OK, so here's a puzzling thing...

The other night I watched Pirates of the Caribbean again. OK, so get 
this: Captain Jack Sparrow. He's a notorious pirate. He steals. He lies. 
He cheats. He tries to sell a man's soul to get his ship back. He 
triple-crosses the Royal Navy and then quadruple-crosses his enemies. 
The guy will basically do anything to save his own neck, or anything 
with a profit in it for him.

And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously. He tries to sell poor Will so 
he can get cut up, and at the end of the film, Will risks being hanged 
to help Jack escape. Wuh??

Jack does all these despicable things. And yet, as the audience, we all 
come away instinctively "knowing" that he's obviously the hero. How the 
heck did the script writers *do* that? How did they turn such a 
villainous man into a hero?

Apparently I still have much to learn about the art of writing a good 
story...

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> OK, so here's a puzzling thing...
>
> The other night I watched Pirates of the Caribbean again. OK, so get
> this: Captain Jack Sparrow. He's a notorious pirate. He steals. He lies.
> He cheats. He tries to sell a man's soul to get his ship back. He
> triple-crosses the Royal Navy and then quadruple-crosses his enemies.
> The guy will basically do anything to save his own neck, or anything
> with a profit in it for him.
>
> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously. He tries to sell poor Will so
> he can get cut up, and at the end of the film, Will risks being hanged
> to help Jack escape. Wuh??
>
> Jack does all these despicable things. And yet, as the audience, we all
> come away instinctively "knowing" that he's obviously the hero. How the
> heck did the script writers *do* that? How did they turn such a
> villainous man into a hero?
>
> Apparently I still have much to learn about the art of writing a good
> story...

what good story is in Pirates of the Caribbean?  Fun blockbuster?  Sure!  Makes
any sense?  No.

Characters are just there doing their stunts with some nonsense lines thrown in
the air for good measure in a dramatic voice tone that makes it sound like
something truly serious is about to happen in the flick, but it's just an
amalgama of disparity events leading onto more disparity events.

Glueing it all and making it work?  The bumbling and remarkable persona that
Depp imbued the character with.  He's already right up there with Darth Vader or
a John Wayne cowboy as an iconic Hollywood figure.  Depp's talent is the reason
we forgive all of Sparrow's cowardice and quirks.  He's a resourceful and
versatile actor, no doubt.

Plus, don't forget audiences these days love twisted tales and imoral
characters.  Villains turning into poor souls tormented by bullying
protagonists, lame and coward heroes, beautiful and twisted princess are all
already a staple of many movies and literature these days, specially fanfics
retelling old fairy tales.  That's why even Disney is cashing into fairy
comedies rather than the old dramatic approach...

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.

It's the typical anti-hero trope.

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On 25/07/2012 06:41 AM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.
>
> It's the typical anti-hero trope.

Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and 
say "he's the hero". That wouldn't work as a story. And yet, there are 
several stories where it clearly /does/ work. And I can't figure out how 
they do that.

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On 24/07/2012 10:02 PM, nemesis wrote:
> what good story is in Pirates of the Caribbean?  Fun blockbuster?  Sure!  Makes
> any sense?  No.

If you think the story doesn't /make sense/, you're clearly doing 
something very, very wrong.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 25/07/2012 06:41 AM, Warp wrote:
> > Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> >> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.
> >
> > It's the typical anti-hero trope.

> Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and 
> say "he's the hero". That wouldn't work as a story. And yet, there are 
> several stories where it clearly /does/ work. And I can't figure out how 
> they do that.

See my answer above.

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > On 25/07/2012 06:41 AM, Warp wrote:
> > > Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> > >> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.
> > >
> > > It's the typical anti-hero trope.

> > Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and 
> > say "he's the hero". That wouldn't work as a story. And yet, there are 
> > several stories where it clearly /does/ work. And I can't figure out how 
> > they do that.

> See my answer above.

Ok, I'll be a bit nicer and try a slightly more profound analysis of the
character archetype.

Jack Sparrow is an anti-heroical subversion of the classical swashbuckler
archetype.

In nostalgic/romantic storytelling, a swashbuckler has been traditionally
a goody-goody merry adventurer, most often from the romantic period of
16th-17th century European baroque and the golden era of piracy (the three
musqueteers being the quintessential example), although it can go much
farther in the past (Robin Hood being another excellent example, whose
stories are often dated to something like the 13th or 14th century)

The goody-goody hero character is a bit boring nowadays, and often tends to
be a rather flat and two-dimensional character. The so-called anti-hero is a
much more popular character type nowadays. The swashbuckler anti-hero is
quite similar to his more traditional counterpart in that he is a merry
adventurer who gets into wacky and flashy adventures, but unlike the
traditional swashbuckler, he has no qualms in lying, stealing and
committing other crimes if it serves his purposes (usually those of purely
personal gain). He might end up fighting the villains, but not because of
a sense of doing the right thing, but for personal reasons.

Unlike the typical swashbuckler, this is a *flawed* character. He commits
crimes, he is selfish and does things for personal gain, not to help others
(unless he is emotionally invested, eg. from a romantic perspective), yet
he usually ends up being the unwitting hero of the story who defeats the
actual villains.

There's much more depth to this character, and the writers have a much richer
variety of hijinks at their disposal for this character because he is not
limited to the boundaries of what's good, ethical and lawful.

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Am 25.07.2012 17:33, schrieb Warp:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> On 25/07/2012 06:41 AM, Warp wrote:
>>>> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>>>>> And yet... he's the hero? No, seriously.
>>>>
>>>> It's the typical anti-hero trope.
>
>>> Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and
>>> say "he's the hero". That wouldn't work as a story. And yet, there are
>>> several stories where it clearly /does/ work. And I can't figure out how
>>> they do that.
>
>> See my answer above.
>
> Ok, I'll be a bit nicer and try a slightly more profound analysis of the
> character archetype.
>
> Jack Sparrow is an anti-heroical subversion of the classical swashbuckler
> archetype.
>
> In nostalgic/romantic storytelling, a swashbuckler has been traditionally
> a goody-goody merry adventurer, most often from the romantic period of
> 16th-17th century European baroque and the golden era of piracy (the three
> musqueteers being the quintessential example), although it can go much
> farther in the past (Robin Hood being another excellent example, whose
> stories are often dated to something like the 13th or 14th century)
>
> The goody-goody hero character is a bit boring nowadays, and often tends to
> be a rather flat and two-dimensional character. The so-called anti-hero is a
> much more popular character type nowadays. The swashbuckler anti-hero is
> quite similar to his more traditional counterpart in that he is a merry
> adventurer who gets into wacky and flashy adventures, but unlike the
> traditional swashbuckler, he has no qualms in lying, stealing and
> committing other crimes if it serves his purposes (usually those of purely
> personal gain). He might end up fighting the villains, but not because of
> a sense of doing the right thing, but for personal reasons.
>
> Unlike the typical swashbuckler, this is a *flawed* character. He commits
> crimes, he is selfish and does things for personal gain, not to help others
> (unless he is emotionally invested, eg. from a romantic perspective), yet
> he usually ends up being the unwitting hero of the story who defeats the
> actual villains.
>
> There's much more depth to this character, and the writers have a much richer
> variety of hijinks at their disposal for this character because he is not
> limited to the boundaries of what's good, ethical and lawful.

Plus, it's much easier to like this guy. The audience can identify with 
his flaws (at the same time feeling superior to him because he's even 
worse, making him a non-threat), and also with the stuff that happens to 
him.

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On 7/25/2012 0:57, Invisible wrote:
> Sure. But you can't just take somebody with no redeeming qualities and say
> "he's the hero".

You can if his redeeming trait is that he's fighting against the even more 
awful "legitimate" characters.  Han Solo is a smuggler, a pirate, a card 
cheat, etc. But since he's giving the finger to Darth Vadar, we like him anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Darth Vadar

That name gets misspelled probably as frequently as "Hannibal Lecter".
I wonder in how many ways it's misspelled.

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