Pirate Movies Suffer from Lack of Realism

When I was younger, I wanted the movie industry - as I understood it then, in vague terms - to come up with a series of films about pirates that were raw, vicious and unyielding. Because I spent a great deal of time poring over books that portrayed pirates as the sadistic malcontents they probably were, I wanted to see those same gritty seafarers reflected with a note of genuine terror on the big screen. I suggested that nothing would please me more than a handful of well-researched, deeply real-feeling (preferably unrated) films about Buccaneers.

Occupying the opposite end of the spectrum, my younger brother - probably twice the fan of these bloodthirsty knaves that I am - indicated that he would watch anything pirate-themed, no matter how compromised, caring only for the ill-fated profession itself, not for artistic merit, realism or, as it turns out, sense. 

In the end, he won out. Let’s draw a thumbnail sketch of the ever-so-slight curve pirate films occupy in the epochs of cinema, shall we?

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was melodrama. So much melodrama, so many leading men, so many big speeches, and a great deal of swashbuckling (whatever that is). Frederic March in The Buccaneer. Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk. Tyrone Power in The Black Swan.

The 1950s and 1960s saw an uptick in films released, but still none that amounted to anything approximating realism. Instead, we were given a great number of remakes, lavish 60s sets with movies built around them, a Disney comedy (Blackbeard's Ghost) and a Hammer film (Captain Clegg).

The 1970s were a dry well in terms of this type of film, but did feature an adaptation of Treasure Island (one of fifteen plus made throughout the years) where Orson Welles plays Long John Silver. Quite awesome, but not even close to historically accurate.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were parodies and tongue-in-cheek portrayals. Yellowbeard. Roman Polanski's Pirates. The Goonies. Cutthroat Island. Muppet Treasure Island. There was Pirates of Penzance. There were comedies. There were umpteen Peter Pan renditions. And there was Shipwrecked, a movie I quite liked that *featured* pirates, but wasn't necessarily about piracy.

Then came Captain Jack Sparrow, a loony riff on the tics and tocks of Keith Richards, a character who audiences found lovable for his oddly articulate wit, his strange brand of charm and, in general, the fact that he's Johnny Depp in a big wig and coat. Star of Curse of the Black Pearl, Depp managed to not only secure an inexplicable Oscar nomination for his trouble, but also, to my mind, whose performance can be credited with driving this puppy into its magnanimous cash returns, three sequels and a resurgence in the interest of pirates not seen since a certain 1979 "We are Family" baseball team won game seven of the World Series.

The Pirates of the Caribbean series highlights my brother’s desires almost to a T, providing something - anything, really - related to these marauders, without really settling down into any sort of rhythm, or addressing the elephant in the room (in my mind, anyhow): How are we celebrating these men who set out to rob and kill professionally?

That question, it turns out, is easily answered: Put Big Safe Disney in charge, adapt their very own theme park ride and relegate the “villains” of these films to evil curses and business organizations.

The theme park angle is merely referential (“You can keep doing that forever, the dog is never going to move”), but one of the series' particularly inspired ideas – in terms of historical validity - is to pit the pirates against the East India Trading Company (surely a modern, cynical movie audience can connect with the trickeries of an evil corporation).

Unfortunately, aside from painting them as evil because they snatch up the right to assembly and free speech (not to mention their penchant for hanging accused pirates by the dozens), the films really fail to capitalize on this, never explaining the implications (in general) of the East India Trading Company, their monopolies, their exploitation of people far and wide and other ruthless “business” practices.

Instead, their "leader" seems to spend all day, every day, obsessed with pirate lore and how to beat these rogues at their own game.

I’m certainly not suggesting that these were going to be the films I envisioned as a kid, but it continues to beg the question: Why has authenticity, in all respects, been ignored so consistently? In scouring the web, I was unable to find a film or a writer claiming to have found a pirate film that could be deemed realistic.

One message board poster I stumbled upon suggested that Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was the closest we have come to date. It’s not about pirates, but it is rich in detail, cohesively exciting, coherently epic, and features a great deal of the same sorts of scenes one might find in pirate films (old ships blowing each other to splinters with cannonballs, Captains in big hats looking over old maps, helplessness in the face of the weather, etc.)

The issue of why we must keep settling for cartoonish in-name-only pirates can be boiled down to one scene in the latest film, subtitled On Stranger Tides. Jack Sparrow finds himself before King George II, portrayed as a hideously overweight slouch who just wants Jack to agree to his terms so he can consume a delicious spread of mostly desserts on the table before him. Jack, of course, is in no hurry to be pressed into service, which leads to a (trademark) burst of slapstick buffoonery.

Jack swings from chandeliers, runs across the table (destroying the aforementioned spread), breaks windows with heavy, expensive chairs and, generally, carries on like a crazy person attempting to escape the asylum.

All the while, King George II slumps further down in his chair, clapping his hands together, twitching with delight and emitting something halfway between a high pitched giggle and a loud, airy wheeze.

He represents, quite unintentionally I’m sure, the prime audience for these “pirate” films. And therein lies the rub.