posted
I got PotC the other night and watched it and the extra stuff. I love the movie, but last night as I was drifting off to sleep something came to my mind that I think is a major plot hole.
How did Will Turners dad die?
Here is another small hole, but I think I see a way around it. Why didn't Elizabeth become one of the cursed? She had one of the pieces of gold.
posted
1) I believe Will Turner's dad was killed in the attack that Will survived. But who knows?
2) In order to receive the curse, it appears that you need to remove the gold from the original chest; merely passing the gold to someone else doesn't curse the recipient.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
How does he get the gold before he dies? The ship that was destroyed at the start of the movie was the ship that Will was on. Will did not know his Dad was a pirate.
I just was under the impression that Will's Dad was there when the gold was taken and sent the medallion to his son and then some how died. That is the hole.
I can see the part about having to take the gold from the chest to be cursed. That explains Captain Jack during the fight at the end.
posted
Didn't the pirates say something about how they shouldn't have killed Bootstrap? Irony was discussed.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Barbossa: I won’t take questioning and no second guesses, not from the likes of you, Master Twigg .
Koehler: Who’s to blame? Every decision you’ve made has led us from bad to worse.
Pirate: It was you who sent Bootstrap to the depths!
quote:Pintel: Ol’ Bootstrap Bill . We knew him. Never sat well with Bootstrap what we did to Jack Sparrow , the mutiny and all. He said it wasn’t right with the Code. That’s why he sent off a piece of the treasure to you as it were. He said we deserved to be cursed… and remain cursed.
Ragetti: Stupid blighter.
Gibbs : Good man.
Pintel: Well, as you can imagine that didn’t sit too well with the Captain.
Ragetti: That didn’t sit too well with the Captain, at all. Tell him what Barbossa did.
Pintel: I’m telling the story! So…what the Captain did, he strapped a cannon to Bootstraps’ bootstraps.
Ragetti: Bootstraps’ bootstraps.
Pintel: The last we saw of ol’ Bill Turner , he was sinking to the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones’ Locker. ‘Course it was only after that we learned we needed his blood to lift the curse.
Ragetti: That’s what you call ironic.
So, this whole time, Will's father is strapped to a cannon at the bottom of the sea somewhere. He doesn't die until everyone is made alive again, whereupon he immediately drowns.
Looks to me like the pirates could have walked along the bottom of the ocean and found him again, but maybe they figured it wasn't worth the bother unless they had that last medallion, and if they found the last medallion, they'd have his blood anyway, so they didn't try.
Still, I'd hate to be Will and someday sit and figure all that out - that, in a way, Will lifting the curse is what truly killed his father.
posted
Why would then need his blood or that of a realtive? I mean why his inparticular? How would they know that they need it? Cortez wasn't there to tell them and probably no one else.
Maybe Bootstrap escaped from the cannon on the bottom of the ocean. He was there for years, wasn't he? Then he just wandered towards land. But he's so hard to find and doesn't have the gold for the pirates to be drawn to him, that they don't bother looking for him.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
The screenwriters mention this in the commentary. They made sure to include "crushing depths" to imply that, skeleton or not, he's powder, with nothing solid left to animate.
Of course, they also kept muttering "sequel" and giggling, so who knows?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
The curse was only upon those who took the gold directly out of the stone chest (this is mentioned when they discuss the curse). It is possible Will's father didn't take a piece from the chest, and instead sent a piece they had taken back; it's also possible his crushed cursed zombie-like body is crushed at the bottom of the ocean. Whichever you like.
And Elizabeth isn't cursed because she didn't take the gold coin from the chest. The same goes for Will, because he was given the coin by his father.
Posts: 1000 | Registered: Dec 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
So they can't use Jack's blood because it isn't just the blood of a pirate, but the blood of all of those who took the gold. Apparently, the other pirates have already added their blood to that chest, and they were just waiting on the last one.
Okay, that covers it.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
My friends and I have discussed this plot hole before. To me though, that one's not as big as the one I thought of after my third or fourth viewing.
The pirates come to get the gold and they take Elizabeth to their ship. They are not skeletons at this point, which is all fine and dandy since it was cloudy at the time. However, just after they take her from her house it shows the clouds move away from the moon and then cuts to the scene where the two pirates find Jack in the jail cell. The moon had to be shining for this part because it is when Jack found out that the curse was real. However, apparently the moon is pretty magical and can only shine into the one jail cell, or the people of the town (including Elizabeth being hauled away) are pretty unobservant because the rest of the pirates would have turned to skeletons at that same moment. It is not until later on the Black Pearl that Elizabeth finds out about the curse, and then not until the climax that the rest of the people find out.
Edit: After the scene with Jack finding out about the curse it shows the clouds moving back to cover the moon, but it still leaves a whole chunk of time unaccounted for.
posted
I'd assume the pirates were mostly indoors at that time...
But anyway, I noticed the plot hole when I first saw it in the theater, and told my family about it. They all got mad at me because I was ruining the movie, eheheh. I assumed he turned back into a human underwater and died, but I immediately thought "sequel!!!" when I realized this too...
You'd think that if he'd been down there for so many years, he'd eventually figure a way to get out... But of course there is the matter of water pressure... But I'd think that a little water pressure wouldn't faze an undead skeleton man... Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
This was the first thing i said to Leonide when we got out of the theater!
They just left his poor father at the bottom of the Ocean for years and years, and finally the curse is lifted and he becomes human again, only to immediately drown and die. Seemed like an awfully big oversight.
so either they were thinking sequel. or they figured people wouldn't care, or notice.
quote: I'd assume the pirates were mostly indoors at that time...
But what about everyone fighting in the streets? And what about the fact that they had just dragged Elizabeth out of her house? Posts: 1635 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
presumably the chains that held him to the metal ball were tight enough around the boots that his feetsies couldn't slip out?
Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
When the moon shines through clouds, it doeszn't necessarily shine EVERWHERE at once, Right? So it would only show them as skeletons when they were in direct moonlight. Sort of like the vampires in Buffy standing under an awning or something. *snicker*
He'd have had to have gotten loose before he got pulverized by the pressure, or else they could have dropped him in a place that wasn't as deep as they thought. Whatever. I think it holds up fairly well.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just had to post to say that I finally saw the movie on Saturday and I've been watching special features little by little since then. I noticed that plothole, but what you've said seems to cover it all. Someone should probably forward this to the movie people so they have an answer when people ask about this. You know, just in case they ignored this little oops in the hopes that no one would notice. Posts: 981 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
So was Bootstrap Bill actually under the curse, or not? I assumed he wasn't, because as we know even after being seperated, the bones still move. If after being crushed, possibly these pieces of bone could reunite, creating the skelaton/man once again, and get to the surface again.
I only would like to ask the screenwriters not to do the same plot as every other father-was-somehow-special-but-now-he's-dead movie. I hate that, it's so overdone. Unless they do something really interesting.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm rewatching Pirates of the Caribbean and I noticed a mistake (maybe) in the movie. When Elizabeth and Jack are trapped on the island, Elizabeth starts to burn all the food (and the rum ) to signal the English navy, she says that the signal is over a thousand feet high.
Since in the beginning of the movie, Elizabeth said she was from London, shouldn't she had said how high the trees were according to the metric system??? Isn't it only the US that doesn't use the metric system, even now? They weren't in the US in the movie, right?
posted
Butterfly, although the British use metres etc now, back then feet and yards etc. would have been the standard measure. And think about it, not many people anywhere know their height in centimetres, metric or not.
posted
Teshi- Bootstrap would have had to been under the curse. If he wasn't under the curse, then they would only need the coin and no blood. But because he was under the curse as well, they needed Bootstrap's blood.
Which is the same reason that Jack adds his blood to the chest as well when he cuts his hand and presses it to the coin before throwing it to Will.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sorry about the double post, but it just occured to me that there could still be a sequel without making Bootstrap alive.
The coins are still on the Isle de Muerte. I would imagine there are still people out there who want treasure and don't believe in the curse. But that's just a thought.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dagonee, I loved Buffy. It made it's rules and it stuck with'em, even when those rules were a little different than the usual vampire thing. Which is good. I love Joss Whedon. *saves nickles for Firefly dvds*
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
(Of course, I can't get them then. But just knowing they're out there makes my finals week a little more tolerable. )
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:presumably the chains that held him to the metal ball were tight enough around the boots that his feetsies couldn't slip out?
I think old bootstrap could have detached his leg, free himself of the chains, reatatch his leg, and then walk to the nearest port. (Remember that skeleton arm scene with the governonr.)
It would be interesting if they got Aragorn to play Orlando Bloom's father in the sequel. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I remember noticing a few plot holes the only time I saw the movie in the theatre, but I haven't seen it since, so I can't remember what most of them are. The only one that sticks in my mind is probably the least significant, and maybe I'm even wrong on some of my facts. So I'm going to test it against ye jatraqueros to see if I'm correct in my thinking. If any of you know more than I do, please fill me in.
For some reason, the bit that bothered me the most was at the very beginning, when Legolas is presenting someone (I think it's Jonathan Pryce) with a sword. He's examining it, which he does by putting his hands all up and down the blade, and then re-inserting it into its scabbard. In days before stainless steel, it seems to me that a blacksmith, or anyone familiar with metals, would never touch the blade of a sword without immediately cleaning it afterward, as the oils from his hands would rust the steel.
There you go. Not much of a plot hole, but that's the kind of thing I notice in movies.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Evil Laugh]](graemlins/evillaugh.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
