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

• Accidental Aesop: When making an agreement, always include exactly what you want and leave as little to interpretation as possible, otherwise you leave yourself open to Loophole Abuse and Exact Words. Case in point, Elizabeth exchanges the medallion for the cessation of the Black Pearl's raid on Port Royal, but becomes a hostage because she neglected to include her own release in the agreement^note Although since she had already pretended her last name was Turner, the pirates likely wouldn't have taken her back even if she had. Later, Will arranges for Jack's crew's safety and Elizabeth's release, but fails to specify when or where, which allows Barbossa to make her Walk the Plank.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The film was expected to be a flop by many entertainment writers. The film was conceived by Disney as the second of three Disney park ride adaptations, along with The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion (2003), at the time considered a bizarre concept to base a film upon. The pirate subgenre had also seen numerous costly flops, such as Pirates and with Cutthroat Island being one of the biggest money losers ever. Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner also hated Johnny Depp's eccentric performance of Captain Jack Sparrow, at one point yelling on set that Depp was "ruining the film". The resulting film took off at the box office, buoyed by positive reviews and word of mouth and ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of 2003, giving birth to Disney's biggest live-action franchise of the 2000s.
• Awesome Music: The orchestral theme song of the franchise debuts to great effect, setting the mood for the action scenes it accompanies.
• Ending Fatigue: Some felt that the film went for one action set piece too many with Jack's escape/rescue at the end.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Anamaria the Pirate Girl who assumes control of the Interceptor in the second act. Many wanted to see more of her in the sequels but Zoe Saldaña had such a horrible experience making the first that she didn't want to return.
• Estrogen Brigade: It's Johnny Depp as a pirate, so this is understandable. But this was also around the time when Orlando Bloom was at his most popular as a teen heartthrob. There are also a select few fangirls who enjoy Jack Davenport as well.
• First Installment Wins: Most people consider the first to be the best because it was fresh and original in its style and humour. Some will even go further and say this is the only good film in the series.
• Franchise Original Sin: Some of the elements that critics attacked the sequels for - Jack hogging the spotlight, lots of slapstick comedy, everyone with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, and jarring shifts between comedy and Nightmare Fuel - are present here. However the film is mostly serious, with the comedy more as flavouring (Jack's main stuff being ad-libbed by Johnny Depp), only the pirates backstab each other, and Will and Elizabeth are the morally heroic characters to ground the film - rather than the two of them becoming greyer in the sequels. And the slapstick IS more restrained.
• Genius Bonus: When Pintel wants to damn the man who invented the word parley, Jack retorts that would be the French. Joking aside, the word does come from Middle French. In the extended cut, he also mentions the French invented mayonnaise. This too is correct.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Japanese dub, Will is voiced by Daisuke Hirakawa. What does this mean? That Makoto Itou becomes the captain of a really NICE BOAT... and without losing his head!
  • Barbossa's reputation says he was spat out of Hell. This finally does happen in the third movie.
  • Elizabeth is mockingly told "a little mermaid flopped up on deck". Fast forward to the fourth movie where we find that mermaids do exist in the PotC universe.
  • Keira Knightley had to wear hair extensions for this film, as she was still growing hers out from Bend It Like Beckham. By the time the second and third films were in production (and filmed together) she had cut her long hair short for the film Domino. So Keira essentially spent the entire production of the first three movies wearing extensions.
  • The last line of the movie? "Bring me that horizon".
  • Elizabeth's discomfort at getting laced into a corset for the first time is rather amusing to watch once Keira Knightley got heavily typecast in Costume Dramas - and thus would spend a lot of time in corsets. It's almost Foreshadowing for her career.
  • In a behind-the-scenes segment about the film's makeup and wardrobe, Jack Davenport laments how he as Commodore Norrington has to look like an "ice cream" while all these guys (the other actors and extras getting dolled up as pirates) get to look "so cool". By Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Norrington has a Heroic BSoD that grants Davenport the chance to look "cool" too.
• Moral Event Horizon: The first that the pirates appear in the film they raid Port Royal and attack and pillage everyone in sight, killing random people and endangering the lives of countless others including toddlers, which can easily make it a crossing if one doesn't consider all the other times that they did it in the past. Their motivation may be (somewhat) sympathetic since they're trying to break their curse but this doesn't change neither the ruined vessel (and the many others that ended up like it) at the beginning nor the fact that they did horrid things even before being cursed like Barbossa marooning Jack Sparrow out of greed. And they go even further when they decide to cut Elizabeth's throat, "just in case", when her blood fails to do the trick (plus they hint they were initially planning on raping her once the curse was lifted).
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Scarlet and Giselle, the two old flames of Jack's. They slap him in the face each and that's all they do in the film. Yet so memorable they're brought back for cameos in the other films too.
  • Will's alcoholic boss at the blacksmith shop, who arouses from his stupor just after Jack's sword fight with Will, whacks Jack on the back of the head with a rum bottle, and then gets all the credit for stopping Jack due to how no one witnessed Jack and Will fighting.
  • The seedy prisoners locked up next to Jack who unsuccessfully try to attract the dog with the keys, then are terrified by the arrival of the Black Pearl and supply the quote that inspired the Undead Author trope.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Why yes, that is Once Upon a Time's Grumpy as part of Those Two Guys on the Pearl's crew.
  • That is also Neytiri (or Gamora if you prefer, or Uhura) as the Pirate Girl Anamaria who gives Jack the slap he admits he deserves.
• Rooting for the Empire: The film's writers mention they intentionally wrote Captain Barbossa as an Anti-Villain throughout the movie, given his singular goal is to end the ten-year-long curse that has plagued him and his crew. Throughout the film they wanted to give the audience the impression that despite being the antagonist, he might not actually be a bad guy. This is why Barbossa's scene where he explains the torment of the curse to Elizabeth was constantly being rewritten and added to by both the writers and Geoffrey Rush to get it perfect. It definitely shows.
• Signature Line: "Ye best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. Ye're in one!"
• Signature Scene: Captain Jack Sparrow's first appearance and arrival at Port Royal. He is introduced to the series standing proudly atop the mast of his ship staring straight ahead... before the "ship" is revealed to be nothing more than a small, flooded dinghy, that he has to bail water out of before resuming his proud staring. All this shows that Jack never loses his pride. Immediately after, he casually steps off the rapidly sinking boat just moments before it completely goes under, and then promptly confuses the hell out of a few officers by babbling non-stop. All of this accurately shows the kind of nonsensical character that he has become known for being.
• Special Effects Failure: When Ragetti's eye gets knocked out during the battle on the Dauntless, a solider in the background can be seen fighting thin air, since the effects artists forgot to add a pirate for him to fight.
• Spiritual Adaptation: for The Secret of Monkey Island, which itself was inspired by the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The story of the game involves a pirate wannabe (which Will Turner, who is suspiciously dressed just like Monkey Island protagonist Guybrush Threepwood, becomes at the end) gathering a ship and a crew in order to set sail to an Island that you can only get to by means of a special magical device that points you to it, with the goal of rescuing the female Governor from an invincible crew of ghost pirates. The stories and tones are, in fact, so similar that it's a major belief that this movie started its life as an actual, proper adaptation of that game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Anamaria, a Pirate Girl portrayed by Zoe Saldaña, ended up as this due to the character only appearing in this film. This is despite the fact that the movie ended with Anamaria still as a part of the Black Pearl crew after stepping aside to let Jack Sparrow become the captain again. It was later explained by Saldana herself that she chose not to come back to the franchise because she didn't have a good experience working on the pirate sets.

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