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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