I kinda figured the scene where Barbosa was shot was “just in the nick of time,” with maybe a little poetic license thrown in there for the fun of it.
The pirates were never actually dead. Cap’n Sparrow begins the movie very much alive and not affected by the curse at all. Later, when he has the chance to sneak a coin from the Aztec hoard, he is later found to be “undead,” tatty flesh and bones, when Barbosa skewers him and he staggers into the moonlight. We may presume his curse is lifted when he tosses the bloody coin to William at the climax of the film, before shooting Barbosa.
Captain Barbosa explains the curse at some length to Elizabeth, during the dining room scene. It isn’t that they’re really dead, but they cannot really feel or experience any sensation while the curse is on them – they are as dead, as far as sensation goes. I figured this explains Barbosa’s obsession with apples, and the conversation between the two pirates on the Pearl when the monkey falls in the water. They do not need to eat, and even if they DO eat, they can’t taste food or drink, or gain any nourishment from them.
Barbosa’s remark about not being able to feel “a woman’s touch” implies that sex is impossible for undead pirates, as well… certainly a wildly major reason for them to want the damn curse lifted!
I still think the water has something to do with. Like their ablity to sense it was activated only once it was in the ocean water, like turning on a homing beacon, if you will. Since, as you said, it didn’t lead them to it while it was safe and dry for years.
My take on Barbarosa’s death by gunshot: his wond hadn’t had time to mystically heal before the last coin was dropped in the chest. Also we can assume the shot was still lodged in his heart when the curse was lifted.
Also, is it just me or was it not the coolest when they shoved the Holy Pirate Hand Grenade into the cursed pirate’s stomach, then shoved hiim out of the moonlight so he couldn’t get to it again. Wonderful bit of ingenuity.
Could someone please explain the plan at the end though. I know Capt. Jack wanted to get the pirates to fight the Navy and then lift the curse so that they could then be killed. But how exactly did Jack set that up? It never was really clear to me what Capt. Jack told the Commodore the plan was, and what he actually expected the Commodore to do. The Commodore told his mate that he wasn’t going to follow Jack’s plan because it was Jack’s plan, but it appeared to me that he did it anyway. Were they supposed to stay on the ship and have the pirates come to them, rather than separate the crew and lose good men? That being the case, was Jack not trying to trick anyone in the first place?
Jack’s plan involved the soldiers being on the SHIP.
The Commodore decided to have the men on the PINNACES, waiting for the pirates to come out of the cave, because he didn’t trust Jack.
Meanwhile, the pirates did their underwater march, and took the SHIP.
This led to the soldiers then having to row back, get shot at, board the ship under fire, and fight like hell, never realizing their opponents can’t be killed…
…until Jack and Will lifted the curse in mid-battle. Whoopsie.
Kn*ckers makes an excellent point, though… why were the pirates so terrified that Elizabeth was going to heave the coin overboard? They could just hop over and wander around on the bottom until they found it. It did “call to them,” after all.
Maybe they saw Captain Barbosa was having a little fun with the naive wench (“I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request,”) and decided to play along. They all sure seemed to have a sense of humor. An EVIL sense of humor, but a sense of humor nonetheless…
It was just a reflex when they were ready to jump for the medallion.
However, they came to Port Royal for two things, the medallion and young Turner. Remember that they only agreed to leave after they found out that they already had both those things. So the deal they struck was not out of desperation to get the medallion, but because they were going to leave anyway.
When Jack fights and kills Barbossa at the end, he’s technically serving under the command of Commodore Barbossa, as part of their accord, right? Would this mean that Jack is now guilty of mutiny as well? Making them even, I suppose.
The gold only calls to the cursed pirates when it’s in the water; the bit about it calling to them when they were looking for Elizabeth in the house was just a bluff – they saw from the folded-over corner of the rug that she was in the closet.
I disagree. By this logic all 882 coins would have had to end up in the water for the pirates to find them. This doesn’t seem very probable. I think the underwater boom was just a cool thing to stick in, and mark a point at which things suddenly became ominous. I also think that it was a little confusing.
I think that the turned over rug corner was shown for the audience’s benefit. We didn’t know where Elizabeth went, and don’t have the ability to sense the gold. So the filmmakers had to show us where she was, so that the actions of the pirates would make sense. Otherwise it would just look like they were walking towards a blank wall.
Not necessarily did all 882 coins have to hit the water. If they gave away, say arbitrarily, only 25 of them before they realized what the curse was all about, they would only have to collect those 25 coins back. The other 857 would not have been taken out of the box, presumably. It took them ten years to get all of the coins back, so that is a lot of time to devote to one mission.
Can you Ulysses?
I have to agree with the first person that suggested this theory (coins hit water, causes a rippling signal that calls to the cursed). I had not thought of it myself, and it seems to fit.
But I wonder if the water has to be sea water. What if the person just took a shower with the coin around their neck? Would that cause the same ripple?
It’s just damn fortunate that Will Jr. didn’t fall into the water in the opening scene, or it would have been a very short movie.
But how did the pirates find out about the curse in the first place. It’s not like Cortez was around to warn them. Unless there was some sort of cursed/immortal Guardian Of The Coins, such as in the last Indiana Jones, who warned the pirates, that the viewer did not see. I guess this point is not really all that important, it is a movie afterall. The important part is that they did find out about the curse.
I’m still wondering if there was a purpose for Jack Sparrow’s “broken” compass. Someone here suggested that it was a charmed compass that guided the way to the island, but it always pointed in the same direction.
Damn, there HAS to be a sequel to explain all of this stuff.
Sparrow, if you recall, wasn’t under the curse until after he snuck the coin out of the box. Given Barbossa’s reaction, apparently, you have to do more than simply pick one up and toss it right back in.
They are quite half-dead. Theya ren’t all dead, but they aren’t all alive, either. The advantage is that they cannot die. The downside is that they take no pleasure in life. They get no nourishment from food or taste from it either. Its a living hell that cannot end. They can’t die, but they aren’t alive, either.
Sounds EXACTLY LIKE the last job I had! So why should these pirates have it any better than the rest of us working stiffs! I think it would be pretty cool to walk around the bottom of the ocean.
Wife and I watched this movie last night. Seems like a whole hell of a lot of people died because of Elizabeth’s corset. If I was the Commodore, I would have hung her, Turner, Sparrow and her poncy dad, too! Then, it would be off to the island to collect the booty!
Did anyone catch the sexual innuendo at the end when the pirate girl tells Sparrow that the “black pearl” is his? Black pearl, indeed! ;D
Someone on this thread states that the details of the curse were engraved on the chest in Aztec, and that the pirates didn’t bother to try and read it until they realized that something strange was happening. No explanation, though, as to where they managed to dig up someone who could read Aztec.
As to the compass, it doesn’t always point in the same direction. Norrington just says that it doesn’t point north.
I wondered about Barbosa’s wound, too. My first thought was that the mortal wound remained, and killed him when he became mortal again. But cursed-Jack was mortally wounded, too, earlier in the battle, and it didn’t seem to do much harm to him. My current best guess is that wounds are repaired when a cursed man is exposed to moonlight and returns, since you can’t exactly have a mortal wound in a skeleton. Hence: Jack gets that spear through him, he has a wound. He backs into moonlight, and turns into a skeleton. Being a skeleton, he can’t have a spear wound. He removes the spear, and steps back into the shadow, whole. But Barbosa was in shadow the whole time, so his wound remained.
And the curse was definitely lifted after the shot, not before. Jack shoots Barbosa. Barbosa says “I can’t believe you wasted your one shot”. Cut to Will, standing over the chest: “He didn’t waste it”. Glint of falling gold, clink as last two coins hit the others. Barbosa gets a pained look on his face, starts bleeding, and collapses.
As for the call of the gold, I think that the simplest explanation is that it calls to them whenever it’s in contact with or on the person of a living soul, but that the call is stronger when that person is under stress of some sort. So at the beginning, they find Will’s ship, and as the pirate vessel gets closer, Will (and everyone else on the ship) starts getting nervous. The gold calls stronger, until the pirates are able to home in on it. Once Will is rescued, he’s a lot calmer, and when Elizabeth takes the gold from him, she’s not worried at all, so the gold quiets down, and the pirates temporarily lose the scent, so to speak. But when Elizabeth falls off the cliff (right after being proposed to, to boot: How’s that for stress?), the gold calls out much more loudly for a moment, loudly enough that the pirates can sense it from many miles away. So they come raid Port Royal, and when they reach the Governor’s mansion, they can sense the gold again (and so can find her in the closet).
It seemed quite plain to me that the gold sent out its call to the cursed pirates when it hit the water, and it didn’t call elsewhere. I would imagine that hitting the sea, rather than just any water, is what is significant. As for how they found Will’s ship when he was a child, the gold could have called to them and then they tracked it to Will’s ship. Just because we don’t see child Will swimming and sending out a homing beacon ping doesn’t make it implausible.
The idea of the gold calling to the pirates when - and only when - it’s in the water doesn’t necessarily contradict the fact that they had to track down 882 pieces of gold, not all of which would have ended up in the ocean.
How do we know they spent all 882 pieces? That much gold is a LOT of money, and even as spendthrift as pirates are, they might not have spent ALL of it before they realized they were cursed. In fact, I think they’d’ve started to figure it out pretty quickly, even if they didn’t see themselves in moonlight… suddenly EVERY GUY ON THE SHIP has lost his sense of taste and is suffering erectile disfunction… so maybe they still had some in the hold.
Once they did find out, depending on how soon it was, they may have remembered where they spent it and gone back and slit the innkeep’s throat for the swag, etc.
They’re pirates. They steal stuff from people anyway. For the past ten years they’ve been the scourge of the sea, taking out every single ship they possibly can - their holds are burstin’ with swag - they’re stealing EVERYTHING in hopes of finding the things they are really looking for. I don’t think it would’ve taken them ten years to track down what they’d spent if they could find it with magic.
Also, in the Elizabeth-hides-in-the-closet scene, Pintel very obviously looks at the folded-back rug, and only THEN starts saying “the gold calls to us.” Ragetti looks confused for a moment, starts to say something, Pintel gives him a conspiratorial look, Ragetti gets it and starts chuckling. I think Pintel was trying to freak Elizabeth out. If the gold really called to 'em, why wouldn’t Ragetti have picked up on it too? His first thought was the open window; he should’ve known she hadn’t jumped out if he had some sort of supernatural attachment to her proto-Goth necklace.
Also, Bootstrap is NOT still cursed; the curse wouldn’t have been lifted until EVERYONE’s blood was repaid, or all the pirates on the ship would have been un-cursed as soon as they pricked their thumbs over the Aztec chest. Will’s blood was close enough for sympathetic magic, so EVERYBODY who was affected by the curse got free of it, including Bootstrap - wherever he may be.
Captain Jack Sparrow was only affected by the curse for the climactic battle scene of the movie. He was affected because he stole a coin. This was obvious to me when I saw it; they show him palming it, the audience is supposed to realize this. Barbossa isn’t privy to the palming of the coin, so of course he’s surprised to see Jack turn into a skeleton. Jack wasn’t quite sure of the details of the curse, so he was surprised himself to find that he was instantly transformed into a rotting corpse. When it was appropriate, he cut his own hand, got his blood on the gold, and then got the blood AND the gold into the chest - thus paying his own blood penalty, and helping relieve the curse from everyone. In order to be cursed yourself, you had to actually remove the gold from the chest, which is why Elizabeth, Will, and countless shopkeeps and innkeepers in Tortuga aren’t zombified.
