ROUGH ANIMATION IS...ROUGH.

ROUGH ANIMATION IS...ROUGH.

Okay okay y’okay laughing my ass off at that addition aside I just wanted to add in for jarringly tone-shifting real talk that honestly, the third movie was not nearly brave enough!

The actual canon story was, but you don’t really understand the depravity of Beckett through the movies alone, and you especially don’t if you are unaware of how his backstory with Jack actually played out.

For anyone unaware- and was not explained well enough but definitely alluded to and implied in the final cut of the trilogy-

The entire catalyst for most of the whole plot of all this is that Jack liberated a shipment of slaves from the East India Trading Company.

I’m not exaggerating. Not remotely.

The gist of how him and Cutler go back so far was that they both worked for the EITC, Jack captaining a cargo ship under Beckett. Well, one day Beckett puts Jack up to delivering a shipment of slaves for one of his superiors, and Jack, having a spine and being an actual chaotic neutral/good type, basically said “screw this” and freed the entire cargo load.

For god only knows what reason, they cut out an entire scene from At World’s End that was going to recount the perfect little summary of this story and it would have elaborated on so much of what these two’s deal was. Included below because screw the writers for letting any audience member miss out on this delicious exchange.

I still can’t believe we had this omitted from the final cut, including such a banger line as this from Jack.

Which again, I find so stupid because this was such influential lore for the whole everything that sprung the narratives of the first movies’ characters.

Jack’s single heroic action of defying this ruthless, oppressive company by freeing those people are the first snowballing cause behind:

Jack becoming a pirate and Beckett’s Hatred of him - By committing literal treachery and making Cutler look like a complete idiot to his higher ups, he screwed over that monster’s career ambitions at the time, a humiliation that took years of clawing and struggle to earn the sort of prestige he desired within the company again. This is the reason Beckett himself gave the order to have Jack branded as a pirate and the Wicked Wench (the exact same vessel that would later be revived as the Black Pearl) destroyed. These were the “marks” he talked about them leaving on each other in the parts of the scene that were kept in. This is the reason he wants Jack dead more than anything else in the world.

The Existence of the Black Pearl - After Cutler saw to the burning and sinking of the Wicked Wench, Jack contracted with Davy Jones to raise the vessel up again as the legendary ghost ship. This made him the captain over the crew that included Barbossa, who led a mutiny upon him and ignorantly plundered the cache of cursed gold. The same crew that included Bootstrap Bill, William’s father, who sent his son away with the single piece Barbossa’s crew spent years chasing after until Elizabeth, Jack, and an adult Will got involved with and did the entire first movie about it.

Jack’s debt to Davy Jones - In which he agreed his soul to serve 100 years aboard the Dutchman in return for 13 years commanding the Black Pearl. That much they explained in Dead Man’s Chest but did you stop and wonder why when Jack tried to haggle for trading other souls in place of his own, Jones smugly set the price at 100 people? That’s the number of slaves he freed. It was no arbitrary price. It was another cruel lash he could use to dig into his victim, punishing Jack further for the good deed that got him into this situation in the first place.

Also the entire chain of hijinks that led to the third movie - Ergo, the East India Trading Company coming into possession of Jones’ heart, and Elizabeth leaving Jack for dead because of the aforementioned unpaid debt. And obviously the significance/urgency to our main characters (especially Jack and William) regarding why Jones needs to be killed. And Beckett.

Ah, and Beckett.

So in a funny twist of fate, instead of imagining all of this as “Jack’s good deed coming back to haunt him”, it’s actually the slow burn story of Beckett’s own karma catching up to him. Of the entire EITC’s depravity and inhumanity becoming the cause that finally ruined their claim over the sea and world.

When I hear Beckett’s savory last words, as he faced his final moments, I always feel like it was his pathetic attempt at an explanation to the gates of judgement themselves. In that moment when his world was at end around him, he reflected on every poor decision he made that brought him to this, his entire career and life laid out, flashing before him in those splinters and embers.

What does he have to say for himself, in that moment before he knows the fires of Hell will claim him? The same excuse he gave to every person he broke, the same to every person he destroyed, and the same to everyone that opposed him.

The same as he always told himself to get this far.

pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them

[Slides these your way with a lopsided grin, for fun reminders]

…

A small comp I like to call 'dib what the actual fuck'

Fun “mission failed” screens from Sly 3

:)c

so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone's blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it's just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else's apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch