Poor Historical Accuracy

Rating: 1/10 (15 August 2005)

Personally, I found this film to be a great disappointment. I am something of a history nut and so was disappointed by the amount of inaccuracy of the movie. For example:
1) Every cannonball in the movie exploded, yet they were all fired from long guns and so would just have been lumps of metal hurtling through the air.
2) Norrington had a huge ceremonial promotion to commodore. A commodore was not a permanent rank. It was simply a way of distinguishing between a captain who had been given /temporary/ command of a squadron and one who had not.
3) There were never enough sailors on any of the ships. Most ships of that era had literally hundreds of men aboard. The Black Pearl would have had at least 100 as a skeleton crew (no pun intended) and they would not have been able to use the guns or mount any sort of assault. It would have a full complement of something like 500, if not more.
4) All the sailors were bedecked in ridiculous uniforms. All of the sailors seemed to be wearing their dress uniforms all the time, which simply would not happen on any ship. As if this wasn't bad enough, some of those who weren't marines were wearing red, which would make them an anathema to all the other men in the ship.
However, action-wise, the film is very good, though Depp does begin to get on my nerves after a while.