Why Pirates of the Caribbean Succeeded Where Cutthroat Island Failed
https://screenrant.com/pirates-caribbean-success-cutthroat-island-fail-comparison-explained/
1995’s infamous Renny Harlin flop Cutthroat Island was disastrous enough to kill the entire pirate sub-genre for some time, but why was the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise a runaway success where this movie failed? Released in 2003, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie The Curse of the Black Pearl was a massive success for Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Intended to be a mid-budget adaptation of the popular Disneyland ride of the same name, the swashbuckling action-adventure movie was predicted to do roughly as well as Eddie Murphy’s star vehicle The Haunted Mansion, another theme park ride adaptation released by Disney the same year.
Instead, The Curse of the Black Pearl defied expectations to become a massive success with audiences and critics alike, earning over $650 million on a $140 million budget and spawning four sequels. Despite the sequels earning mixed reviews, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise soon became a huge financial earner for Disney and remains a series whose popularity rivals the MCU and Star Wars. But only eight years before the release of The Curse of the Black Pearl, another pirate-themed blockbuster was released and, despite its superficial similarity to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the movie was a resounding flop.
1995’s Cutthroat Island was a star vehicle for Geena Davis directed by Cliffhanger helmer (and her then-husband) Renny Harlin. The movie began production on uneasy footing, and an initially uncertain climate soon snowballed into a full-blown catastrophe. Original star Michael Douglas dropped out during production and Davis attempted to follow suit, infamous Gladiator hellraiser Oliver Reed was fired after getting into a bar fight, and the Cutthroat Island script was rewritten countless times while the movie’s sets were plagued by flooding. Despite all this, Cutthroat Island arrived in cinemas in December 1995 where it sank like a stone, earning $10 million on a budget of almost $100 million. So what did Cutthroat Island get so wrong that The Pirates of the Caribbean got so right?
Geena Davis has been a reliably superb screen presence throughout her storied career, and the later Renny Harlin collaboration The Long Kiss Goodnight proved that the actor had serious chops as an action movie leading lady (in fact, Davis’ tough-as-nails performance was one of few bright spots singled out by critics in that later dud, alongside Shane Black's expensive script). However, the veteran actor couldn’t salvage Cutthroat Island’s attempts at subversive characterization when the movie’s script simply didn’t have anything to say about the gender roles it appeared to toy with. Where Pirates of the Caribbean’s Elizabeth Swann was a lady who was forced to become a pirate by circumstance, allowing audiences to follow her transition from frightened naif to tough action heroine throughout the first film in the series, Davis opened the movie as a pirate and Cutthroat Island never made much use of this unexpected gender inversion after her introduction.
Where Davis’ Morgan Adams is established as a tough pirate from the jump, Knightley’s Swann offers a more effective audience insertion persona as she begins the movie unable to handle adventure and soon progresses to being a resourceful but relatable heroine. By the third film in the series, Elizabeth Swann has double-crossed Jack Sparrow himself, saved the crew of the Black Pearl, and become a Pirate Lord, but this transformation required her to begin as a more grounded character much like the humble blacksmith’s apprentice, her love interest Will Turner. Cutthroat Island, in contrast, made its main character the unflappable swashbuckling hero, a seemingly smart choice that in practice sapped the movie's action of any tension as the audience were aware Morgan would survive no matter what (a mistake repeated by the later, Jack Sparrow-centric Pirates of the Caribbean installments).
While Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t an out-and-out horror movie, every installment in the series knew that pirate movies needed a little help from other genres to be engaging. Much like fellow famous "pirate" movie, The Princess Bride mixed fantasy, fairy tale, and romance tropes to make its satirical story more involving, The Curse of the Black Pearl added a ton of creepy zombie sequences into the mix for when the swordplay and ship chasing action eventually inevitably became tiresome. Cutthroat Island had no such tricks up its sleeve, eschewing genre-blending in favor of Erroll Flynn-style sincerity. It was a commendable effort by Harlin to reignite interest in a genre first made famous in the early years of cinema, but ultimately Pirates of the Caribbean’s creators were right to (somewhat cynically) make use of CGI and scary monsters under the assumption that jaded modern audiences would quickly tire of pirate action alone.