Headscratchers / Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

• What was Will doing floating about in the wreckage? Had he been travelling aboard the Black Pearl, somehow not learning it was cursed? If so, you'd think the pirates would remember Bootstrap Bill's kid wasn't a girl. Or did he just so happen to be a passenger aboard the ship the Pearl attacked? But then, why was he and nobody else left alive? It can't have been out of respect for Bill: not only would it be wildly out of character, but then that would again mean that the pirates knew Bootstrap's child was a boy. Not to mention he was conspicuously wearing the Aztec coin, which the pirates somehow overlooked…?
  • He was on the ship that was attacked by the Black Pearl travelling to the Caribbean to find his father (who had taken up piracy unknown to him) and just happened to be the only one lucky enough to survive the attack and ensuing explosion (or perhaps, given the curse, there was a supernatural hand which helped him out). The crew of the Pearl didn't leave him alive as much as they simply didn't find him among the wreckage. Given how much of it there was, and how much fog and smoke and fire there was, they probably just didn't see him; they're supernaturally cursed, but they're not Superman. It appears that the Pearl attacked the merchant ship but were too over-eager and blew it up before they were able to search it, and Will managed to get overboard in time to survive.
  • Although it's never actually confirmed that it was the Pearl that attacked the merchant ship; we just see a brief glimpse of a ghostly ship in the fog. Of course, it probably is (and was almost certainly intended to be), but given how many cursed spectral pirate ships of the damned that seem to be floating around in this universe, it could have easily been another such ship.
  • Elizabeth does confirm it's the same ship. When she's first brought aboard the Pearl and is threatening to drop the gold piece overboard, she mentions that she recognises the ship having seen it eight years ago - we can assume that she's referencing the prologue. As for Will's survival at the start? He was probably on the merchant's ship as a cabin boy and had managed to get over the side of that ship thanks to being a young boy not easily noticed during a battle between full-grown men. When the ship blew up, he probably found a piece of driftwood from the wreckage and subsequently passed out, leading to him being found by the Swanns.
  • It's also a plot point in the movie that the Pieces of Eight call to one another when in contact with the open sea (notice when Elizabeth falls into the sea there's a strange supernatural wave emanating from the medallion and the Black Pearl besieges Port Royal shortly thereafter) so that's presumably how the Black Pearl found Will in the first place and why they sank the merchant ship he was in.

• Is it possible that Will might have noticed something was up with these Pirates? In the first battle, Will seemingly kills Jacoby when after he blows several bombs into windows, and then Will seemingly kills him again when he chases a girl. Will didn't technically see his face, but Will seemed pretty confused when he sees Jacoby reappear in front of him later, before Will gets knocked unconscious.
  • Elizabeth getting captured was Will’s main concern, so he probably didn’t focus much on it. He may have realized it later after learning about the curse.
  • He was definitely a bit surprised, but did get knocked unconscious almost immediately after, so assuming it even stayed in his memory in the light of day he might have just reasoned that he saw a similar looking pirate in the dark and chaos (let's face it, scummy hairy pirates do kind of all look alike), or any number of other more 'normal' alternatives before leaping straight to "OMG UNDEAD ZOMBIE PIRATES!"

• Why didn't Barbossa just politely ask anyone for a few drops of blood? He has a capacity for diplomacy and charisma, and most people would view a shipload of nigh invulnerable pirates as a very bad thing. He could've poked around a bit, met Will, and explained the situation with a sword in his gut. Will probably would've volunteered.
  • Personality. Barbossa is very much a "why ask when you can take" type of personality. He even criticizes the tendency to negotiate within Jack as being the reason that Barbossa mutinied and took the Pearl.
  • But he's also a pragmatist. If the Pirates could gain consent before the ritual then it'd just make everything easier.
  • Because where's the fun in that? They have invincibility and so few other pleasures in life that sacking a town is a blast.
  • They're also pirates. If they were the kind of rational, calm pragmatists who sailed into a port and politely asked for a drop of blood from all the inhabitants rather than just knackering the place, they probably wouldn't have stolen the treasure and ended up cursed or even became pirates in the first place.
  • As he makes clear later, they're not certain whether they need just a drop of blood or if they need to sacrifice the victim's life. Revealing what they need and why would backfire if just a drop of blood wasn't enough.

• What's the deal with 663 golden medallions? Does this number hold some significance in Aztec religion? Were the Aztecs trying to make 666 but ran out of gold?
  • It's 882 gold pieces. Presumably Cortez demanded a lot of gold, and the Aztecs came up with as much as they could on short notice.

• All they needed is Will's blood... so he was threatening to shoot himself. Hey, blood! Not like five quarts would all vanish into thin air before they could squeeze a bit into the chest from the headless corpse...
  • Blood coagulates. They were on the Pearl when Will made his threat, not near the chest (which was back on Isla De Muerta), so his blood may not have been sufficient to break the curse. And, since Will was the last Turner (as far as they knew), if they screwed up and failed to break the curse, they were doomed to an eternity of a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Coagulates and spoils. How long would a jar of corpse-salvaged blood last in the tropical Caribbean heat, before it's so much clotted sludge? Not long enough to reach the island where the treasure was, that's for sure.
  • It's also quite possible that Will has to be alive (at least up until the moment his blood is shed) for his blood to break the curse. And even if it's not necessary, the pirates have no way of knowing either way, so they can't afford to take the risk.
  • It may be that the condition of the curse is that the person making the "blood sacrifice" has to put the coin in. That's why Barbossa made Elizabeth hold the coin and drop it in. It's not really a blood SACRIFICE to the heathen gods if someone scoops up your blood and drops it in for you. Debatable whether forcing you to make the sacrifice against your will counts, but it seems logical that someone else making the payment in your name certainly doesn't count.
  • Can't be true. Will dropped the coin Jack stole for him.
  • Jack's intent may factor in, since he meant to put the coin back and he deliberately tossed it to Will so he could put it back. So either you drop it yourself or you intentionally make the blood sacrifice. Will shooting himself and (potentially) leaving some blood on the railing would not satisfy either requirement.
  • At that point, Will was leaning backwards while standing on the edge of the ship. He was making it so that if he had shot himself, his body would have fallen into the ocean. It might not have been impossible to gather some of his blood after that, but it would have added complications.
  • Besides, they had Will, they were in the home stretch to being free of the curse. Leaving him alive was a precaution - we don't want to screw things up at the last minute, do we? They could have at least TOLD him that they only needed a drop or so, he might have been a little more reasonable to work with.
  • Those Two Guys did - then another crew member said otherwise.

• Why does Jack (the monkey) take a medallion and become cursed again? If he was a human being it would make sense; humans have high intelligence and can enjoy many pleasures apart from the base biological ones, and may consider the ability to eat, drink, and have sex a fair price for being immortal so they can eternally enjoy the finer things in life (ranging from good conversations, to being able to see the course of history for centuries to come, to crushing their enemies beneath their heels with their now invincible bodies). But a monkey... why would he want to be immortal at such expense?
  • It's a monkey. It doesn't know about the effects of the chest.
  • Also, it might have simply acted with survival in mind. What better way to preserve your life than by becoming immortal?
  • Plus, it's a pretty big assumption that the monkey was able to put the idea that he'd been cursed and the shiny gold piece he grabbed a long time ago together. He probably just thought the gold was pretty and interesting, and that's why he grabbed it.
  • Barbossa trained the monkey to steal those medallions, back when they were collecting those which had been sold or bartered away or lost in dice games, before the Pearl's crew learned they were needed to break the curse. Jack just did what he'd been trained to do.
  • Wait, does this mean that they got the monkey to do the blood sacrifice as well? Because that's a funny thought. What if they'd forgotten that the monkey took one of the medallions as well?
  • They would notice that he turned skeletal in the moonlight.
  • Monkeys can actually be a good bit smarter than the OP gives credit for. There was a lab situation that actually led the monkeys to basically realize their enclosure was cleaned out reasonably close to them being fed, and thus believe their waste was valuable to the researchers, thus they would shit in their hands and offer it to the researchers in hopes of being rewarded. Yes. Seriously. Also, Jack is a little bastard, it's entirely possible that he gave up physiological satisfaction for the satisfaction of screwing with people for eternity, with the constant hunger and monkey-horniness making him fairly pissed off.
  • Actually, there's a real answer to this one, beyond conjecture, and it gives Jack the Monkey more credit than all of the above. Unlike the crew, the monkey doesn't pull for Barbossa out of fear or respect - he's Barbossa's constant, devoted bestie. President of the Barbossa fan club, even. Then Jack murderers Barbossa. So, monkey steals gold. Next time you see the monkey, he's doing what? Terrorizing Captain Jack, haunting his ship like a ghost and otherwise making Jack's life hell in his own little way (throwing Jack's precious hat overboard, for example). Jack can shoot him all he wants, but the monkey's here to stay, a constant reminder of Barbossa. It's vengeance, baby. Half-baked, trifling monkey vengeance. Notice, once Barbossa's alive and well, the monkey sets out to save Jack from the locker and doesn't pester him again?
  • Let’s follow that through to its logical conclusion. Then, why doesn’t Jack forcibly return the monkey to the treasure chest, make a new blood sacrifice to undo the curse, and then kill him for good? Or less violently, just abandon him in the most remote island imaginable (presumably on a different side of the world to the Carribean)? In the latter case, the monkey could swim or walk the ocean floor to his heart’s content and probably never find Jack and the Pearl, not before the end of their natural lifespans anyway.
  • Because that’s a lot of effort to go to to rid only Jack of an annoyance. The monkey's not so inconvenient that he makes life on the ship unbearable so it’d be hard to justify a whole expedition to Isla De Muarta just to get rid of him.
  • Also, an undead monkey has potential barter value to occultists whom Sparrow might want to cut deals with. He offered caged Monkey Jack to Tia Dalma as part of a swap, and fully expected her to accept the creature as a valuable commodity.

• How was Barbossa not going to make the mistake of Jack being Captain Jack Sparrow again? Was he going to change Jack's name somehow?
  • He was going to kill Jack so that he wouldn't be captain again.
  • Didn't the first mutiny remove his captaincy anyway?
  • Forgetting somebody is who they are is a difficult mistake to make, and not particularly relevant here. It was just empty bravado on Jack's part, and Barbossa was just (obtusely) pointing out how little sense it actually made.
  • Jack's comment was more like "you forgot how awesome I am." with Barbossa saying that he would take that into account this time.
  • To elaborate Jack's comment was said in response to Barbossa asking how Jack got off the island. Jack's response was basically saying, "I'm Jack Sparrow. I find a way." Barbossa saying he won't make that mistake again was him saying that this time he won't underestimate Jack and just leave him marooned and hope that he'll die, he'll make sure he's dead.

• How on EARTH did Jack and Will manage to keep that canoe underwater when sneaking past the naval guards!?
  • Jack's Crazy Is Cool aura has grown so strong it's turned him into a low-level Reality Warper.
  • Jack's been putting on a few pounds lately; he just disguises it with his extravagant clothing and makeup.
  • Plus, Will Turner isn't the brightest character in the series. In fact, he's quite dense.
  • As Jack himself says in a different context, "Just close your eyes and pretend it's all a bad dream, that's how I get by."
  • Perhaps they weighed it down with some heavy iron stuff from the blacksmith shop or the docks (or even loose stone rubble) and dumped it on the harbour bottom when they got next to the ship.
  • We see a shot both inside and outside that canoe. Nowhere is there any heavy objects used to keep the canoe down. Not to mention that wouldn't work anyway. To counteract the buoyancy of that much air and wood, they would need a couple tons of weight, not bits of scrap metal and rocks. It's just a case of Hollywood physics.
  • Because a Shout-Out to The Crimson Pirate trumps physics.

• Having been captured, Elizabeth negotiates the Pearl leaving Port Royal by threatening to drop the medallion off the side of the boat and into the ocean. The crew tries to bluff her by saying it isn't important, but when she pretends to drop it, they react with fear. Why? Elizabeth throwing the medallion overboard isn't a huge deal. If she really did drop it, one of them would've just been able to hop in the water, do the whole ocean-floor-walking thing and go get it. In fact it would've worked out better for them, since then they'd have the medallion and they wouldn't have to strike any sort of deal with her. They could have their cake and eat it too.
  • Ships move faster than they look, and there's always the possibility the medallion could've been swallowed by some fish or something... best not to risk it.
  • Except that Barbossa didn't tell them to start sailing away until AFTER he and Elizabeth had made their agreement.
  • Instinct. how else would they react to it?
  • Obviously he didn't think of it the first time he saw it, because the fact that they are invincible skeleton things didn't get brought up until a little bit later.
  • Even an immortal wouldn't want to have to wander around the ocean floor looking for a piece of gold the size of a beer coaster. If it isn't taken somewhere by the current or buried in the sand or eaten by some sea creature, it's still an itty bitty thingamajiggie that they'll have to search for mostly by touch. Fun.
  • The answer's simple: the water's murky and polluted, and the medallion could get washed in any direction by an undertow or buried in the sand. Even if you could dive down to find it without worrying about something like breathing, you still wouldn't be able to guarantee where it landed. Plus, it's night, and it's the 1700s. There was no way to see where the medallion fell or to find it with your eyes.
  • Not to mention how much work they must have done tracking done every, single, last, miserable piece - the last thing they wanted to see was someone throwing the last remaining coin into the water, to get eaten by sharks or whatever. The pirates' not wanting to go through additional pain in the behind should more than explain their reaction.
  • They should also be under time pressure. They are still within reach of Port Royal's cannons and cannot afford to search for hours for a single gold coin in a pitch-black sea (once it gets day again, they will no longer be camouflaged by the darkness, which makes their black ship nigh-invisible by night). Even if they are nearly indestructible, their ship is not, and cannon fire might be detrimental even to the undead.
  • The problem with the "Time Constraints" and "The Murky Water/Fish" Theories is that it's pretty apparent that the coins pulse when they are in the water. So it makes it pretty easy to find something when it's going off like a beacon inside of your brain whenever it's in the water. Also, being immortal, and thus having all the time in the world, it may be an inconvenience to go find it, while under cannon fire, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the end. Because they will still be able to get to the destination island in their own good time and drop it off, making the panic only justifiable if they were a bunch of normal, non-immortal, non-skeletal pirates, but still not making a damn bit of sense for Barbossa and his crew. And even if the ship gets shot to hell and back, they can climb up the anchor line of any other ship and just take it, no problems.
  • Not necessarily. Think about if you're making a sandwich. You've got the bread out, put the meat on, put the lettuce on, added some ranch and bacon bits, and you're ready to go. Then, you think you might want a glass of milk, so you leave the sandwich on the table to fetch one. While you're doing this, your cat hops on the table, and nearly knocks over your sandwich. If you're anything like most people, you'd make some—possibly frantic—effort to save your sandwich and shoo the cat.
    
    But why? You've got more bread, more meat, more dressing and more lettuce and it would only take like five minutes to make another one. Why not just let it fall or let the cat have it?
    
    Because when you're that close to having something you want/need in your hands, anything that's going to delay it further is going to cause that reaction, especially if it's something you've been wanting/needing for a long time. Yes, they could have faffed about on the ocean floor, searching for the coin while letting their ship get destroyed. But that would have been a lot of work and time (plus the needless risk to their ship) to get something that had literally been within arms' reach.
  • Plus, they believed they finally had the person whose blood they needed to break the curse - dawdling around on the ocean floor would have increased the chances of someone from the town mounting a successful rescue or her getting killed in a counter-attack. Barbossa was probably thinking "We got what we came for, so let's just humour her demands and go break the curse." Besides, the Pearl was a damn fine ship. Why let it get destroyed if they can prevent it and go on pirating afterwards? Also, waiting around for the Pearl to get blasted by cannon fire would have made it tricky to get the "Blood of Bootstrap Bill" back to Isla de Muerta - the pirates can walk underwater, but their descendants can't. The blood necessary to break the curse is passed on, not the immortality effects of it.
  • More simply, they probably just panicked and didn't think of the possibility at the time.

• Elizabeth bluffs the crew of the Black Pearl by threatening to drop the medallion into the ocean unless the Pearl leaves Port Royal and never returns. A couple things. One they're still in the shallows close to Port Royal, so it would be simple even for an ordinary man to retrieve the medallion. But the crew aren't ordinary men; they're immortal. As seen in the final battle, they could easily just jump in the water and go get it no problem. Barbossa and his crew react with fear when Elizabeth fakes dropping the medallion... but it would've actually worked out better for them, considering then they could get the medallion, keep Elizabeth and then not have to make any kind of deal anyway.
  • Even near port, the bottom of the ocean is rocky, murky with low visibility, and has a lot of crevices and sand. Additionally, objects very rarely fall straight down when dropped into it. Would you want to scour the area looking for a small object like the medallion? Sure, they COULD probably get it back, but it would be a lot of work and a lot of hassle, and a bit of prayer that nothing has come along and picked up the shiny thing, or that it hasn't been buried in the sand. To say nothing of the fact that while the pirates are immortal, the Black Pearl can still be damaged, and the longer they linger, the more they risk Norrington making a counter-attack. Immortal or not, they'd be royally screwed if they lost the ship.
  • The medallion "calls out to them". It wouldn't be as much hassle as all that. They could still find it in a reasonable amount of time with little effort.
  • It called out to them once in 10 years. That's what those waves were. It's pretty risky to put their faith in that. Still, it's unclear if the Pearl sinking in the time it took them to look is such a big factor... can't they just steal another ship from the port after killing the crew?
  • Since the calling came when the medallion was underwater, it seems that the signal is sent only when the piece is in the ocean. Elizabeth kept it in a chest for the intervening years so that's why they didn't sense it until the present. If she dropped it in they probably would still sense it. The other points stand though.
  • It's the fastest ship ever, "nigh-uncatchable". Even if they got another ship, that ship would be the equivalent of a donkey to their fast stallion. Plus, how shallow was the water in the port? It has to be deep enough for large vessels to get in without being beached. If a person got into the water, they'd be wading.
  • Also, as far as they know they're finally on the verge of getting this pesky "immortality curse that's turned them into undead skeleton monsters and caused them unending misery" thing dealt with once and for all after a very long time. They don't want to piss about in the harbour looking for a dropped medallion, fight the most powerful ship the Royal Navy has stationed in the Caribbean and spend time stealing another, inferior ship if the really-pretty-good-one they currently have gets blown up, because doing that pointlessly and unnecessarily extends the time they have to spend being miserable cursed undead skeleton monsters. They just want to get out of town, go to their hidden island with the cursed treasure, end this pesky curse that's ruined their lives and get back to being living, normal pirates again as quickly as possible, because of course they want to get rid of the curse as quickly as possible, why wouldn't they? Elizabeth dropping the medallion into the bay is an unneeded complication for them, so they react with alarm when it looks like she might.

• In the scene where Elizabeth first encounters the pirates in their zombie form, two of them are hammering... something with hammers. What are they doing? It doesn't look as if they are forging or repairing anything, they are just hitting it.
  • ...Dramatic license? It looked cool and frightening at the same time.
  • They may be hammering something into shape that's not entirely visible in the night darkness or Elizabeth's swirling viewpoint. You don't have to necessarily heat metal to glowing red to try and hammer it back into shape... especially if you don't have a forge or fire to heat it in.
  • They were hammering barrels shut. Though why they were doing it up on deck is another question.

• Why is Bootstrap Bill Turner's blood the blood needed to lift the curse?
  • This is explained explicitly in the movie: They needed the blood of all the pirates that took gold from the chest which included Bootstrap. They still needed Turner's because they tossed him overboard before they realized this, so he was the last one they needed.

• Did their clothes get cursed too? The curse makes them into skeletons but the clothes also looked all torn up in the moonlight.
  • The curse seems to extend to whatever they're wearing at the time. There's probably nothing wrong with the clothes in and of themselves, though.
  • Curses in this Verse seem to have ambient cosmetic effects on whatever it is they afflict. Consider how torn-up and decayed the various curse-afflicted ships in the films look: you could go fishing with those sails, they're so full of holes, yet they still remain functional for actually sailing in the wind!

• A simple question: Norrington wants Jack Sparrow to be hanged, as soon as he discovers the branded "P" on his wrist which says he is a pirate. So we must assume the authorities brand all pirates that they get hold of. But they also hang all pirates they get hold off. Why don't they hang them in the first place, without bothering to brand them at all? If Jack Sparrow was branded, why wasn't he hanged at the same occasion?
  • It's All There in the Manual. Jack was branded a pirate by Beckett for releasing a ship full of slaves and imprisoned, from which he escaped. The brand was humiliation, not a death sentence. It was akin to modern whistleblower laws in America, a way of ensuring he could never work as an honest man again for doing the right thing.
  • Pirates were not always treated the same way. Punishments varied by jurisdiction (some colonies were more tolerant than others) and especially by time period. For a long time the British government not only tolerated but encouraged privateers to attack foreign merchant vessels. But once the Royal Navy was built and the Brits could control the waters themselves they started cracking down hard on piracy of all kinds, even the pirates they themselves had funded. It could be posited that the flashback at the beginning of the movie when Norrington first states his desire to see all pirates hanged takes place during the tail end of the pro-piracy days. The fact that Norrington states his intent to see all pirates hanged suggests they weren't all being hanged at that time and he intends to change that. Jack could have been branded but not hanged during this time. The later scene after Norrington is made Commodore takes place after British naval policy has shifted from a pro-piracy to anti-piracy stance (hell, Norrington may have helped spearhead the anti-pirate campaign in the PotC universe). Norrington now has command of a powerful warship (the Dauntless), the authority to enforce the law in the waters around Port Royal, and a willing political ally in Governor Swan who is clearly no fan of pirates either (he is, after all, the one who orders Jack hanged).
  • No.
    
    Pirates and privateers are two different things. Privateers were only allowed to attack enemy vessels in a time of war. If the war ended, the Letter of Marque was no longer valid, so if they continued to attack vessels of the prescribed nation, they were a pirate. Conversely, if they attacked ships of any other nation, they were a pirate.
    
    Privateers were used right up to the War of 1812, because they offered advantages, such as being significantly cheaper than commissioning ships, costing the Crown next to nothing, and could be mobilized almost immediately.
    
    Port Royal's pro-pirate era was the 1690s, but the series is, according to Word of God, set in 1740s-ish, and even then, pirates were prosecuted everywhere in every time period, but in the 1690s, Port Royal was just short of a pirate fortress. By around 1700, they stopped harbouring pirates.
  • Just pointing out that, nope, according to Wikipedia, the prologue of the film takes place in 1720. Which would place the main action of this first installment in 1728.
  • "Pirates and privateers are two different things." That all depends on whose side you're on, doesn't it? The French and the Spanish didn't see much of a difference between English pirates and English "privateers" back in the day.
  • True, and the French or Spanish would've treated captured English privateers no differently than they would, independent pirates. But that's just the classic "your terrorists are their freedom fighters" argument; essentially, privateers were the private military contractors of their day.
  • In theory, they wouldn't and I can't find any examples of it happening. The major European powers all recognized privateering as a legal part of war and treated captured privateers as enemy prisoners, not pirates. The only time it was done otherwise was with sea raiders outside of Europe (because racism and colonialism) and with privateers serving a government that the other party didn't consider legitimate at all such as Union forces prosecuting Confederate privateers or British authorities prosecuting privateers loyal to James II after the Glorious Revolution. Countries also hanged their own privateers for exceeding their commission or not having proper paperwork.
    
    There was, however, a lot of overlap in personnel. The Crown sometimes offered pardons for pirates right when they were needing to recruit some privateers.
  • What's more, the mark could indicate that Jack was caught and sentenced to be hanged at one point, but he escaped. Even just running on the movie's logic, it'd make sense to brand pirates so they can be easily recognised if they somehow escape, or get rescued by the rest of their crew. Norrington has no problem with immediately executing Jack because the brand showed he was already tried and sentenced to death.
  • Though it could just be a policy of the East India Trading Co. to mark any traitorous privateers working for them as pirates as a form of punishment, as suggested by by Norrington's remark that Jack had "had a brush with the East India Trading Co." and the later reveal that Cutler Beckett, head of the company, had branded Jack for a misdeed to said company.

• Jack explains to Elizabeth that he was rescued from the island by smugglers. Since he was stranded there with nothing but a gun, what exactly did he pay them with? Unless, of course...
  • “Unless, of course”, what? What implication are you trying to make?
  • Jack being Jack, he probably conned them into thinking he could lead them to something valuable if they rescued him and then got away at the first opportunity, or something of that sort. Alternately, they were short a crewman for whatever reason and he offered to fill in, though that's a lot less interesting.
  • Smugglers are still businessmen, and they probably figured that the great Captain Jack Sparrow owing them a favour was a good thing.
  • Or maybe they were just nice smugglers who rescued a marooned man. It's not impossible.
  • Jack was once captain of the Black Pearl, the fastest ship on the sea. Which is to say: exactly the sort of thing smugglers would want. He probably offered them the boat and then ditched them.
  • Perhaps Jack bartered some of his better hair beads. He may have concealed his more-valuable trinkets deep inside his mane, in case he needed some emergency fundage (could be he still has a precious bauble or two hidden in there).
  • Yeah, there's also the rings he's fond of stealing. He might've had half a dozen or so when he was stranded.
  • People, people: these are rum smugglers we're talking about. Why on Earth wouldn't they rescue one of their very best customers?
  • Plus, they'd want him off the island ASAP so he'll stop drinking their supplies.
  • In that case, wouldn't it make more sense to just shoot him?
  • He says "I was able to barter passage". If he didn't have anything he could barter with, he maybe offered services - working with them for an X amount of time until his debt is paid off.
  • He may have bartered the remainder of the rum they had come to get.

• There's an establishing shot with Jack in the prison of the moonlight making the cursed pirates look like skeletons. However, it appears as though this shot was during their raid and while Elizabeth was being taken to or already on the dinghy and headed for the Pearl. Wouldn't someone have noticed that the crazed pirates suddenly don't have any skin or muscle or anything? Wouldn't Elizabeth have noticed?
  • Not if the shaft of moonlight was narrow enough. The film makers cheat with stuff like that.
  • Shots of the sky showed it was a very cloudy night. There was only a brief, small break in the clouds for that reveal.

• Jack shoots Barbossa in the heart. "I can't die and you've wasted your shot!" says Barbossa. Then Will mentions he didn't waste it, dropping his blood stained medallion into the chest. After it lands, Barbossa starts to bleed out his heart and die, as does the black pirate on board the Dauntless. Meaning anyone who suffered a fatal wound while cursed is now going to die from that wound. Then why doesn't Jack die from the big gaping stab wound in his stomach?
  • Barbossa and the other pirate died because they were wounded right then, and their supernatural natures hadn't had the chance to fix the damage. Jack's wound had happened several minutes before, and was undone when he stepped out of and into the moonlight.
  • Also, there was a bullet lodged in the middle of what was, now, a beating heart. Kinda makes it hard to pump blood.
  • You notice, Jack and Barbossa went jumping in and out of moonlight throughout the fight. It's almost like a reset for wounds and such, but just standing there is what got Barbossa. If simply being wounded carried over no matter what, the pirates would be swiss cheese after the eventful ten years they'd just had. The rule was probably created just for that scene, like the fact that the cursed pirates were shown to be able to bleed just to explain how they were able to make their blood sacrifices. It's movie logic, you have to accept the rules you're shown, even if there's no better reason given. Also, Koehler had a sword stuck in him immediately after the curse was lifted, not before.

• So it's said that none of the Black Pearl's crew can taste or feel. However, many times in the film, crew members react as if in pain (Bomb Dude getting hit by Will's thrown axe, Pintel being smashed in the face with a bedwarmer). What if the curse prevents them from feeling things like a woman's flesh and the sea spray, but not things that would hurt or otherwise have some sort of negative effect on them? Hey, if you're going to put a curse on something, might as well go all the way with it, eh? Anyone else think this is plausible?
  • Word of God backs this up; while cursed, Barbossa and co. don't feel pleasurable sensations, but they can feel pain. It's possible that their sense of pain, while present, is dulled even in human form. Also, Barbossa seems to have been expecting Elizabeth to attack him, and so would have steeled himself against it, while Pintel was more shocked that Barbossa shot him than anything.
  • If the cursed pirates "don't feel pleasurable sensations," then how do you explain the scene where Elizabeth is being made to walk the plank, and Barbossa demands she return the dress he gave her? After she flings it at him, Barbossa holds it to his cheek and says with obvious delight, "Ooh, it's still warm!" How could he have felt that warmth?
  • He was being sarcastic, hence why the other pirates laugh. Like his demanding of the dress back, it was just another slight to humiliate Elizabeth.

• Why don't the pirates take Jack with them when they encounter him in prison? They were kind of called to Port Royal because of the gold coin touching water. So they were obviously raiding the town looking for it (which is quite an ambitious objective anyway, considering that the coin could simply be laying at the bottom of the sea). Then they happen to stumble across Jack Sparrow, their former captain and victim of their mutiny who originally tipped them off about the treasure in the first place. And for what reason exactly do they NOT totally jump to the conclusion that Jack might have something to do with it, possibly being able to tell them something about the coin's whereabouts (even though, ironically, he doesn't have anything to do with it and it's just a crazy coincidence for him to be around at exactly that time - though there's no way Barbossa's men could know that)? They don't even ask a single question, let alone take him with them to be thoroughly interrogated aboard the Pearl.
  • Neither of the guys who stumbled across Jack seemed that bright (or that any of Barbossa's crew was really, save for Barbossa himself and, at odd moments, Ragetti). They probably figured he wouldn't have anything valuable -like the medallion- actually on him, what with being in prison at all, and just decided it was funnier to leave him to his fate. By the time they told Barbossa (if they even told him at all) he'd presumably already parleyed with Elizabeth and as a result had his hands on the medallion.
  • In addition, it's not that big of a coincidence that Jack might have been captured at sea and brought to Port Royal while the latest owner of the medallion also happened to be there. Port Royal is apparently something of a major crossroads in the Caribbean for non-pirate ships. It's a major trading port and two very powerful British fighting ships, the Dauntless and the Interceptor, are both stationed there. They're more surprised that Jack is even alive than by the fact that he managed to get himself captured and thrown in jail.
  • From the way he reacts with clear surprise when he discovers that there is, in fact, a curse, presumably they decide that he doesn't know anything at all. Since they mutinied and dumped him before even stealing the cursed gold and apparently have not seen him the decade or so since then, they've got no reason to suspect he knows anything about the missing piece that they're searching for.
  • They mutinied and overthrew Jack before they stole the cursed gold, and it's implied they haven't seen him since, so they have no reason to think Jack would know anything about the gold to begin with. As it turns out, he does, but they have no way of knowing that. As far as they know, yeah, it actually is just a mildly interesting coincidence. Port Royale is a major port in the area, it's not necessarily unusual that a sailor might happen to end up there eventually.
  • More importantly: Pintel tells Elizabeth they know she has the medallion even before she shows it to them, they feel it calling to them. Once the water activated the medallion, it seems it gave off a more specific ping than "in the general area of this town". So the pirates who raid the fort would also be able to feel they weren't particularly near the medallion yet.

• Related to the above, when Twigg and Koehler find Jack in the Port Royal jail, why didn't either of them bother to mention it to Barbossa? Barbossa is clearly shocked to see Jack turn up alive when he's caught on Isla de Muerta, so the two of them can't have said anything. Didn't they think Barbossa would be interested to know that their former captain, who they overthrew and marooned, somehow escaped and is still alive?
  • He's in jail, he's a known pirate, he's probably going to die anyway, and getting the medallion is much more important. And after Jack turned up on Isla de Muerta, they may have kept quiet about it for fear of angering Barbossa and lucked out that Jack didn't mention that he talked with them (or maybe he did offscreen and Barbossa didn't care).

• Near the end, when Jack takes some of the cursed medallions out of the stone chest in front of Barbossa and his crew, he puts them back one by one, but he secretly keeps one in order to become a cursed, undead skeleton thingy for the upcoming fight. But why does he need to keep one? Everyone who takes gold from the chest is cursed, and simply putting back the medallions doesn't lift the curse. Barbossa, his crew and everyone else knew this at this point of the story. So why was everyone surprised that Jack turned into a skeleton? And why did they allow him to go near the chest filled with gold that can make him immortal to begin with?
  • He keeps one so that he already has it in hand and can later end the curse exactly when he wants to. They were surprised because they didn't think Jack would want to be cursed.
  • The problem is that how the curse seems to work is that anyone who is cursed stays cursed, until everyone currently cursed has paid a blood sacrifice and all the coins have been returned. It can't be that each individual person's curse is undone when they return their coin and pay a sacrifice, when the other cursed people, who haven't done so yet, stay cursed. If that were the case, then Barbossa's crew would be uncursed because only Bootstrap's blood and coin remained, ergo the other pirates have already returned their coins and made their sacrifice. So that fact that Jack took any coins, even if he put them back in, would mean that is remains cursed until everyone cursed has repaid, which hasn't been done yet since they were still waiting on Will. Even if Jack didn't need to have the existing curses lifted to lift his, Barbossa still should know that he's cursed because even though he supposedly put all the coins back in, he hadn't put his blood in. So the only possible explanation was that they just plain didn't know Jack had taken a coin, which is impossible since he was standing right in front of Barbossa and the coins made a clinking sound when put back in.
  • He didn't know that Jack took a coin, because Jack pretended to drop them all back in, but secretly palmed one of them.
  • They clearly know that he put it back in. There's probably some sort of a "distance" thing to the curse.
  • Even if he put all the coins back in, he'd still be cursed because he didn't make a blood sacrifice, so why was Barbossa shocked when he saw Jack become a skeleton?
  • Because he didn't know Jack had kept a coin.
  • It's possible that "taking" a coin involves more than just picking it up and immediately putting it back. Dropping them back in for dramatic effect doesn't show an intent to actually take the gold, just touch it. When Jack concealed a coin on his person, he actually took that coin.
  • In fact, it's almost certain that just picking up a coin and immediately dropping it back in doesn't activate the curse, since that's not theft at all; it's picking up something and putting it back. The pirates were only cursed after they took away the gold without returning it and only noticed that they were cursed after they spent it, thus clearly showing no intention of returning the gold (until forced to by the desire to remove the curse). Until he pocketed the last gold piece, however, Jack clearly demonstrated that he was willing to put the gold pieces back in the chest and wasn't stealing them. Whatever powered the curse might not have been entirely happy with Jack poking around in its gold, but it had no quarrel with him until he took a gold piece with the clear intention of not immediately returning it.

• What happened to that cursed pirate, when Elizabeth or Will (forgot which one) shoved a bomb in his open stomach and pushed him into the shadows? Did he... blow up?
  • ...Yes?
  • He was probably still conscious and might have been able to put himself back together had the curse not been broken (depending on how badly he was blown up).
  • He and the other two impaled on that long column were blown to Ludicrous Gibs, because the fact that the pirates can do blood sacrifices themselves in their normal (non-skeletal) form indicates that their physiology would be pretty much the same as any other person (besides, you know, immortality and inability to feel pleasure and maybe some other miscellaneous, unimportant-to-the-plot functions). Even if the various disembodied parts of brain matter scattered all over the cave for each individual pirate still had a collective, decentralised intelligence about them (again, for each individual pirate), that doesn’t give them any more capability to instruct the assorted rest of their other (now brainless) fragments to reassemble. So functionally, the bomb completely obliterated them, if not outright killing them thanks to the curse. And then the curse ending made it even more of a moot point (and making it a rare subversion of And I Must Scream).

• Was anyone else bothered by how both sides effectively wanted the curse to end? If it wasn't for the whole "and we will kill you once we get your blood" the heroes wouldn't have been motivated to stop them, actually they would have been motivated to help, since the whole world would be much better off with them mortal.
  • As hospitable as Barbossa was, he did still have the unfortunate habit of kidnapping people, which made it very difficult for the love-parrots to want to help him. Plus, he kept saying he'd kill everyone when it was all over.
  • And it was kinda implied (as implied as it gets in a Disney film) that they were going to rape Elizabeth after they got what they wanted.
  • Why would the protagonists and the antagonists having the same objective bother anybody? Just because you don't see it all the time in movies doesn't mean it's a headscratcher. Also, it was a historically fallacious Disney movie based on a theme park ride that broke the laws of physics like they were pickle chips, featuring cursed skeleton pirates. And the problem you have with the logic was that the antagonist's objective in and of itself was benign?
  • Breaking the laws of physics as part of the premise is okay. That's what Willing Suspension of Disbelief is for. But within the premises of the story, we expect characters to act in ways that make sense. Same reason people can accept the fact that Superman can fly, is super strong and has heat vision, but him hiding his identity with a freaking pair of glasses gets on their nerves.
  • Also, keep in mind that while all sides want the curse to end, they also have other, mutually exclusive goals- Will/Elizabeth each want to rescue the other from Barbossa at varying points; Norrington wants to capture Barbossa and his crew, curse or no curse (and keep in mind that he and the Navy doesn't even seem to believe there is a curse until they sees the skeleton pirates with their own eyes); Barbossa, by the climax, wants to stay immortal long enough to kill Norrington and his crew and then lift it and get away scot-free with all his loot; Jack just wants his ship back and revenge on Barbossa. The movie builds up plenty of reasons for everybody to fight by the end of it.
  • In addition, it's not the ends that are important when it comes to Barbossa'a goals, it's the means that sets the protagonists into motion. In order to lift the curse, he needed both the coinage and the blood offering of William Turner Sr. That means the blood of his only child and the coin said child inherited, which gets Elizabeth and Will abducted. Swann wants his daughter back safe, Norrington wants that and the pirates hanged, and Jack just wants his ship back. Lifting the curse isn't really the goal of any of the protagonists.
  • At the same time, though, the protagonists have plenty of reason to want the curse to be lifted so the bad guy pirates stop being invincible and impossible to kill. It may not be their goal, per se, but there's really no reason for them to be against it.
  • Not all the characters are aware of all of the facts, so they act on incomplete information. Will and Norrington don't find out about the curse or how to lift it until later in the film. Barbossa doesn't know whose blood they need until Jack tells him. Neither Norrington nor Will trust Jack Sparrow. The characters’ actions in this film actually make perfect sense when you consider what they want and what they know:
    • Will wants to save Elizabeth no matter the cost.
    • Norrington wants to save Elizabeth and to uphold the law.
    • Jack wants the Black Pearl.
    • Barbossa and the pirates want to lift the curse.
  • The pirates are willing to cut Elizabeth's throat and spill all her blood when it doesn't work the first time, and they're willing to do the same to Will too. So they're not exactly innocent victims who can be reasoned with.

• Elizabeth took the medallion off of Will and kept it for eight years. Why didn't she turn into a skeleton under the full moon like everyone else?
  • You are only cursed if you take the gold directly from the chest. If possessing one of the coins was enough, Will would have been cursed, too. As would anyone who accepted one as payment.
  • Barbossa explicitly states "Any mortal that removes but a single piece from that stone chest shall be punished for eternity." It's the act of taking the gold directly from the chest regardless of intentions, case closed.
  • Would it therefore be safe to knock the chest over and let the coins all spill out and then pick them up off the ground?
  • Technically, by knocking the chest over, you would still have removed the pieces from the chest, just in an indirect way. So it depends on whether or not the curse counts such indirect manners.
  • Judging from how he talks about "the greed of Cortés", the curse is a punishment to anyone who steals from the chest. Elizabeth and Will wouldn't have the medallion if it hadn't been stolen already, so the person who removed it from the chest in the first place is the one who gets cursed.

• Why is it that all the medallions managed to stay intact? Plenty of people would have been willing to melt them down - after all, it's not like they're legal tender.
  • Maybe it's like the One Ring and can't be melted down or destroyed.
  • Also, back in the old days, gold was gold. As long as it weighed enough and was real gold, it didn't matter whose face, or skull, was stamped on it.
  • But why wouldn't they cut them in half or quarters the better to spend them? They just kept getting absurd amounts of change every time they purchased something worth less than a medallion?
  • They probably traded whole medallions for money exclusively, then used that money to purchase whatever else they wanted. Same with everybody else who got one.
  • No reason to. A huge gold medallion with a fancy engraving on it is more valuable than a melted down lump.
  • They would have probably been cut up into pieces rather than melted, but then again, they are magic gold pieces that turn men into undead skeletons. Who is to say they don't have a protective charm over them to make them Nigh-Invulnerable?
  • Who says that all the medallions did remain intact? There could've been broken-up pieces of medallions in the chest, that'd slipped down to the bottom because they were smaller than the whole ones. The pirates might even have re-cast some medallions from ones that were converted into gold jewelry and goblets and so on.
  • There's a lot of other gold odds-and-ends scattered around the treasure chest as well; perhaps they were items that contained gold from the melted-down medallions that the pirates tracked down, stole and brought back to the chest as well. It's the gold that's cursed, not necessarily the form it takes.

• Why doesn't Pintel bleed when shot by Barbossa? We know that gunshot wounds bleed from Jack's killing of Barbossa, and we know that even when cursed the pirates bleed when wounded (not in the moonlight, of course) from when Elizabeth stabs Barbossa.
  • They're essentially undead even in normal form. They HAVE blood but it doesn't really circulate. It may be that their hearts just don't pump, and none of their other biological functions are really working either. Barbossa didn't really BLEED, but even if your heart isn't pumping blood, if you stick the knife directly into the body it's going to come out bloody. Then, when Will broke the curse, Barbossa's heart started pumping again. It seems that stepping into the moonlight and out of it essentially repairs your body-so Barbossa would have been fine after being shot if he'd had time to jump into the moonlight first.
  • Them being able to bleed was written in on purpose by Ted & Terry so the pirates could pay their blood debt to the gods and it would make sense.
  • Blood on a knife or putting blood on a coin doesn't necessitate bleeding, or circulation. The blood sacrifice is still possible without circulation; Jack does it at the end.
  • You do see a little bit of blood when he shoots him. Not actual bleeding but just broken skin. Likewise there's clearly blood on the knife when Elizabeth stabs Barbossa at dinner. The curse says they can't be killed, so they don't bleed when they get cut. The blood is still under there though.

• The Pearl raids Port Royale at the start of the film. Nice. A ship like the Dauntless would have a crew of at least 800, so, where are those guys? Why are they not fighting? They should greatly outnumber the pirates, who are undead, fine, but they can be dismembered or, in a more Disney-Way, locked up or tied up. They do not seem stronger than normal humans... and in addition: no one would like to fight five guys alone. Even if they had a sword and the rest were unarmed. You can kill a guy or two, and the others will just jump on top of you.
  • Firstly, watch the raiding party scene again: The Pearl is out on the bay, between Port Royal and the Dauntless! Also, the Navy was returning fire from the Fort, firing on the Pearl wasn't doing any good. But the ship wasn't the perceived easier fight, or the worst threat, as a pirate ship is basically a floating war machine, but one that can't come on land. It was the (presumed mortal) men raiding the town - killing, looting, raping, setting fires in a town full of defenceless people. If you were a navy guy, where would you be? Protecting civilians and fighting bastards with your massive stores of firearms, or in a little dingy, completely deserting everyone to try and get past a ghost ship that was assailing your shore with no protection from cannon fire?
  • Your last statement is based on the assumption that the crew would be sleeping on-shore, which they normally would not. They should be sleeping on board, returning fire, greatly outgunning a ship like the Black Pearl, which is canonically a tuned freighter rather than a war machine (in contrast to the Dauntless, which is definitely the latter) Secondly: The Navy is not returning fire. The guys in the fort are redcoats, the colonial land forces of the Empire.
  • Lingering on that second point, aren’t they actually Royal Marines? So, naval infantry, equally at home on a boat or deployed on land?
  • It does beg the question, even if a large proportion of the crew were ashore, why would a skeleton crew not have been left behind? The Dauntless is the most powerful warship in the Caribbean, if it is the case she was unmanned at the time, the men from the Pearl could have easily boarded and sailed her away unchallenged if they so pleased. It makes no sense to leave her completely undefended, so why not have the men operate a few of the heavy guns on the lower decks, the men of the Dauntless could have matched the Pearl's broadside pound for pound by operating three or four 32lbers.
  • Even excluding the Dauntless and Interceptor, in a gunnery duel between the Pearl and the fort, the fort should win anyways. It's tougher, a more stable firing platform, and can mount larger guns. The only limiting factor in the fort's effectiveness would be the quality of the gunners; a real concern given that they are garrison troops. Nevertheless, the fort - which theoretically is there to fend off naval assaults - should be able to take potshots at the Pearl with relative impunity.
  • But that scene introduces the Pearl showing it blasting the bejesus out of Fort Royal at the onset. How it was able to do that to a fort placed up so high doesn't make sense, but they were. Also, in the first movie, the cursed Pearl had that huge fog following it around. Odds are, it obstructed the men at the fort in their aiming.
  • And on top of that, forts often employed heated (incendiary) shot, although it did take a lot of time to heat and load, time the garrison gunners wouldn't have.
  • Typically, most pirate ships were not in fact dedicated warships, but merchants of various types armed up with guns. They usually avoided combat with Naval warships rather than try to fight them, as they were almost always outmatched in such a fight. Similarly, forts have the undeniable advantage of being much harder to sink even than most warships, and any important harbour would often have multiple fortifications providing a mutually supportive network of defence, with obstructions sometimes placed in the water to force attacking ships to sail obligingly into their prepared lines of fire. Also, forts could be placed high up, giving them the ability to attack with impunity (ships' cannons could only be elevated so far, while the gunners in the fort would have gravity on their side). Then again, supernatural zombie pirates.
  • It's a cursed ship of the damned captained by a man so evil Hell itself spat him back out. There's all sorts of weird supernatural stuff going on with the Black Pearl. It's faster than the fastest ship in the Royal Navy, so stands to reason that it's probably a bit more powerful than your average rundown merchant ship turned pirate ship as well.

• At the beginning, Mr. Gibbs warns Elizabeth not to sing about pirates because it will draw them in. If he's so worried about encounters with pirates, why is he WORKING WITH THEM later in the movie?
  • Did you miss the part where a solid 8 years have passed in the meantime? And how Mr. Gibbs clearly isn't at the same station in life? He's not worried about encounters with pirates because of some pathological fear; he's worried about encounters with pirates because, you know, pirates would try and kill him and take the ship. Later on, he loses whatever station he had, and it's likely he can only find work with pirates. Just like Norrington in the second film.
  • Also, recall the exact line of dialogue. "Cursed pirates sail these waters." Clearly it's not just the idea of being pillaged and murdered that's gotten him all superstitious.
  • Unless he means "cursed" as in "bloody" or "sodding" pirates, rather than "cursed" as in "literally under a curse". Gibbs is definitely superstitious, but the word has multiple meanings.
  • Most of the scoundrels populating Tortuga, however, are probably not cursed, so he doesn't have the same problem with them.
  • Maybe Gibbs pulled a Heel–Face Turn and deserted the pirates when Jack (the closest thing he has to a Heterosexual Life-Partner) was exiled. He could be afraid of encountering Barbossa or another pirate with a grudge against him.
  • Unlikely by the timeline. Gibbs probably knew Jack from before.
  • Or maybe her singing was just getting on his nerves, and he told her it could attract pirates to scare her into shutting up.
  • Working with pirates and being on a navy ship that's attacked by them are kinda different things.
  • Not that different. Piracy was a fairly common career move for men who'd deserted from the Navy and couldn't seek legitimate employment for fear of being caught.
  • Different from the perspective of the person facing them. Younger Gibbs is a man working for the Royal Navy at an era where there was a good risk of people working for the Royal Navy being attacked by pirates. Younger Gibbs doesn't like pirates because he doesn't want to be attacked and possibly killed by them. Older Gibbs is washed up, has clearly lost his job working for the Royal Navy, and isn't exactly blessed with a multitude of other options in life. Older Gibbs likes pirates, or at least is willing to put up with them, because he doesn't have a lot of choice if he wants to work, eat and have shelter over his head.
  • If any of you really paid attention to his character, you'd notice that Gibbs is very superstitious, and there have been multiple occasions in which he claimed something would cause bad luck, so he said that line to Elizabeth out of superstition.

• What the heck was up with the guy on the Dauntless right before Jack enters Isla De Muerta? He's leading Elizabeth to the captain's quarters for her "own safety" as she tries to protest and tell him that Barbossa's crew is cursed. He laughs this off and claims that Commodore's already been informed of that as "a little mermaid flopped up on deck and told him the whole story." He then gives a dickishly smug laugh and walks off. Does this guy have a death wish or something? He just insulted the governor's daughter - who is far higher up on the social ladder than he'll ever be. Not to mention that, for all he knows, he was also rude to the Commodore's fiancee - the Commodore who is his boss. That guy could get in serious trouble.
  • What do you think Governor Swan or Norrington was going to do, have him hanged? Even in the 1600s no one was ever executed for teasing a Governor's daughter.
  • Being a dick isn't punishable by death, even in their time period. Worst case scenario, assuming what he did was ever found out, is that Norrington gave him a stern warning to mind his station and be respectful to his superiors.
  • Considering that guy was on a ship later attacked by said cursed pirates, one assumes that he either died in the fight or got a pretty good lesson in being a bit less of a smug prick out of the whole deal. Either way, he probably got comeuppance enough.
  • He didn't get killed. The guy in question is Gillette, who reappears in the third and fourth movies. He was killed during the fourth movie though.
  • The latter point about "receiving a nasty warning about not being a smug condescending prick when someone tries to warn you about pirates" presumably still applies, however. One assumes that in future, Mr. Gillette would be a bit less inclined to be snotty if someone was urgently trying to warn him about an attack by pirates after the last experience where that happened.
  • For that matter, why does this situation even occur? Elizabeth had loads of times and opportunities to warn Norrington! Like, for instance, in the very beginning of their expedition that she herself insisted on undertaking. And she doesn't think it'd be prudent to mention this detail about the impending enemy being immortal?
  • Because she's a woman, it's the early eighteenth century, and they don't take her yelling about cursed pirates particularly seriously. Sexism, basically.
  • Isn't Elizabeth being restrained in that scene as well? So she was ignoring the crew’s orders to go to the cabin and fighting with them, so they had to use force to get her inside. Elizabeth was likely telling the whole crew about the pirates being undead, so he probably thought that if she did complain, he could claim it was another of her obvious fantasies since she's just another hysterical woman.
  • Yes, and this is what makes the scene so weird. It seriously looks like she's just been saved in the middle of the battle and is immediately shoved into the cabin for her safety. In that case you could maybe excuse the officer's dismmisal - because he has a lot on his mind right now, and yeah, maybe sexism kicks in. But they had to have been sailing to that location for days. In all that time, with no urgency whatsoever, when nobody had anything better to do, she couldn't have found a mintute to calmly explain the situation, even to her father?

• So... the Aztecs were able to curse a chest of gold to turn anyone who stole a gold coin from it into unkillable immortals. How in the heck could a people capable of doing THAT get their entire civilization conquered and enslaved by a bunch of guys with guns, or by anyone for that matter?
  • It wasn't the Aztecs themselves who cursed the gold, but their gods. Presumably, the gods are fickle. They have been infuriated by Cortez' taking their sacred gold, yet have judged the Aztecs unworthy of further existence if they failed to defeat the Spaniards. Also, these movies operate on All Myths Are True. The Aztecs might have had their gods fighting with them, and by the same token, the Spanish might have had Christ or Maria on their side.
  • We NEED to make a fanfiction about holy Spaniards fighting the Aztecs with literal Jesus alongside to help them. How epic would that be?!!
  • Doesn't Barbossa say it was Cortez who placed the curse?
  • No, it was the Aztec gods, who were not nice gods.

• Okay, so Bootstrap wanted the pirates to remain cursed and that's why he got rid of one of the coins. Why did he send it to Will? Why not just toss it overboard in the middle of the ocean when nobody's looking? Or at least give it to a stranger or something, not your closest relative. Not only is he placing Will in danger by ensuring the pirates will have to target him to lift the curse (granted, they ended up doing that anyway for his blood, but presumably Bootstrap didn't know about that part since the other pirates only found out after they threw him overboard) but it's an easy connection to him and probably one of the first ones Barbossa would follow while looking for the coin.
  • These are still his mates we're discussing. He probably doesn't entirely like the idea of them being cursed for all eternity with no possible chance of undoing it, but at the same time he feels they deserve to be punished. So sending the coin far, far away from their hands is probably the best compromise. Since Will is in England at the time, it's not like they have easy access to where he is; knowing Bootstrap has a son somewhere isn't the same as having that son's exact address.
  • Boostrap also likely figured his son would just spend the damn coin rather than keep it for the rest of his goddamn life as a keepsake of his old dad. Bill does say later that his motivation was to provide for Will, so giving him a coin of pure Aztec gold was likely to aid him financially. Bill just wasn't counting on A) being thrown to the bottom of the sea B) Will keeping the coin.

• After they fail to lift the curse with Elizabeth, and the pirates start to get rowdy, Barbossa draws his sword and cows them back into obedience. Uhm, how? They're all immortal. He can't kill them, and he can't be that much stronger that they couldn't overpower him, tie him to something heavy and sendhim after Bootstrap.
  • They still feel pain and the writers said Barbossa is an expert swordsman, so they might not have wanted to get beaten.
  • Do they? It's kinda totally inconsistent. Sometimes they scream when stabbed, other times ignore it completely. The fat pirate Barbossa shot, Barbossa himself when stabbed by Elizabeth and later Jack etc. And no mater how expert you are, no way you can beat an entire mob of pirates, who shouldn't be too shabby themselves.
  • They do. Put it this way - getting stabbed with a needle hurts. But at the doctor when they're taking blood, most people will simply ignore the pain. Getting shot doesn't, necessarily, hurt right away - there's been reports of people being shot and not realising it for one reason or another. So if it's something like that, or something they're expecting, they might well not react.
  • Ragetti cried out in pain when Elizabeth dropped the coals on him and since he was trying to find the medallion that would lift the curse, there's no reason why he would stop and let her get away unless he was unable to, so he couldn't have been faking it. One of the writers said that the cursed crew doesn't feel pleasurable sensations but they do feel unpleasurable ones. "Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died."
  • It's not a serious mutiny attempt. They're just angry, frustrated and yelling at each other; they're just spleen-venting and lashing out. Remember also that before they can get the matter settled they get distracted by the fact that Elizabeth's run off and then Jack shows up again.

• Norrington refuses to go after the Pearl to save Will, and when Jack reminds him that there's also the Pearl itself, the infamous pirate ship and the last real threat to the Caribbean (which not so long ago hit Port Royal itself, so Norrington knows it's a legit threat), Commodore blows him off saying that "he serves others, not himself". What ends up convincing him? When Elizabeth offers herself as payment. So Let Me Get This Straight..., ridding the realm of a pirate threat and rescuing a, mostly, innocent man from a terrible death does not constitute "serving others", but, basically, forcing a woman into an unwanted marriage with an unloved man does?
  • As far as the "serving others" comment is concerned, Jack was phrasing his suggestion in a way that suggests that Norrington should catch the Pearl for his own personal glory, implying that if he does, he'll get all sorts of awards and promotions. Norrington's response was that he's obliged to serve his commanders, including the governor who insisted they go home, and not go off on his own to make himself look good. Governor Swann said that they wouldn't go running after pirates, so he probably figured that since they were out of Port Royal, it wasn't their problem anymore. As for Will, he broke out the wanted pirate captain with a huge price on his head when they had him in jail ready to hang and helped him escape by commandeering Port Royal's fastest ship, which was subsequently destroyed. They probably aren't too keen to want to save him after that. The point with Elizabeth still stands though.
  • But Will only did those things to save Elizabeth, and if it wasn't for him, she would've died for sure. THAT is "serving others, not himself". On the other hand, he only resorted to breaking the law because Norrington didn't heed his advice. Norrington was, tangentially at least, responsible for Will's peril, by being such an arrogant prick.
  • Norrington really wasn't being arrogant by turning down Will's advice. Will suggested that Jack could lead them to the Pearl and Norrington dismisses it saying, "the pirates who invaded this Fort left Sparrow locked in his cell ergo they are not his allies", thus he assumes Jack wouldn't know anything about its whereabouts. Of course the audience knows that Jack knows, but Mullroy and Murtogg only said that Jack mentioned the Black Pearl, which shows that he's heard of it, but doesn't prove that he has any intimate connection with the Pearl. Thus Norrington is making a logical assumption based on what he knows. As for not saving Will, Norrington at this point seems to view things in terms of Black-and-White Morality. In his mind, Will helped a pirate captain escape, therefore he is a criminal and should leave him to his fate. You do have a point about him being so easily convinced by Elizabeth though.
  • You don't have to be one's buddy to know where they live, especially if you're both pirates, for whom alliances and allegiances are ever fleeting and volatile. There was no harm in questioning Sparrow who could've at least known something, and Norrington clearly rejected this idea out of spite and revulsion to the prospect of being indebted to both Will and Jack. It's not like he had any better ideas in the pipeline. And regardless, Will did end up saving Elizabeth's life, the fact that Norrington ignored in favour of a chance to, AFAICS, Murder the Hypotenuse, and with the hands of those he apparently so despised at that!
  • Elizabeth does bring up that Will did all those things to save her, but Norrington and Governor Swann aren't hearing any of it, with Swann saying, "The boy’s fate is regrettable, but, then, so was his decision to engage in piracy." Swann had already made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with pirates ("We will return to Port Royal immediately, not go gallivanting after pirates!") and since the only person left who would suffer directly due to the pirates was Will, they probably figured "Well, that saves us the trouble of having to hang him." Norrington may have been a dick in ignoring Will's suggestion, but as he says to him, "you are not a military man, you are not a sailor. You are a blacksmith and this is not the moment for rash actions." While there was a sense of elitism and resentment, he probably figured Will's hot blooded actions wouldn't solve anything. Whether or not Norrington was justified in ignoring Will's advice doesn't change the fact that Will's subsequent actions were illegal. At the end, Governor Swann mentions that he granted Will clemency, presumably at Elizabeth's request, which suggests that if not for that, Will would have been sentenced to hang just as Jack was. That being said, all those factors make Norrington's decision to ignore all that and go after the Black Pearl just because Elizabeth agreed to marry him seem all the more flimsy.
  • Norrington knows Liz has feelings for Will. If he blows her off, he hurts the woman he loves, and sinks any chance he has with her, no matter how slim.
  • Plus since he was taking orders from Governor Swann and Swann wanted Elizabeth to marry Norrington at the time, he may have allowed it for that reason.
  • Norrington's whole character development in the film is a conflict over To Be Lawful or Good. He's not doing it just out of spite; he's a career navy officer, he's spent his entire working life obeying the chain of command, so he follows the orders of his superiors regardless of whether they clash with his personal desires or interests. If his superiors order him not to go scouring the seven seas in search of a pirate ship, that's what he does even if he really wants to go hunting after that pirate ship.

• During the scene where the pirates are fighting the navy on the Dauntless, one of the dying rings a bell. We cut to Norrington and his men hearing it and then noticing the battle on the ship, complete with audible gunshots. How did they miss the sounds of gunfire beforehand? The fight literally begins in earnest with shots being fired after the pirates are spotted.
  • It looks like the pirates were using cold steel and hand-to-hand. Then the bell rang, and they figured "So Much for Stealth".
  • But it’s true that there are some gunshots exchanged in the opening part of the battle. I guess we’re just to assume that the sound of the bell carried a lot better than the sound of the gunshots slightly earlier (perhaps Norrington’s rowboats were passing through an area of the island with odd acoustic properties).

• Jack is apparently well known throughout the Caribbean, since Norrington is able to identify him as Jack Sparrow. How is it then, that in the ten years since Jack was mutinied against, Barbossa and his crew never heard of Jack's recent activity and realized that he was somehow still alive?
  • Because they were focused on recovering the coins and raiding. Any reports were doubtless brushed off as, well, fish tales. Like Jack and the sea turtles. He was already Shrouded in Myth.
  • Also, we are first introduced to Jack as he single-handedly sails a small POS yacht with a hole in the hull that he literally only just manages to get into port before it sinks entirely. It's heavily implied that Jack's "recent activity" ain't exactly much to be writing home about.

• When one of Jack's fellow prison inmates said that there were never any survivors from attacks by the Black Pearl, he questioned where the stories about it came from. What’s that about?
  • They were just that: stories. Pirates often spread rumours around. Plus, people exaggerate. We see how the Pearl, under Barbossa, raided Port Royal in the first film, so if this is a benchmark on how they conducted raids, it's possible there were survivors who exaggerated the effects.
  • It could be that the ones spreading the stories were the cursed crew of the Pearl. Fridge Horror for any anyone who'd heard the stories.
  • The Black Pearl attacks a ship, kills most of the crew. The survivors tell the tale to the next people they meet... who in turn tell the tale to the next people they meet, and so on. And each time, the story changes, details get changed or forgotten or conveniently left out to make the story more incredible sounding, until eventually you're left with a cursed ship of the damned who kill literally every living soul they come into contact with. Jack is rather dryly pointing out that the crew of the Black Pearl must leave at least a few people they encounter alive, even if accidentally, because if they didn't no one would be left alive to actually tell any tales about them.
  • We also see that this story isn't strictly speaking true: they leave many survivors in Port Royal.

• Why is the ability of the cursed pirates to feel physical pain so inconsistent, in particular why is Ragetti the only one who feels seemingly normal physical pain but not the others? Ragetti complains about his wooden eye hurting, and screams out in pain when Elizabeth dumps hot ashes on him. But when Pintel gets shot through his chest by Barbossa, he doesn't react in physical pain. During all the fighting the pirates don't seem to be affected by pain either. Is this just a case of Ragetti being a kinder spirit? He is the only one who can whisper words of love to Calypso in the sequel and seems "softer" than the other pirates.
  • Several of the other pirates cry out in pain during the final battle, such as when one pirate accidentally stabs another while fighting with Will.
  • When Pintel gets shot by Barbossa, arguably he is reacting to the pain but more as a circulatory shock type of response than “OWW, that really hurt!”. That’s a broad interpretation of “shock”, granted (accounting for both the physiological response but also “how dare you shoot me?!”) but people in real life (and thus, clearly mortal people at that) have occasionally been known to have different reactions to extreme wounds (including being shot) than outright bawling in pain. He’s also probably going through a hurricane of other reactions, in sequence probably something like “OMG he shot me I’m dying!” “Wait am I dead? Is this the afterlife? Am I cursed twice over to relive my last few moments very slowly?” “No, actually I’m not dead! I can’t be because I’ve had worse than that over these years of being cursed and I’m still alive just like all them other times!” “That really fucking hurt but actually I don’t care so much about that because...” “I can’t believe he had the audacity to shoot me just to test if the curse was lifted!”. And all of those internal reactions, experienced very fast and overwhelmingly, left him outwardly expressing the reaction the way he did.

• In the prologue, why is Elizabeth so scared when she sees Will wearing the medallion? One can assume that Elizabeth thought that if Commodore Norrington, Governor Swann or any of the sailors saw the medallion, Will would be hanged, but why would he? It's widely known that child pirates were mostly spared from punishment as long they were forced into piracy and didn't commit any criminal acts on their own.
  • There are a lot of variables there. Firstly, at this point Elizabeth doesn't know who Will is or what he's done in life - he may very well have willingly joined the pirate crew, perhaps as a runaway looking for adventure. And while it's widely known now that child pirates were spared execution, Elizabeth is the sheltered child of a governor and may have just assumed any captured pirate (age regardless) would be hanged for piracy. Why would anybody have reason to tell her differently?
  • It's worth noting Elizabeth finds out Will is a pirate moments after Norrington tells her in no uncertain terms that he wants to see all pirates hanged from the neck until dead, which she probably interprets as "yes, including kid pirates" given how shocked she is by the statement.

• Is the Swann family's butler deaf or what? Barbossa's pirates attempt to break into the house by violently hammering on the door, and the butler calmly walks to open it as if the Governor's friends were behind it.
  • He seemed to be oblivious to the raid, that’s for sure. Either he was at least hard of hearing, or he wasn’t actually oblivious to the raid but maybe he thought that the violent knocking on the door may have been a rescue party of Marines coming to reinforce the house and protect the residents.

• Some of the debate on this page says the Black Pearl is really only cosmetically affected by the curse which blights its crew. But the other side argues that no, it also benefits from supernaturally enhanced speed, power (witness how it manages to aim its guns at Port Royal’s fort at impossible angles) and God knows what else. It seems like the latter side has some credence. So does this mean it perhaps also features some of the immortality characteristics which the crew has? Does it have a Healing Factor, or enhanced defence even against the damage it suffers in the broadside battle against the Interceptor? Or both? It's right there in the subtitle of the movie, right?
  • It stands to reason that the ship has supernatural powers. Firstly, the curse seems to not only affect the cursed pirates, but their clothing and worn gear as well; a ship that has had the hands and boots of cursed men on it for a decade probably suffers the same effect. Secondly, the Aztec gods demand a repayment of gold and blood to lift the curse, and making the ship unsinkable guarantees that at least one ship can bring the gold and blood back. Thirdly, the next film reveals that there was already a kind of supernatural enhancement on the Pearl before the curse took hold.

• Norrington scoffs at Jack and Will’s supposed attempt to forcibly commandeer the Dauntless, stating that it’s impossible to crew with only two men. This is of course entirely logical because ships of this class would have a complement of around 800 at the minimum. But then, why is it so much more possible for the pair of them to doublehandedly crew the Interceptor​? Yes, it’s a much smaller ship, built for speed rather than power and defence. And they’re relying on that speed advantage to put some distance between themselves and the Dauntless, aided by their having temporarily disabled it’s rudder mechanism, rather than having to crew the smaller ship’s weapons in their defence. But still, wouldn’t they need more than the two of them (even on the first sailing to Tortuga) to crew it? Surely more sailors would be required than the helmsman and his first mate (who would have to work every other function crucial to the sailing operation besides the helm)? Proportionally if the larger ship has a complement of around 800, wouldn’t the smaller one need something like one order of magnitude less? According to Wikipedia, the ship she was based on (the Lady Washington) had a complement of 12 crew, but the Interceptor appears to be considerably up-gunned from its real life inspiration, so it would need more than that.​
  • I don't know anything about what the absolute bare minimum a ship like the Incerceptor would need to sail, but if anyone can work out how to make a ship limp to a nearby island with only two crewmen, I would bet it would be the legendary pirate and accomplished seafarer who routinely manages such impossibilities as walking on the bottom of a harbor while holding a boat over his head. Maybe exhausting as all living hell, but just barely adequate.

• When the Pearl wins the battle against the motley crew and captures them, Jack warns Will not to do anything stupid. He’s immediately disappointed by Will who holds his own life hostage as a trump card to force Barbossa to negotiate for Elizabeth (and latterly, the crew). But did they have any other options? Barbossa definitely holds the upper hand in this scene, which is only tempered by his ostensible sense of honour. If not for Will’s intervention, Elizabeth would have been both raped and enslaved by the evil pirates, and the motley crew would have likely been either enslaved or killed, themselves. That is of course, unless anyone can posit what Jack (or Will, if he had been inclined for this) may have had in mind as an alternative? Captain Jack Sparrow always finds a way, as the saying goes, but what could he have in mind which would be both smart (so, not-stupid) and able to achieve a similar result in hostage negotiation as achieved by Bootstrap Bill’s real offspring offering to make the blood sacrifice? Also, why didn’t Will attempt to further refine his terms before taking the gun off of his head? Jack was doing some non-verbal communication towards Will to help parley for the lives of his crew, couldn’t he have done more of that to induce Will to be a bit more specific with a) when and where Elizabeth was to be freed; b) a better treatment for the crew than “thrown into the brig”; c) favourable terms for Jack, himself?
  • Jack always thinks he's smarter than everyone else (he's right a lot of the time, but not every time). I think he was less concerned about the efficacy of Will's gambit and more that it meant Will was now in the driver's seat of the plotting and A) Jack has a fairly dim opinion of Will's planning skills B) if Will is now calling the shots, Jack becomes disposable (indeed, Barbossa maroons him to die right afterwards as no one has any use for him now that Barbossa holds all the cards and Will is a living leverage). As to what exactly Jack could do if not that, it's unclear, but it probably involved something that didn't leave him at Will's mercy and everyone at Barbossa's mercy. Going on a guess, Jack might at least try to convince Barbossa some other captured crewmate was Bootstrap's blood rather than Will so as to not hand him the genuine article (which is what Will ends up doing).
  • Additionally, Jack isn't signaling for Will to negotiate for the crew, only himself. That's why he looks disappointed when Will decides all on his own to protect them but not him. It's more blatant in the second movie, but at this point, he's still a self-centered eel who will backstab anyone to get his (and can you blame him, considering what happened the last time he trusted someone else?), so while he would probably be a little sad to lose someone as loyal as Gibbs, ultimately, he doesn't care about any of them, least of all Elizabeth whom he has zero allegiance to. With that in mind, it's not so surprising that he would be worried about Will opening his mouth to say anything, since there's very little chance he would try and help the man who almost sold him off as a blood sacrifice.
• Jack's introduction. He sails into port, deals with the snooty harbormaster, and as he walks away, he reveals that he had pickpocketed him. So far, classic roguish comedy moment.... except he doesn't actually pickpocket the annoying official. Instead, he pockets... a pouch full of coins just left on the pier for anyone to pick up, like a bit of random RPG loot. What? Why? What's up with that?
  • That's just that annoying official's wallet. For whatever reason he wasn't wearing his wallet on him, but laid it down.

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