A Lesson in Story Economy from Pirates of the Caribbean

When Family Movie Night Turns into a Lesson on Story

I have seen the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl, a dozen times, at least. It was a hit when it came out, and it has been a delight every single time since. There’s something special about it. Quite a few somethings, I’m coming to understand, but one of them in particular caught my attention this time: how incredibly economical the opening sequence is.

All four of the major plotlines are set up without anyone really noticing.

1. Jack’s quest to be restored as the captain of the Black Pearl
2. The romance between Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner
3. The curse of the pirate treasure
4. Will’s backstory (which turns out to be a connection to the curse)

If we’re examining this sequence through the lens of entertainment, we’re given plenty of humor, atmosphere, and the epic and complete promise that this is the pirate movie we’ve been waiting for. The costumes, the remarkable score, the complete immersion…it’s all compelling. But at the exact same time, we get enough fuel to carry us the entire way through the story so organically we hardly realize it.

Through the lens of a writer, of a story crafter, it leaves us with a lot to examine and learn from. So let’s talk about it!

What is Story Economy?

Economy as it pertains to story means using as few characters, scenes, and words as possible, usually in a way that not only tightens the story overall, but increases its impact.

In other words, just about everything in your story should accomplish multiple things at once. A conversation should advance the plot and character development. Instead of using three examples within a sentence, choose a strong verb that captures the intention on its own. Every scene and as many characters as possible should be pulling double duty, triple, etc..

So when I say this first Pirates movie is extraordinarily economical, I mean there is absolutely zero wasted space.

This is your spoiler warning. This is a story analysis. While it focuses on the opening sequence, entire plot arcs are discussed throughout.

Analysis

The opening image is a distinguished ship quietly appearing through dense fog. A young Elizabeth Swan is singing a pirate song as she gazes out into it. She’s warned by Mr. Gibbs (who later becomes Jack’s companion) and Norrington (Will’s eventual romantic rival), about pirate superstitions. Through this sequence we come to understand that while Elizabeth is a little frightened of the subject, she finds the romantic idea of pirates thrilling.

Craft Note: The character economy here is already impressive. It could have been any ol’ sailor spouting off superstitions, but instead it was Gibbs, which gives us a glimpse into his backstory when we meet him later in a pigsty. Similarly, Norrington might’ve just been a current day character, but he is present here, too, so we already understand his duty and attitude toward pirates without having to stop and explain later.

Next, Elizabeth spots an unconscious Will Turner on a piece of floating debris. He is brought aboard and Elizabeth is charged with looking after him as the crew busies over to the burning shipwreck. She finds a gold coin necklace around his neck, which she pockets (for his protection, she says later). And as the scene ends she catches a glimpse of a ship with black sails disappearing into the fog.

This turns out to be a dream sequence, but when Elizabeth rises from bed and rummages through her side table to a secret compartment and pulls from it the gold coin necklace, fastening it around her neck, we understand it was not only a dream, but a memory.

Because she is interrupted immediately by the entrance of her father bearing a gift, we almost miss that she leaves the necklace on—but it is that necklace’s presence, hidden around her neck, that sets the entire story into motion.

Downstairs, Will Turner is delivering a sword for her father, a gift for Norrington for his promotion to Commodore, which is what Elizabeth and her father were already discussing upstairs.

Do you see how every single element included is layering in and adding to the propulsion of the story? Our cast is still remarkably small here. Elizabeth’s father is the governor—Norrington’s boss, essentially. It’s not a stranger who forged the sword, but Will Turner, the very boy we already met in the first scene. And then there’s our lovely Elizabeth, who is the connective tissue between all three of them.
There are no wasted moments, no wasted words, no wasted shots. Everything is building into the same epic story.

Which leads us to…

The single most efficient minute of storytelling

Everything we know at minute 7:56 of the film about Elizabeth and Will is:

• They met when they were young, she stole his medallion, she still has it.

That’s it.

By 8:41, we have a complete understanding of the engine of the romantic subplot.

Let me walk you through it…

Will is at Elizabeth’s house because her father commissioned a new sword for Norrington, whose promotion ceremony is happening later that same day (progressing more than one plot at a time). Will works as some sort of apprentice at the blacksmith, and in an awkward moment when he breaks a sconce on the wall, we understand that he’s not used to such lavish surroundings. Her world is very different from the one he’s used to.
Elizabeth descends in the new dress her father gifted her to wear to the ceremony (more on that later). When Will spots her, he’s speechless. But when she greets him, she’s warm and markedly casual with him. He, however, is entirely proper and polite. Elizabeth is Ms. Swan, consistently and relentlessly, even once she asks him to call her, apparently not for the first time, Elizabeth.
Though nothing Will says could be mistaken as cold, Elizabeth interprets his propriety as a sort of rejection and changes to match the same, more distant, style.
It is only once she leaves that Will allows himself to tenderly and secretly whisper her first name, revealing his feelings of longing, after all.

Craft Note: Their specific backstory is never explained, and it doesn’t need to be. Their current dynamic implies everything we need to know, and invites the kind of audience questions that drive them forward into the story, not away from it.

By the end of this scene, we now know:

1. Will is of a lower rank than Elizabeth, and he feels the distance to a sometimes humiliating degree.
2. Elizabeth already thinks of him as one of her closest friends, one she need not worry about conventions with, even directly in front of her father.
3. Will is hopelessly taken with her, but perfectly restrained in her presence as he knows she is out of his wildest aspirations for a wife.
4. His restraint is the obstacle for Elizabeth. She is already fond of him and was all but begging him to join her in the memory of their first meeting. If he would only be brave enough to speak it aloud, I have a feeling the result would surprise him. But then we’d be in a very different type of story…

The Pirate

I can’t think of a more iconic character entrance than that of Captain Jack Sparrow in The Curse of the Black Pearl.

He stands at the masthead of a sailing vessel, gazing heroically into the distance. But when he jumps down, we see it’s not a grand ship he’s sailing, it’s a dinghy, and…it’s sinking. He stops bailing water long enough to pay homage to a trio of hanging bodies as he approaches the harbor.

Craft Note: This is the moment that establishes the stakes of the film. Piracy is illegal, and the penalty for it is death. Though the way it is shot is enough for us to understand the impact, it is made more powerful because Norrington spoke about this very circumstance in his first words in the film. Repetition or callbacks like this help emphasize important elements of story. Because all of our beloved characters end up engaging in piracy before the story is over, understanding these stakes raises the tension of the entire plot.

When Jack arrives in the harbor, his ship is well and truly wrecked, just in time for him to step from his place at the masthead to the dock. Between that and his interaction with the harbormaster, we already have a perfect idea of Jack’s character:

• He is most alive at sea.
• He takes risks (like sailing a barely sea-worthy vessel) that seem to work out against all odds.
• He’s not opposed to going along to get along (originally paying the shillings), but also opportunistic and morally grey (stealing the coin purse).

This is all reinforced in the next scene, where he moseys over to the Interceptor and must sneak past two redcoat guards. He instigates an argument and is temporarily successful. When he’s caught, he states his real intentions plainly: to commandeer a boat, recruit a crew, and continue in his scalawag ways. But before the guards can react though, Elizabeth drops into the ocean like a stone from where she was being proposed to, high above. As neither of the guards are able to swim, Jack jumps in to rescue her, bringing the two sides of the story together in a way that feels inevitable.

This is, of course, when the gold necklace, still around Elizabeth’s neck, sends out the shockwave signal that calls the Black Pearl to Port Royal. I consider this to be the inciting incident.

Craft Note: The exchange between the two redcoats could have been about anything and served the plot just fine. Instead, the storytellers used this moment as an opportunity to introduce the Black Pearl; not only how to identify it (which a careful audience will remember seeing in the first scene), but also of the legend surrounding it. By the time we learn of Jack’s history with the ship, we already have some greater context of what that means.

Within this brief scene, we’ve gotten background on what we soon learn is Jack’s motivation, his immediate intentions, the colliding of Jack with our main cast, and the inciting incident.

Now that’s economy.

Once Jack and Ms. Swan reach the shore, Norrington and his additional guards have arrived, cornering Jack. We learn his identity as a pirate of some renown, which means Elizabeth has officially realized her childhood dream to meet a pirate, and it is indeed, quite thrilling. She begs mercy for him, which the ever-resourceful Jack uses to his advantage to escape.

Will Turner’s Mission

Now shackled and on the run, Jack ducks into the blacksmith shop where Will works. He finds the proprietor passed out drunk. This is not only a boon for Jack, who can now use the shop to unencumber himself, but it also explains a moment that happened earlier, when the governor complimented the blacksmith’s work: the work was clearly not done by the degenerate here. Will is under-appreciated professionally, and perhaps in other ways, too.

Moments later, Will returns to the shop and catches Jack. During a highly entertaining sword fight action scene which takes them into the rafters and back, we learn that Will has dedicated himself to the study of sword craft so he can eliminate any pirate he meets, though we don’t learn why until later.

This scene serves as the logical next step in the story (Jack is ultimately captured and imprisoned), but it also confirms Will’s unrequited feelings for Ms. Swan, and raises the question of why he’s fixated against pirates, which eventually leads to the revelation that Jack knew Will’s father, the connection Will still has to Jack’s scheme to win back the Black Pearl, and the reason why Barbossa takes Elizabeth with them as she negotiates peace.

So What Sets this Opening Apart?

When I think about successful setup for a story, I want to see the beginning tie directly to the ending. The better you can do that, the more impact you’ll achieve. So let’s walk through them…

1. Elizabeth has a weakness for pirates in the very first moments of the film, which initially draws her into the adventure, and makes it all the more satisfying when she ends up with one.
2. The gold coin that seems harmless enough at the start, turns into the key to defeat the cursed crew attacking the English ships sent to rescue Elizabeth.
3. The misunderstanding Will has of his father gets turned on its head but ultimately, he ends up following in his footsteps.
4. And the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow is given the final image of the film, at the helm of the Black Pearl, set sail on the open seas once more.

Craft Note: As you may know, this is not a stand-alone film. Pirates went on to become an enormous franchise. However, Curse of the Black Pearl is a complete story on its own. The promises made at the beginning are fulfilled by the end. That’s how you leave your audiences satisfied!

Bonus Lesson: Effective Symbolism—The Dress

What dress, you ask? The dress gifted to Elizabeth by her father that she is to wear to Norrington’s promotion ceremony.

Immediately, it suffocates her. As she struggles to breathe while her maids tighten the corset, her father mentions that the new Commodore (Norrington) fancies her. In that way, this dress represents the future she would have, if the story had not been interrupted by Captain Jack Sparrow.

She wears it through the re-introduction of adult Will, her finery representing his obstacle to their romance. She wears it as the Commodore pulls her aside and begins his proposal, except it becomes too much for her, the corset has finally constricted her enough to cause her to faint, and she falls into the sea. It is ripped from her body by Jack, who dives in to save her, because it is holding her back too much to be carried through the water to safety.

There is a distinct shot of the dress floating in the sea, lost, forgotten, left behind. Just like her future with Commodore Norrington. It was ripped away by a pirate, the exact pull she’s always had, as we learned in the very first words spoken of the film.

Kudos to A Great Story

Not everyone who watches the movie will catch everything being planted in the opening sequence, in fact, most of them probably won’t, but whether they realize it or not, they’re being shown all the pieces of the puzzle that will snap together one at a time. Economical storytelling satisfies close readers (or watchers) for paying attention to the details, and rewards anyone who comes back to read (or watch) the story again when they realize the things they missed the first time through.

As a writer, I’ve also experienced more than a few times that feeling of profound satisfaction when you spot the opportunities to pull multiple threads of story through in the same scene. Like all things, there is probably a point in which this technique could be overused, but I can’t say that I can think of one!

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Your Turn

I’d love to hear about the work you’ve read or watched that utilized such economical storytelling.

If you’re a writer, which economical decision have you made in your own work that you’re most proud of?

Writing Prompt: Choose a character in a story you love, or your own story, and imagine an unexpected way they might connect to another part of the story.

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