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yo ho ho a pirate’s life for me
pirates gets hyped up for the big screen
by erin thursby    scopes1925@msn.com

      What’s remarkable about the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series is that it is based on a ride at the Disney theme park. Everyone expected it to fail because it was doubly cursed, once because it was a pirate movie and once because it was inspired by a ride. It is the only widely successful franchise to be based on a Disney ride.

      The ride itself has an interesting history. Installed in 1967, it’s the last ride to be largely influenced by Walt Disney himself, who liked to be in on the design process. It was also the most ambitious animatronics project that Walt had ever done.

      The first two Pirates movies incorporate scenes from the animatronics ride. Wisely, they kept these scenes as part of the backdrop of the movie, rather than plot staging points. In the jail scene of the first movie, the dog with the keys and the prisoners trying to coax him near, is lifted straight from the ride. The governor/mayor being dunked in the well by ruffians and pirates can be found as part of the backdrop in the second movie.

      But the influence works both ways. Because the first Pirates movie was such an unexpected hit, Disney decided to place characters from the movie in the ride itself as part of promoting the second movie in the series. The ride got an overall facelift and now you can find Captain Jack Sparrow in three different places during the ride.



keith richards rumors,
confirmed for pirates 3

      Rumors of Keith Richards in a Pirates movie have been in the air since Depp claimed that Richards was the inspiration for the look of Captain Jack Sparrow. Richards was scheduled to play Captain Jack’s dad in part two, but a sudden injury and surgery precluded that. Finally, in part three, the stars aligned and the scheduling conflicts disappeared. Keith Richards will be in Pirates 3 as Captain Teague, who may or may not be Captain Jack Sparrow’s father. Word is that the script may be nebulous on the point of Jack’s parentage.



speculation on the role of tia dalma

      Tia Dalma (Naomie Melanie Harris), the mysterious voodoo priestess to whom Jack goes to for counsel, is apt to play a pivotal role in part three of the series. Although some have speculated that Jack and Tia were once lovers, others on the net theorize that she is, in fact, his mother. Jack says in Deadman’s Chest that there was a time when he and she were “inseparable,” which may be Jack’s obfuscated way of saying that he may have spent nine months inseparable from her during her pregnancy.

      The fact that she actually seems to be Jack’s contemporary in age is no deterrent to these theorists, who also hint that she was once the lover to Davy Jones and was the ex-goddess Calypso. Is it true? Who knows…but I hope that the actual movie is entertaining as the theories and websites it has spawned.

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