So I’m rewatching PotC and I just realized that although we spectators already come to Curse of the Black Pearl knowing beforehand that Jack is quite eccentric, the characters don’t know and it really fucks me up that at first Elizabeth, Will and even Norrington do see Jack as Captain Jack Sparrow and do get intimidated by the stories about him. Of course later they start seeing more and more about who he really is and go all “#is this serious #i’m so fucking done™“, but at first they are intimidated by him and now that I’ve seen Jack with these eyes I just can’t stop having my mind blown by every single scene because I too can now see Jack by the way strangers would see him and it fucks me up to finally realize he is intimidating and does look like a cruel pirate
okay so i just took a moment and realized i need to go deeper into this, i’m completely obsessed now
When Elizabeth first meets Jack, she has absolutely no idea who he is. There’s this man who just pulled her off the water and saved her life. Suddenly said man is a pirate (a.k.a. a certainly murderer, ruthless criminal) with a chain around her neck and a gun aimed at her head. She gets pissed instead of scared, but that’s because Elizabeth is the most pirate-y of them all, a point to be discussed in another post. Any other person would be terrified.
When Will first meets Jack, he also has absolutely no idea who he is. He’s picking up a weird hat at the forge when suddenly a sword hits his hand and a man is threatening him with a sword. Will fights him though, but that’s because apparently the kid has more love for rightfulness and justice than for his own life.
I really want everyone to take a good look at this gif as if you didn’t know who Jack is. Will has his stance but is retreating. Jack? A nameless, potentially dangerous pirate, totally relaxed (look at his posture, he’s not rigid at all) and in his element, to the point of sliding his sword along Will’s, provoking him.
At one point in this sequence Jack has only one sword, and yet puts up a fight with Will, who has two. Let that sink in for a moment. At this point in the movie Will has been a blacksmith for maybe just a few months less than eight years. He practiced with swords three hours a day. Roughly 8640 hours of training and two swords versus Jack and one sword. Jack is scary.
But imagine that this is only the first impression for those who don’t know that the man they’re looking at is Captain Jack Sparrow. Now, imagine what people who have heard of his name think. We know Jack carries rumors and stories, Elizabeth herself had read about them before.
“Jack Sparrow? He sails the Black Pearl, a black ship with black sails. They say the ship was once burned and sank but got brought back from the bottom of the sea as perfect as it was before.”
“Jack Sparrow once was killed by the Kraken.” “Once was killed?” “Yes. The stories say he went to Davy Jones’ Locker but came back.”
“Jack Sparrow and Blackbeard met once. Sparrow survived.” “How is that even possible?” “Not only that, but Blackbeard died in the fight.” (We know Barbossa killed
Edward Teach, but you can’t tell me there aren’t people who say it was Jack. Some say they fought Blackbeard together, some say Barbossa did it all alone. A consensus was never reached.)
“They say that he talks to witches.”
“Apparently his crew mutinied once. They abandoned him on an island, but Sparrow escaped and cursed the crew. The mutineers became undead, agonising men until Sparrow got his precious ship back and sent all of them to the bottom of the sea.”
“He once almost got captured by the East India Trading Company, but disappeared without a trace.”
God, I just have a lot of thoughts right now. We know Jack as a funny eccentric man who has no idea what he is doing half of the time and improvises a lot, but people who don’t know him? They cower in fear. ‘Captain Jack Sparrow’ are words whispered at bars at night in hushed tones, by men afraid that the pirate’s shadow might by behind them, listening. The sight of the Black Pearl causes havoc whenever it arrives near the continent. Jack is known by many names, most of them referring to how many times he tricked Death.
Ocean Archive 