Pirates of the Caribbean Summary

This spoiler was also used at TheMovieSpoiler.com

            The movie opens on a ship, bound for the Caribbean from England with a little girl on it singing a pirate song. One of the lieutenants tells her not to sing it because its bad luck. We find out that her name is Elizabeth Swann, she is the governor’s daughter, and she thinks pirates are interesting and exciting. The Captain of the ship tells her that if he ever found anyone bearing the mark of a pirate, he would send them to the gallows immediately. Elizabeth looks out onto the water and sees a parasol floating in the water, then a boy on a raft. She calls the alarm and they bring the boy aboard. Seconds later, they see a burning ship ahead of them and recognize it as one of theirs. While the crew is searching for survivors Elizabeth talks to the boy and finds out his name is Will Turner. She finds a gold medallion around his neck with a skull on it and thinks it means he’s a pirate, so she takes it and hides it from her father. She looks out onto the water and for a second sees a ghostly ship sail by.

            Eight years later Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) wakes up and goes and gets the medallion from a hiding place in her room. Just as she has put it on, her father knocks at her door so she hides it inside her dressing gown before opening the door. Her father gives her a dress (with a corset) to wear to a ceremony that day for Commodore Norrington. Downstairs, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) arrives with an order for the Governor, a very nice sword which is going to be given to Norrington. The Governor says to gives his complements to Will’s master and it is obvious that Will made it himself. Elizabeth comes down and tells Will she had a dream about the day they met. Elizabeth asks him to call her by her name, but Will insists on calling her Miss Swann. As she leaves, however, he calls her Elizabeth to himself and we can all see that he is in love with her.

            Meanwhile, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) sails into the harbor on a sinking little boat. When he arrives at the dock the master tells him that he has to pay a shilling to tie up his (now underwater) boat and that he needs his name. Jack pays him three shillings to forget his name, which he steals back a second later. Jack then decides to go find a ship. There are two ships in the harbor, the Dauntless (a big ship anchored out some) and the Interceptor (a smaller ship tied to the dock). He walks up to two men guarding the Interceptor and talks to them, asking them about how fast the ship goes and about a legendary ship, the Black Pearl. He learns that the Interceptor is the fastest British ship. Jack manages to confuse the men while he looks over the ship.

At the ceremony in the fort, Elizabeth looks like she’s about to pass out from a combination of the heat and being unable to breathe because of her corset. After the ceremony, Norrington asks to speak to her and they go over to the wall of the fort. Norrington starts to propose to her, but Elizabeth passes out and falls off the wall, down a good distance and into the water. Jack asks the two guards why they don’t try to rescue her, but neither can swim, so Jack dives into the water to save her. As he’s pulling her up, her medallion becomes visible. There’s this weird ripple effect in the water, and the winds change. The governor and Norrington come down from the fort and at first try to arrest Jack, and then realize he’s the one who saved Elizabeth. Norrington, however, finds he has a pirate brand and recognizes him from a tattoo to be Jack Sparrow, and has him shackled. Jack uses his shackles to threaten Elizabeth to get them to let him go and runs off.

Jack runs around while everyone is looking for him into the blacksmith’s shop, where the blacksmith is dead drunk. He breaks his shackles but just as he is about to flee, Will comes back and finds Jack. They fight with swords and both are very good. Jack wins in the end by throwing dirt in Will’s eyes and pointing a pistol at him. However, the blacksmith wakes up and hits Jack over the head with his bottle. The soldiers come in and yet again, the blacksmith gets all the credit. They lead Jack off to jail.

Later at night, it gets very dark and foggy and a ship arrives and starts firing on the fort and town. Then the pirates come on land and start pretty much destroying the town. Will runs out and starts fighting the pirates with the soldiers. At the governor’s house, Elizabeth runs away from the pirates, but they tell her that the gold medallion is calling to her. They find her, but she calls parlay (spelling?) which means, in the pirate code, that they have to take her to the captain unharmed. Will sees them taking Elizabeth away and tries to go after, but gets knocked out. In his jail cell, Jack is trying to get out when two of the pirates come by looking for the armory.  They recognize Jack and wonder why he’s not dead. Jack tells them that the lowest circle of hell is reserved for mutineers and one of them sticks their hand through the bars, into the moonlight, where it turns into a skeleton hand. Jack looks surprised and says, “So there is a curse.” The pirates leave Jack there.

On the ship, the Black Pearl, Elizabeth meets Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and negotiates the end of their attack, noticing that the medallion is important to them. Barbossa asks her name and to keep them from using her against her father she tells them her name is Elizabeth Turner (BIG mistake) and that she is a maid in the governor’s house. One of the pirates says something about “bootstraps” and they agree to leave. Elizabeth realizes that they mean to kidnap her and they lock her in a cabin.

Will wakes up the next morning and runs to tell Norrington and the governor that Elizabeth has been taken. Will wants them to ask Jack for help, because he obviously knows something about the Black Pearl. Norrington refuses and Will gets angry, so he goes off to find Jack himself. In the prison he asks Jack is he knows anything about the Black Pearl and offers to spring him from the cell if he helps him get Elizabeth back. Jack refuses at first but then asks Will his name, and if he was named for his father. When Will says he is, Jack agrees to help him (important later).

Jack and Will go over and look at the ships, then swim over to the Dauntless. They start messing with the ship and Norrington gets in the Interceptor to get them. When all the soldiers go over to the Dauntless and begin looking for them, they swing over to the Interceptor and sail it away. Norrington tries to follow, but Jack and Will disabled the ship. On the ship Will asks why it was important who his father was and Jack explains that Will’s father was a pirate, Bootstrap Bill and served under him once.

On the Black Pearl, Elizabeth has to dine with Barbossa, who doesn’t eat. For a second Elizabeth thinks they’re poisoning her but Barbossa tells her that they need her and explains why. All the crew of the Black Pearl found this chest of Aztec gold and took it, but it had been cursed so whoever removed any gold from the chest would be cursed. The pirates spent the gold and when they realized they were cursed set out on a mission to find all of the gold. Each had to repay the gold and with blood. Elizabeth tells him she doesn’t believe in ghost stories and tries to escape and stabs him, but Barbossa is unaffected. She runs out of the cabin, only to see the entire crew as skeletons. Barbossa tells her that moonlight shows them for what they are, and steps into the moonlight to show he’s a skeleton too. Elizabeth panics and they lock her up again.

Meanwhile, Jack and Will have come to a sort of “pirate city.” Some women come up and slap Jack and Jack tells Will that he didn’t deserve that. Then Jack finds and wakes up a man (hmm… familiar looking) and tells him has a proposition. He tells the man he wants to go find the Black Pearl. The man thinks he’s crazy, but Jack says he has “leverage” and gestures toward Will and tells him who his father was. The man agrees to round up a crew.

            The next day they meet the crew the man has rounded up, which includes a dwarf, a mute with a parrot. There’s also a woman who is angry at Jack for stealing her ship, however, they convince them all to come with them and sail off. While leaving the man tells Will wants to know how they can find the Black Pearl, or the island which the Pearl is heading towards which you supposedly can’t find unless you’ve been there before. The man explains that Jack was once the captain of the Black Pearl and was looking for the treasure but the first mate, Barbossa, led a mutiny against him and marooned him on an island with nothing but a pistol with one shot (to kill yourself after a while but Jack is saving the bullet for Barbossa) and that no one knows how Jack got off.  Jack directs the ship and says that they’re getting close.

            The Black Pearl arrives at the island and takes Elizabeth into a cavern filled with treasure. In the center is a box with the rest of the Aztec gold in it. Will and Jack also arrive and they alone go into the cavern to find them. Jack tells Will not to do anything, but Will knocks him out and says he doesn’t want to be his leverage. The pirates have this ceremony and Barbossa cuts Elizabeth’s hand and drops the medallion with her blood on it into the chest. Trying to figure out if they’re still cursed, Barbossa shoots one of the pirates who doesn’t die and they realize that they don’t have the right person. Barbossa throws back the medallion and Elizabeth takes it. Will then finds her and they escape on the boat back to the Interceptor. The pirates are upset that she got away, but they find Jack. Jack calls parlay but Barbossa won’t listen to him until he tells Barbossa he knows why Elizabeth’s blood didn’t work. That interests Barbossa and they lock Jack up as they chase after the Interceptor.

            On the ship, Will is bandaging Elizabeth’s hand when he finds his medallion on her, recognizing it as the one his father sent him. Elizabeth explains she took it because she thought it meant he was a pirate and Will explains that it’s not her blood they want, it’s his. He leaves the medallion on the table and goes on deck where the Black Pearl is catching up with them. They fight the Black pearl, but don’t have any cannon balls so they fire silverware and odd things out of the cannons. Jack gets loose from his cell and tries to find Will, but Will is trapped in the bottom of the ship as it is sinking. Barbossa’s pet monkey grabs the medallion and brings it to the Black Pearl. The crew is taken off the Interceptor (except for Will, who they don’t know is trapped) and the pirates blow up the ship. However, Will jumps up the other side with a pistol and demands they release Elizabeth. Barbossa laughs and tells Will that he can’t be killed, but Will reveals who he is and threatens to kill himself. Barbossa agrees but lets Elizabeth and Jack go off onto a tiny island, the same one where Jack was marooned before. Again, he gives Jack the same pistol and still with only one shot.

            On the island Elizabeth asks Jack how he got off before and Jack reveals that the island used to be a hiding spot of a rum smuggling group and he was picked up after three days on island. Jack finds a big store of rum and drinks a lot until he passes out. The next morning he wakes up to find Elizabeth burning all the rum and barrels to create a signal fire for the British. Jack tells her that she’s crazy but the Dauntless shows up a second later. Elizabeth wants them to go after Will and save him, but Norrington refuses. She asks him to consider it a wedding present and he agrees.

            On the Black Pearl, one of the pirates tells Will that his father had been against the mutiny and so sent the medallion to Will to keep them cursed. When Barbossa heard what his father had done, he chained him to a cannon and pushed him into the ocean, but before they realized they needed his blood. All the other pirates had given blood so this time they planned on killing Will to get his blood.

They arrive at the island again and they all go to the cave again. On the Dauntless, Jack has the some of the British sit out waiting in boats to get the pirates as he goes in to convince them to go out. Just as the pirates are about to kill Will he stops them, explains that the British are out there and suggests they stay cursed for a while to remain immortal. He also mentions to Will that Elizabeth has agreed to marry Norrington. As he talks to Barbossa he picks up three pieces of gold from the chest and tosses them back in, but palms one and hides it (important). Barbossa sends the pirates out to fight the British and they walk under the water to the ship. For a distraction, two of the pirates dress up in ladies dresses, with parasols to keep the moonlight off of them. On the Dauntless Elizabeth tries to tell the British that the pirates can’t be killed but no one listens to her and they lock her in a cabin so she escapes out of the window and rows toward the Black Pearl just as the pirates climb up aboard the ship and start killing the crew .Norrington sees the pirates attacking and they row back to the Dauntless.

Elizabeth gets to the Black Pearl and frees the good pirates, but they won’t help her go after Jack and Will because of their code. Elizabeth heads off towards the caves in a rowboat. In the caves Jack attacks Barbossa and they start fighting. Will also attacks the other pirates guarding them and Elizabeth shows up and fights them too. Jack runs Barbossa through with his sword, but Barbossa laughs at him and stabs Jack with his sword. It looks like Jack’s a goner, but he steps backward into a patch of moonlight and you can see that he is cursed. He shows Barbossa the coin he took from the chest and they continue fighting.

On the Dauntless, the British are losing badly because the pirates can’t be killed, but the governor is safe because he locked himself in a cabin. In the cave, Jack buts his hand, gets the medallion bloody, tosses it away, and shoots the shot in his pistol at Barbossa. Barbossa laughs at him that he saved the shot for so long and then wasted it, but Will says he didn’t waste it and reveals that he cut his hand and dropped his medallion into the chest along with Jacks so that the curse is now broken. Barbossa looks down and realizes he really has been shot and dies. On the Dauntless, the pirates realize that they are no longer skeletons and can be killed so they surrender. Elizabeth is happy but Will coldly tells her that her fiancé is waiting for her. Elizabeth, Will, and Jack row back out to the ship and Jack sees that the Black Pearl is gone. They do back to the Dauntless.

Back at the fort Jack is going to be hung for his crimes. Elizabeth tries to talk Norrington and her father out of it but they say they have no choice. Elizabeth sees a big blue parrot sitting on the wall. Will comes up to Elizabeth from the crowd, tells her that he loves her and then goes to rescue Jack. He throws a sword so Jack can stand on something, fights off the executioner, and frees Jack. As they are running off they are surrounded by British soldiers. Norrington wants Will to move so they can kill Jack, but he refuses and Norrington says he might have to kill Will too. Elizabeth jumps in front of him and stands next to Will, saying she’d rather be with him, so they lower their guns. Jack goes and jumps off the same wall Elizabeth fell off of and swims to the Black Pearl which is waiting in the harbor. Norrington lets Jack go by giving him a day’s head start and everyone seems to be okay with the fact that Elizabeth has decided to marry Will instead. They kiss while Jack sails off.

Same Spoiler at TheMovieSpoiler.com
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