSA, leads a crew under an AZTEC CURSE: after stealing cursed gold, they cannot die, and in moonlight they appear as UNDEAD skeletons. The only cure is to return every MEDALLION of the treasure.
Davy Jones' Locker was sailors' slang
DAVY JONES is a character in the films, captain of a ghost ship with a face of octopus tentacles. But the phrase Davy Jones' LOCKER is much older: eighteenth-century sailors used it to mean the bottom of the sea, the place where drowned sailors and sunken ships ended up. Nobody knows for certain who Davy Jones was meant to be.
The KRAKEN, the giant sea monster Jones sends after ships, comes from Scandinavian sailors' stories, which may have been inspired by sightings of real giant squid. Our mythical creatures page has more monsters of the deep.
Parley and the pirate code
The pirates in the films invoke the right of PARLEY, a demand to be taken to the captain to negotiate, under the pirate code. Barbossa says the code is more like guidelines than actual rules. Real pirate crews did sign written articles agreeing rules and shares, which our pirates page covers, but there was no single code shared by all pirates.
TORTUGA, the rowdy island where Jack recruits a crew, was a real place: an island off the north coast of Haiti that was a base for buccaneers in the seventeenth century.
The crew and the grid
Will TURNER, a blacksmith who becomes a pirate, and ELIZABETH SWANN, the governor's daughter, are the other heroes; Commodore NORRINGTON is the naval officer chasing them; and GIBBS is Jack's loyal first mate. Jack's most useful possession is a compass that does not point north at all: it points to whatever the person holding it wants most. CALYPSO is a sea goddess bound in human form, and the TRIDENT of Poseidon can control the oceans.
The INTERCEPTOR is the fastest ship in the navy until Jack takes it, and every pirate is out to PLUNDER.