Even with a bottomless budget and a bunch of A-list stars at Disney's disposal, the
Pirates of the Caribbean movies may be pretty great — but they're still not perfect.
Set over the course of several years during the 18th century, this swashbuckler epic series
has fallen victim to a number of historical inaccuracies...though they pale in comparison
to the many rookie mistakes made on the set and in the editing room.
From glaring errors in continuity to makeup mishaps and green screen nightmares, here
are the biggest mistakes lurking in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Jack's escape
In The Curse of the Black Pearl, when Captain Jack Sparrow is repaid for saving Elizabeth's
life with arrest, the Captain engineers the first of what would become many improbable
escapes over the course of the franchise.
After putting a pistol to the head of Miss Swann and ordering her to unshackle him, Sparrow
grabs a rope and releases the cannon at the other end, flying into a spin and, eventually,
to freedom.
Before departing he tells Commodore Norrington:
"Gentlemen!
My lady.
You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow."
In reality, we would remember it as the day his men time-traveled into the future to upgrade
their weapons.
The English gunmen fire at will, each popping off shot after shot, though rifles at the
time would have needed reloading after every bullet.
Repeating rifles like these didn't come into use until 1862, when they were used by Union
soldiers during the American Civil War.
Still, this movie does have pirate zombies.
So maybe time travel isn't totally out of the question.
Elven tattoo
In another Black Pearl blunder, all-round do-gooder Will Turner engages in an acrobatic
duel that utilizes all the machinery in the blacksmith shop to stop Sparrow from escaping.
When he leans over one to taunt Jack, he exposes a rather unusual tattoo for 1700s Port Royal:
on his forearm in black ink is the word 'Nine' in J.R.R.
Tolkien's Elvish Tengwar script, a piece he and a number of his castmates had done to
commemorate their time working together on The Lord of the Rings.
Orlando Bloom took to Instagram to share an old photo of the gang showing off their matching
tats the day they got them done.
That's all well and good for Orlando Bloom, super-cool-actor guy.
But Will Turner seems like too much of a square to get a tattoo — even for something as
nerdy as Lord of the Rings.
Maybe they should've covered that thing with some makeup.
The lonely cowboy
The sheer number of people needed to bring a big-budget franchise film to life means
it can get a little crowded sometimes, even on the largest of sets.
Separating the extras from the many crew members needed to turn a ship into a working film
set clearly proved to be too much of a challenge here.
There's a lot of movement on deck when Jack Sparrow finally returns to the helm of his
beloved ship, and the final cut of The Curse of the Black Pearl relies on this to keep
you blind from the obvious error in the scene.
For just a single frame, a man dressed in a modern white t-shirt and tan cowboy hat
can be seen over Captain Jack's shoulder, staring longingly out to sea as the film goes
on around him.
He probably misses his horse.
"If I had a boat.
I’d go out on the ocean.
And if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat."
Disappearing fish guts
In Dead Man's Chest, when Will boards the Dutchman in search of his father, his rescue
mission fails to go as planned.
Cursed mutineer Bootstrap Bill Turner is bound to Davy Jones as a member of his immortal
crew, having agreed to serve 100 years aboard his ship, and the supernatural tyrant has
no intention of breaking that contract.
Will is set upon by Jones' gruesome crew, slicing one of his attackers open as he advances
and spilling his fishy guts all over the deck.
When the young Turner is knocked down seconds later, however, all those guts have pretty
much vanished.
This is either an obvious continuity error or producers making sure that Orlando Bloom's
highly marketable face wouldn't be covered in rotten intestines — even for a brief
moment.
Tortuga concertina
The Tortuga bar fight is pretty much everything you could want out of drunken pirates punching
each other.
It begins with a disheveled James Norrington applying to serve under the very pirate he
once chased halfway across the world, and it ends with the shamed Commodore getting
a bottle smashed over his head.
The music playing over the all-out brawl that takes place in between those two events comes
from a concertina, one of the most 'piratey' sounding instruments there is.
Have a listen!
Even though that tune really fits the scene well, its inclusion is pretty factually inaccurate.
The concertina, a cousin of the accordion, wasn't actually invented until the next century,
around 1830.
Still, there's really never a bad time for a solid concertina jam.
The big wheel
The most memorable Dead Man's Chest scene might be the big wheel run, in which a sword
fight between Norrington and Turner ends up becoming a whole new Disney park ride in the
making.
Jack Sparrow also finds himself caught up in the wheel as it rolls downhill towards
the ocean, though he's thrown out again before long, knocked out by a metal bar that, from
all other angles, looks to be a good foot above the Captain's head.
That isn't the biggest mistake in the scene, however.
When the wheel finally slows to a stop it falls to the left, with the axle pointing
down.
When Norrington and Turner emerge, the wheel is somehow the other way up, with the axle
pointing skyward.
The self-repairing ship
Davy Jones' ferry to the afterlife, the Flying Dutchman, is the most formidable ship to have
appeared in the franchise thus far, rising from the deep and making matchsticks out of
Navy and pirate vessels alike.
As Jones bears down on Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl in pursuit of his stolen heart, he orders
his crew:
"Send his beloved Pearl back to the depths."
... and they get to work on sinking the Pearl.
The windows of the Captain's quarters and the wood framing them is blown to pieces by
the Dutchman's cannons, though Sparrow's ship seems to have some otherworldly qualities
of its own.
Either that, or it's a really bad edit.
Moments later, viewing the Pearl from the port side of the Dutchman, we see that its
back end has magically repaired itself.
"Maybe somebody came in here and fixed it or something."
"Someone, like an Angel?"
Jack's rings
You know how it was weird that Will Turner had a Lord of the Rings tattoo?
Maybe it does make sense — when you consider that Jack Sparrow has magic rings of his own.
The Captain is left alone as the mythical Kraken wraps its giant tentacles around his
pride and joy, all while he's chained to the mast of his doomed ship.
However, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Jack manages to escape, using lamp oil to
wriggle his hand free of his manacle.
As he does, the rings on his index and ring fingers come loose and are just about to pop
right off until Jack whips his hand free, with the same rings somehow still in place.
The Fountain of Youth
As At World's End draws to a close, Jack discovers that his old nemesis Barbossa has once again
taken the Black Pearl, though he's able to continue his search for the Fountain of Youth
without it.
As Sparrow sets out from Tortuga on his dinghy, we see him consulting a scroll that details
the discovery of 'Aqua de Vida' by someone named Ponce de León in 1523.
History buffs know this refers to an actual Spanish explorer and conquistador who, according
to legend, set sail in search of the mythical fountain.
The trouble is, this voyage actually took place in the year 1513 — not 1523, as Jack's
map states.
So close!
Tire tracks
The fourth installment in the franchise, 2011's On Stranger Tides, begins with Jack making
a failed attempt to free his first mate Joshamee Gibbs, who's being held in London on charges
of piracy.
Captured, Sparrow is brought before King George II, who asks him to join his expedition to
find the Fountain of Youth.
He of course refuses and — as always — makes an unconventional escape.
As the hunt for Sparrow moves into the streets of the British capital, which is filled with
skinny-wheeled buggies pulled by horses, tire tracks made by a modern car or truck are visible
in the mud, as clear as day.
The shrinking impostor
Jack soon finds out that an impostor has been attempting to put together a crew to lead
an expedition to find the Fountain under his name.
When Sparrow comes face to face with said impostor, the pair become involved in a sword
fight that keeps the identity of the Captain's foe hidden until the very last moment.
The fake Jack turns out to be Anjelica, his former lover and the daughter of infamous
pirate Captain Blackbeard, who also happens to be seeking the mythical Fountain.
The problem with this scene is the height difference between Penélope Cruz and whoever
stood in for her during the battle, as this person was clearly the same height — if
not a little taller — than Johnny Depp.
Meanwhile, Cruz is clearly a few inches shorter than Depp...even in heels.
Half-cocked Blackbeard
Sparrow has various run-ins with Blackbeard over the course of On Stranger Tides as the
pair go head to head in a battle of savvy.
Shanghaied into service aboard his vessel the Queen Anne's Revenge, Jack fails in an
attempted mutiny and sees first hand the power of Blackbeard's legendary Sword of Triton,
a magic blade that allows the wielder to control every rope and pulley on the ship.
"You dare face this sword?"
But his closest shave with Blackbeard comes on land, when Jack finds himself with his
back to a cliff and a gun in his face.
A closer look reveals that Sparrow isn't actually in that much danger at all, seeing as Blackbeard
has his pistol half-cocked and it wouldn't fire no matter how hard he squeezed the trigger.
Barbossa's lieutenant commander
The reveal that Barbossa was alive and well — minus one leg — perhaps wasn't unexpected,
nor was the fact that the Black Pearl had been lost under his command, seeing as he
seems to lose control of the ship as often as Jack does.
The biggest surprise was that Captain Barbossa was now in the employ of the Crown, though
either the former pirate isn't up to scratch with his Navy lingo or the writers made a
few historical errors.
Barbossa addresses one of his men as lieutenant commander, a rank that was not introduced
into the Royal Navy until 1914.
Also, his ship flies a version of the Union Jack flag that didn't exist at the time, as
the Kingdom of Ireland had yet to be absorbed.
Magic feathers
Poor Geoffrey Rush was done yet another disservice later in the movie, this time by the editing
department.
With his ridiculous wig left back on land, he sheds the rest of his British Naval garb
after admitting to Jack that his true goal was to exact revenge on Blackbeard for sinking
the Pearl and taking his leg in the process.
The scene in which a young deckhand passes him a hat more suited to his true standing
as a pirate is supposed to be a moment for the character, but instead it leaves viewers
asking "where the hell did those feathers come from?"
Maybe he was just getting ready to set sail for the player hater's ball after all.
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