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

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is the first installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.

The film stars Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa.

The film was directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

The film was written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert.

The film was inspired by and partly based on the Pirates of the Caribbean attractions, first unveiled at Disneyland in 1967.

The film was released on July 9, 2003.

The film was well-received by critics. Johnny Depp received a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as Jack Sparrow as well as being nominated for a Golden Globe.

At the Academy Awards, The Curse of the Black Pearl was nominated in four different categories.

Eight years have passed since Elizabeth's fateful dream.

Elizabeth is wearing a dress from her father that she plans to wear to Captain Norrington's promotion ceremony.

Elizabeth meets Will Turner, who is now John Brown's blacksmith apprentice, and a swordfight ensues.

Eventually, Sparrow is knocked unconscious by Will's employer and arrested by the Royal Navy officers who have just broken into the blacksmith shop.

The mysterious pulse which emanated from Elizabeth's medallion seems to have "called" the Black Pearl somehow.

Elizabeth Turner (a.k.a. Governor's Daughter) is in possession of the medallion that can lift the curse on the Black Pearl's crew, and the crew of the Pearl abducts her in order to take it back.

Will Turner (Jack Sparrow's former friend and current rival) rescues her and agrees to help her get back to the British Navy in exchange for breaking him out of jail.

They set off in search of the Black Pearl, which is headed for Isla de Muerta, a mysterious island that is supposedly undiscoverable.

The curse on the Black Pearl's crew is real and requires them to return all the pieces of the treasure to its chest and sacrifice a blood sacrifice from everyone who removed it.

Barbossa believes that Elizabeth is Bootstrap's child and anoints the last coin with her blood in order to lift the curse.

They reach Isla de Muerta and find the treasure, but are forced to fight their way through the undead pirates in order to get it.

They succeed in fulfilling almost all of the requirements to break the curse, but are forced to fight their way out of the island when they are discovered.

The crew of the Black Pearl discover Jack, wandering around, and take him to Barbossa, who is shocked to see him alive and well.

Jack offers to reveal the location of Bootstrap Bill's child in exchange for the Pearl.

The crew of the Interceptor is imprisoned, and Barbossa watches in anticipation as the Interceptor is blown up and sunk.

Elizabeth and Jack are both left stranded on the same Caribbean isle on which Barbossa had Jack marooned a decade ago.

Elizabeth asks Jack about how he escaped the island last time, to which he answers that with the help of the rum runners, he bartered passage off the island.

But seeing that the rum runners are long out of business, Jack has no plan of escaping.

Then, Elizabeth took matters in her own hands by burning all their supplies (Jack's hidden cache of rum), as well as some of the small island's palm trees, to create a signal fire to alert anyone from the Royal Navy of her location.

Elizabeth and Jack are eventually rescued by Norrington, but Elizabeth is unable to convince him to go back and rescue Will until Elizabeth promises to marry him.

Upon arriving at the cursed island, Jack convinces Norrington's forces to lie in ambush for Barbossa's crew while he goes in and convinces them to come out.

He convinces Barbossa to delay spilling Will's blood to break the curse until after they have killed the crew of the Royal Navy ship Dauntless and taken the ship.

This proves to all be part of Jack's plan; however, he was not expecting the undead crew to walk along the ocean floor to the ship, which allows them to escape the planned ambush.

As the Black Pearl crew engages the Royal Navy in hand-to-hand combat aboard the Dauntless, Jack steals one of the cursed coins, unseen by Barbossa, and engages in his own swordfight with his former first mate.

Because of the coin he stole, Jack now has a share of the loot, so he too is cursed and thus can't be killed until the curse is lifted. Moreover, in order for the curse to be lifted, his blood must be spilled.

Jack successfully convinces Barbossa to delay spilling Will's blood, and the crew of the Dauntless is eventually killed. This allows the crew of the Black Pearl to lift the curse, and they all return to their own ships.