Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl corrections

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - 185 corrections

Directed by Gore Verbinski, starring Jack Davenport, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Crook, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Jonathan Pryce

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When Will frees Jack from jail, he lifts the door, but the door is directly under another bar, making it impossible to lift straight up. [As Will is standing right in front of Jack's cell, you can see a gap between the top of the cell door and the cell wall bars. There is more than enough of a gap at the top to lift the door off its half-pin barrel hinges. That is how the door is set into the hinges in the first place.] Corrected by Rikki

When Jack and Will are talking to Anamaria in Tortuga, look behind them and you will see the Interceptor with no canvas visible at all. Then when Will points to the ship and they turn to look at it, you can see canvas. [The sails on the masts are lowered halfway in all the shots during this scene. When Will points to the Interceptor, we see it from a better angle, and the sails are more visible.] Corrected by Rikki

When Elizabeth Swann pretends to be Bootstrap Bill Turner's child, Elizabeth Turner, Barbossa slits her hand, so if that happened when Jack Sparrow and Barbossa are fighting, Will standing there with his hands tied up and Elizabeth comes in to save the day why is it that she has no bandage around her hand or at least a scab or scar? [Will is not tied up anymore, when Elizabeth comes to join him in fighting the pirates and she IS wearing the cloth around her hand during this entire scene.] Corrected by Rikki

In the scene where Sparrow and Turner sword fight in the blacksmiths, after Sparrow cuts his chains in half, you can see when they're fighting he sometimes has it on, sometimes has it off. Very noticeable on the left hand. The excess chains also disappear in some shots. [I watched the entire scene frame by frame and this isn't true. It may look like the chains aren't there, but they are, as seen in individual frames and he always has the shackles on.] Corrected by Rikki

Characters in the film are firing wet flint-lock guns, even though flint will not create a spark when wet. [Wet flints will fire, but wet powder will not. So long as the frizzen is folded down to cover the pan and powder, the friction/impact of the flint on the frizzen should cause sparks enough to ignite the priming charge. As a historical re-enactor, I have fired my flintlock in the pouring rain with very few misfires. On the other hand, if the weapon is completely submerged, and the powder soaked, it won't ignite even with a spark...]

During the scene of the battle between the Interceptor and the Black Pearl, Captain Barbossa is shouting orders at the crew, but if you look in the background on the left side of the screen, you can see a guy swinging on a rope who gets himself tangled up. You see a jerk where he falls about a half-a-foot, then the camera switches shots, but when it comes back to Barbossa, he is so tangled up that another man is helping him. [Actually, the man who gets caught in the rope is somewhat thrown from the mast by the battle. He gets tangled in the rope on his way down and is caught before he hits the deck. You can see a cannon fired at the Pearl just before this shot and you see a couple of pirates fall from the top of the mast.]

There is a scene in which Elizabeth is reading a book in bed. The bed is heated incorrectly by the maid. The way she heats the bed would burn the feet of whoever was in bed. The object she uses was meant to be placed between the covers before anyone gets into bed, and removed at bedtime. [Actually it is heated just fine.The maid puts the heater under the mattress therefore not burning the feet.]

In the scene where Will Turner is breaking Captain Jack out of prison, he only raises the left side of the jail door out of the hinges to help Jack escape, but that's impossible since the jail doors are locked - when the door falls away it falls to the hinged side showing the door unlocked. [When the camera shows Captain Jack Sparrow picking the lock with a broken bone you can see that the lock is an old deadbolt lock of some kind so when Will pulls the hinges out he is able to pull the door backwards so that the two doors are no longer inter-locking.] Corrected by Jon Sandys

In the scene where Norrington is watching Will and Jack through his spyglass as they get away on the Interceptor, Jack is telling Will to do something, and Will is holding onto two lines, swinging them back and forth uselessly. This would not cause the boat to do anything, such as turn, or go faster. [Jack and Will aren't actually trying to take the 'Dauntless', but only trying to make it appear that they are so they can take the 'Interceptor' when Norrington comes after them.] Corrected by MoonFaery

When Jack Sparrow removes the coin from the chest at the end, he becomes cursed, but when Elizabeth removes it (when they cut her hand), she doesn't become cursed. [She NEVER removed the medallion from the chest. Barbossa grabbed it back up, when he realized the curse has not been lifted. He threw the coin with her, when he slapped her and knocked her down. Only when, 'someone removes any of the medallions directly from the chest, will they be cursed, until they put it back, with a bit of their blood.'] Corrected by Rikki

In the scene where Capt. Jack Sparrow is holding Elizabeth at gunpoint, he obviously has a gun in his hands. Yet, when he turns and runs, he grabs the rope with both hands. You don't hear a gun fall and/or there wasn't enough time to put it into his belt. [Just as Jack pushes Elizabeth away, off camera he does put the gun into his belt, when he spins around, it is there in his belt, just before he flies up the rope.] Corrected by Rikki

Right before Commodore Norrington proposes to Elizabeth you can see that the Cello players cello has no strings. [The strings on the cello can be seen right underneath the bow, as the shot just opens.] Corrected by Rikki

Will is caught under the deck hold as the water rises around him on the floundering Interceptor. But at least one deck below him the powder room, with its burning black powder, remains above the water line. [It's quite possible that since moisture ruins powder, that the whole powder room is sealed with pine gum or hot tar or wax and is nearly watertight.] Corrected by Grumpy Scot

In the scene after Jack saves Elizabeth from drowning, he cuts the corset from her stomach and the soldiers make the comment "I never would have thought of that". Afterwards, Jack says, "Clearly you have never been to Singapore". Pirates of the Caribbean took place in the 1720's and Singapore was only discovered during the 1800's. [No, Singapore was only established as a British trading port in the 1800s. It has been a well-known place since the 14th century. See: http://inic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/singapore/Singapore-History.html]

The first time we see the older Elizabeth, she has just awoken from a dream about the day she and Will first met. She gets out of bed, takes a lamp that is burning there, and opens the drawer to find the medallion. However, a minute later it is shown to be broad daylight, so there is no reason for that lamp to be there. Either it has been left burning all night (something never done, in case of fire - and it would have run out of fuel in that time anyway), or a maid has just brought it in while Elizabeth was sleeping - but why would she do this, and not just open a window? [Lamps were left lit for many reasons, and lamps, with a short wick and a full supply of good oil, can last a night, and some were designed to (much safer than candles). A lamp would be left on so that the sleeper could find the chamber pot if needed in the darkness of night. In this case, it may have also have arisen from a childhood demand that 'the lamp be left' that was still being carried out by the servants.]

In the scene where the pirates fight on board the Interceptor and Elizabeth's father is hidden in the room, his wig gets snatched off his head by one of the pirates. However, when he opens the drawer and sees the human hand inside it, his wig is on again. [He grabbed the wig back right after the pirates took it.]

You will have to stay past the credits to see this one: When Will throws the last two medallions into the chest, he leaves it open. The lid is on the floor, next to chest. When Jack the Monkey arrives at the same chest, the lid is covering it partially. [There is a long-ish time period between Will putting the medallions back in the chest and Jack the monkey showing up. Sparrow has time to check out the treasure, Will and Elizabeth talk and so on. They could easily have put the lid in the position seen later during this time.] Corrected by Tailkinker

When Jack first sails into Port Royal, he passes a gallows with three corpses and an sign that says "Pirates be Ye warned". "Ye" is not an old way of writing "you", but the old form of "the", the y-looking character being derived from the rune for the "th"-sound. [Assuming this movie takes place sometime later than the sixteen hundreds, the use of the word "ye" was used for the modern "you". For reference, check the King James Version of the Bible, written 400 years ago, obviously uses "ye" for "you". While possible uses of the word further back in history may have been different, the language has changed since the days of runes.]

You will have to stay past the credits to see this one. The monkey is back in the cave having swum back to shore, but monkeys do not swim. How did it get from the ship to the cave? [Some monkeys can swim (http://www.monkeymaddness.com/bbm/bbm3094.htm).]

When Will is waiting for the governor, he broke one arm of the candelabrum leaving only three candles. Later when Will gives the sword to the governor, the candelabrum has four candles again. [Actually, the candelabrum had FIVE candles to start with, one of them is slightly obscured by another.] Corrected by Ioreth