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Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the caribbean 2 poster b.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by
  • Ted Elliott
  • Terry Rossio
Starring
Music by Hans Zimmer
Cinematography Dariusz Wolski
Editing by
  • Craig Wood
  • Stephen Rivkin
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Release date(s) June 24, 2006 (2006-06-24) (Disneyland Resort)
July 7, 2006 (2006-07-07) (United States)
Running time 150 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $225 million
Money made $1.066 billion

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 American fantasy swashbuckler film directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), it is the second installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Set one year after the events of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the film recounts Captain Jack Sparrow owing a debt to Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), the ghastly captain of the Flying Dutchman, and is marked for death and pursued by the Kraken. Meanwhile, the wedding of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) is interrupted by Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who wants Turner to acquire Jack's magic compass in a bid to find the Dead Man's Chest.

Two sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl were conceived in 2004, with Elliott and Rossio developing a story arc that would span both films. Filming took place from February to September 2005 in Palos Verdes, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, and The Bahamas, as well as on sets constructed at Walt Disney Studios. It was shot back-to-back with the third film of the series, At World's End (2007).

Dead Man's Chest was released in the United States on July 7, 2006, and received mixed reviews, with praise for its visual effects and Depp and Nighy's performances, but criticism for its running time and plot. The film broke several records at the time, including the opening-weekend record in the United States with $136 million, the fastest film to gross over $1 billion at the worldwide box office (63 days), became the highest-grossing film of 2006, and was the highest-grossing film produced by Disney until it was surpassed by Toy Story 3 in 2010. The film received four nominations at the 79th Academy Awards (winning Best Visual Effects).

Cast

  • Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow: The eccentric pirate captain of the Black Pearl.
  • Orlando Bloom as William Turner: A blacksmith-turned-pirate who strikes a deal with Cutler Beckett to find Jack Sparrow and his compass so he can save both himself and his fiancée Elizabeth from execution.
  • Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann: Governor Swann's daughter and Will's fiancée, who is arrested on her wedding day for helping Captain Jack Sparrow escape.
  • Bill Nighy as Davy Jones: Captain of the Flying Dutchman. Davy Jones was once a human being. Unable to bear the pain of losing his true love, he carved out his heart and put it into the Dead Man's Chest, then buried it in a secret location. He has become a bizarre creature – part octopus, part crab, part man – and collects the souls of dead or dying sailors to serve aboard his ship for one hundred years.
  • Jack Davenport as James Norrington: He resigned his commission as Commodore in the Royal Navy after losing his ship and crew in a hurricane off the coast of Tripoli in the pursuit of Jack Sparrow and his crew. Fallen on hard times, he joins the Black Pearl's crew and seeks to regain his honor and career.
  • Tom Hollander as Lord Cutler Beckett: Chairman of the East India Trading Company, he travels to Port Royal to capture and recruit Jack Sparrow as a privateer.
  • Stellan Skarsgård as William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner: A crewman aboard the Flying Dutchman who happens to be Will Turner's father.
  • Kevin McNally as Joshamee Gibbs: The Black Pearl's first mate and Jack's loyal friend, he once served in the Royal Navy under Lieutenant James Norrington.
  • Jonathan Pryce as Governor Weatherby Swann. Elizabeth's father and governor of Port Royal.
  • Mackenzie Crook as Ragetti: A pirate and former Black Pearl crewmember under Captain Barbossa.
  • Lee Arenberg as Pintel: Ragetti's inseparable crewmate.
  • Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma: An obeah priestess who Jack bartered with for his magic compass. She explains the legend of Davy Jones, in addition to owning a similar locket to his.
  • Geoffrey Rush as Hector Barbossa: Barbossa's character is resurrected in the final scene of this film. Having met his demise in the previous installment, Barbossa is resurrected by Tia Dalma to save Jack from Davy Jones's locker.
  • David Bailie as Cotton, a mute member of the Black Pearl’s crew.
  • Martin Klebba as Marty, a dwarf member of the Black Pearl’s crew.
  • David Schofield as Mercer.
  • Alex Norton as Captain Bellamy, the pirate captain of the Edinburgh Trader.
  • John Boswall as Wyvern, an ancient member of Davy Jones’ crew who has fused with the ship.
  • Derrick O'Connor as Very Old Man, an inexperienced sailor in Jack Sparrow’s crew.
  • San Shella as Leech, a member of Jack’s new crew from India
  • Lauren Maher as Scarlett.

Dermot Keaney, Clive Ashborn, Robbie Gee, Winston Ellis, Christopher Adamson, Andy Beckwith, and Jonathan Lindsey portray the crew of the Flying Dutchman through motion capture.

Production

Development

Following the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the cast and crew signed on for two more sequels to be shot back-to-back, a practical decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio decided not to make the sequels new adventures featuring the same characters, as with the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, but to retroactively turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to explore the reality of what would happen after Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann's embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the Fountain of Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing Davy Jones, the Flying Dutchman and the Kraken. They also introduced the historical East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates.

Planning began in June 2004, and production was much larger than The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was only shot on location in St. Vincent. This time, the sequels would require fully working ships, with a working Black Pearl built over the body of an oil tanker in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. By November, the script was still unfinished as the writers did not want director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to compromise what they had written, so Verbinski worked with James Byrkit to storyboard major sequences without need of a script, while Elliott and Rossio wrote a "preparatory" script for the crew to use before they finished the script they were happy with. By January 2005, with rising costs and no script, Disney executives threatened to cancel the film, but changed their minds. The writers would accompany the crew on location, feeling that the lateness of their rewrites would improve the spontaneity of the cast's performances.

Filming

BoneCagesPOTC
The two bone cages used in one of the early scenes of the film. The cages were on display on the Studio Backlot Tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios until it shut down in 2014.

Principal photography began on February 28, 2005, in Palos Verdes, beginning with Elizabeth's ruined wedding day. For Cutler Beckett's introduction, Rossio and Elliott had him arrive on shore in a boat while sitting on a horse staind in the boat; the duo had originally planned to use this introduction for Don Rafael Montero in The Mask of Zorro (1998), but the scene was cut for being deemed too expensive. Similarly, the Pirates crew wanted to cut the idea for budget reasons, in addition to feel that it would be unbelievable. However, Verbinski promised Rossio and Elliott to use the idea and the scene was filmed one day after weeks of planning and training. The crew spent the first shooting days at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, including the interiors of the Black Pearl and the Edinburgh Trader which Elizabeth stows away on, before moving to St. Vincent to shoot the scenes in Port Royal and Tortuga. Sets from the previous film were reused, having survived three hurricanes, although the main pier had to be rebuilt as it had collapsed in November. The crew had four tall ships at their disposal to populate the backgrounds, which were painted differently on each side for economy. One of the ships used was the replica of HMS Bounty used in the 1962 film adaptation of Mutiny on the Bounty.

On April 18, 2005, the crew began shooting at Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. However, this was also a problem; the Dominican government were completely unprepared for the scale of a Hollywood production, as while the 500-strong crew occupying around 90% of the roads on the island they had trouble moving around on the underdeveloped surfaces. The weather also alternated between torrential rainstorms and hot temperatures, the latter of which was made worse for the cast who had to wear period clothing. At Dominica, the sequences involving Pelegosto and the forest segment of the battle on Isla Cruces were shot. Verbinski preferred to use practical props for the giant wheel and bone cage sequences, feeling long close-up shots would help further suspend the audience's disbelief. Dominica was also used for Tia Dalma's shack. Filming on the island concluded on May 26, 2005.

The crew moved to a small island in the Bahamas called White Cay for the beginning and end of the Isla Cruces battle, before production took a break until August, where in Los Angeles the interiors of the Flying Dutchman were shot. On September 18, 2005, the crew moved to Grand Bahama Island to shoot ship exteriors, including the working Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman. Filming there was a tumultuous period, starting with the fact that the tank had not actually been finished. The hurricane season caused many pauses in shooting, and Hurricane Wilma damaged many of the accessways and pumps, though no one was hurt nor were any of the ships destroyed. Principal photography was completed on September 10, 2005.

The look of the Flying Dutchman was partially inspired by old Dutch "fluyts"—17th-century vessels which resembled galleons—and more specifically, the Vasa, a massive Swedish warship which sank in Stockholm's harbor upon its maiden voyage in 1628 (the ship was salvaged in 1961 and housed in a special museum in the Swedish capital). With its high, heavily ornamented stern, the ship provided a rich foundation for Rick Heinrichs' wilder and more fantastical designs.

One of the stuntmen, Johnny Depp's stunt double Tony Angelotti, was injured on set while filming a "human yo-yo" stunt in July 2005. He was rushed to hospital, suffering internal bleeding after "nicking" a branch off his femoral artery. He lost six units of blood, had an ACL reconstruction and spent a year in recovery, before having to have the surgery all over again when a plate in his pelvis broke. He also suffered from PTSD. Despite this, he did continue filming for the following sequel, At World's End, albeit doing "lighter stunts" like sword choreography or working as a stunt coordinator. However, in 2007, Tony Angelotti did sue Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer for the injury.

Visual effects

FromRealToReal
The three stages of animating Bill Nighy's character.
VOR0506-Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates wins the final leg

The Flying Dutchman's crew members were originally conceived by writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as ghosts, but Gore Verbinski disliked this and designed them as physical creatures. Their hierarchy is reflected by how mutated they were: newcomers had low level infections which resemble rosacea, while veterans had full-blown undersea creature attributes. Verbinski wanted to keep them realistic, rejecting a character with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various David Attenborough documentaries to study the movement of sea anemones and mussels. All of the crew are computer-generated, with the exception of Stellan Skarsgård, who played "Bootstrap" Bill Turner. Initially his prosthetics would be augmented with CGI but that was abandoned. Skarsgård spent four hours in the make-up chair and was dubbed "Bouillabaisse" on set.

Davy Jones had originally been designed with chin growths, before the designers made the move to full-blown tentacles; the skin of the character incorporates the texture of a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup among other elements. To portray Jones on set, Bill Nighy wore a motion capture tracksuit that meant the animators at Industrial Light & Magic did not have to reshoot the scene in the studio without him or on the motion capture stage. Nighy wore make-up around his eyes and mouth to splice into the computer-generated shots, but the images of his eyes and mouth were not used. Nighy only wore a prosthetic once, with blue-colored tentacles for when Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) steals the key to the Dead Man's Chest from under his "beard" as he sleeps. To create the CGI version of the character, the model was closely based on a full-body scan of Nighy, with Jones reflecting his high cheekbones. Animators studied every frame of Nighy's performance: the actor himself had blessed them by making his performance more quirky than expected, providing endless fun for them. His performance also meant new controls had to be stored. Finally, Jones' tentacles are mostly a simulation, though at times they were hand-animated when they act as limbs for the character.

The Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla which featured a live octopus crawling over miniatures. On the set, two pipes filled with 30,000 pounds (14,000 kg) of cement were used to crash and split the Edinburgh Trader: Completing the illusion are miniature masts and falling stuntmen shot on a bluescreen stage. The scene where the Kraken spits at Jack Sparrow does not use computer-generated spit: it was real slime thrown at Johnny Depp.

Release

Theatrical

JohnnyDeppJune07
Johnny Depp at the London premiere for the film in June 2006

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest premiered at Disneyland in California on June 24, 2006. It was the first Disney film to use the computer-generated Walt Disney Pictures logo from 2006 to 2022, which took a year for the studio to design. Wētā FX and yU+co were responsible for the logo's final animated rendering and Mark Mancina was hired to score a new composition and arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star". The new fanfare was co-arranged and orchestrated by David Metzger. The main people responsible for the logo's rendering are Cyrese Parrish and Cameron Smith.

Video game

A video game adaptation of the film was developed by Griptonite Games and Amaze Entertainment and released by Buena Vista Games in June–August 2006 for the PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance.

Sequel

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest para niños

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