The real reason that none of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies could replicate the success of 2003's The Curse of the Black Pearl is that the later franchise installments failed to recapture the original movie’s unique structure. Most blockbuster hits have a story and character structure that is fairly easy to discern. For example, in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is clearly the hero, Obi-Wan Kenobi is his mentor, and C-3PO and R2D2 are the comic relief.
While this can be complicated by a breakout character like Han Solo, whose popularity ends up overshadowing the movie’s true lead, this still doesn't change the basic setup. Princess Leia might be beloved by viewers, but Luke remains the POV character. However, 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl didn’t follow this to a tee, and its sequels failed to replicate its clever subversion of storytelling tropes. Thus, both the later sequels and the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy wasted their chances at critical success by shifting the focus of the franchise.
While there were a lot of factors contributing to the critical underperformance of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, one under-discussed element of the original movie's success was its story structure. While Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner seems, at first glance, to be the original movie’s protagonist, it is Kiera Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann that The Curse of the Black Pearl centers around. Elizabeth Swann is the character who undergoes the most dramatic transformation, it is her kidnapping that sets the plot in motion, and she is the star who eventually decides everyone’s fate in the ending of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Later sequels failed to recapture this, resulting in their critical failure.
Why The Curse of the Black Pearl Succeeded
Although most viewers were instantly obsessed with Depp’s divisive portrayal of Sparrow was most effective in small doses.
How Jack Sparrow Stole The Curse of the Black Pearl
Depp’s The Curse of the Black Pearl character (which saw him nominated for an Oscar for Best ing Actor) is the definition of a scene-stealer. His original Jack Sparrow performance is charming, funny, and engaging, but has nowhere to grow as a character and no need for an independent arc. He has some incidental growth (eventually learning to trust instead of backstabbing), but it’s not his story or his movie — which is what makes Depp’s Sparrow such a fun distraction. He is outsmarted by Elizabeth and saved by Will, both things that the indestructible, unassailable lead of later Pirates of the Caribbean movies would never allow to happen, and he is all the more likable for this fact.
How Pirates of the Caribbean’s Sequels Lost This
From the first Pirates of the Caribbean original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy — a grim coda for a story that could have wrapped up with The Curse of the Black Pearl’s ending.
How Pirates of the Caribbean 4 & 5 Made This Worse
Although the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy earned the ire of some critics and viewers for its over-reliance on Jack, the later sequels were much more shameless about this tactic. By turning Jack into the de facto lead and cutting the original trilogy’s characters, the fourth and fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movies dropped character development almost entirely. Where The Curse of the Black Pearl had followed Elizabeth’s journey of self-realization, the fourth and fifth Pirates of the Caribbean outings simply followed Jack on another low-stakes mission. The character was not only indestructible, but he also had no growing to do, with Depp’s antihero maintaining the same amoral attitude as ever from movie to movie. While this isn’t an issue in and of itself (suave super-spy James Bond, for example, never did much growing), it’s a big problem in a franchise that wasn’t his, to begin with.
Pirates of the Caribbean Needs Another Elizabeth Swann
While Carina, Pirates of the Caribbean 6 needs an Elizabeth Swann of its own for the movie to work. What made The Curse of the Black Pearl special in a crowded field of interchangeable blockbusters was the fact that the original movie knew its comic relief couldn’t be the main character and provided audiences with a compelling lead whose journey was worth engaging with. Each sequel in the series failed to follow suit, resulting in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise gradually becoming The Jack Sparrow Show. Avoiding this by giving the Pirates of the Caribbean movies a new lead with a journey worth getting invested in is all it takes for a new movie in the franchise to succeed, although only time will tell whether this will ever happen.
