For
my Physics of Animation term paper, I chose to focus on the physics in the
world of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Man’s Chest (I’ll call it POTC: DMC for
short). POTC: DMC was produced by
Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski. The film was release on July
7th 2006 and became successful sequel to the hugely popular Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the
Black Pearl. POTC:DMC is a live
action film with CGI elements. The film has various mystical elements, over the
top action, and an extensive amount of CGI and special effects, which is why I
chose to analyze it. For entertainment value, the film pushes the boundaries of
the physical world, by creating improbable stunts and unlikely scenarios. In
the POTC: DMC worlds, the laws of physics are broken for multiple purposes. To
create this creating a fantastical world filled with monsters, sea
creature-pirates hybrids, unbelievable fight sequences, and cursed pirate ships
the films creative team was forced to push the limits of physics and their
imagination. Much of the film ignores the laws of physics for comedic effect. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest breaks
the laws of physics by manipulation pressure and weight, defying
gravity, and balance.
There
are several pirate ships seen throughout the films, most of which follow the
basic laws of physics. For sailing ships, the wind blowing on a sail produces a
pressure difference, creating the force that moves the ship including The
Flying Dutchman and The Black Pearl. The Black Pearl (which was later fixed by
sewing pieces of fabric on it) claimed to be the fastest ship in the Caribbean.
However, both ships are found sailing with ease with numerous holes and large
rips throughout the sails. Not to mention that the pressure would cause
numerous parts of the ship to break, especially the sails. Because the ships
were cursed, the designers sound ways to make both ships feel unique and
haunted. The ripped sails give the ship a creepy and magical quality, much like
the crew that inhabited found sailing aboard The Pearl and The Dutchman. Once
the crew was no longer cursed the sails were fixed and patched up. This is a
highly improbable scenario, but in this universe of Pirates, it is possible.
The
Flying Dutchman, easily the biggest and most fearsome ship on the sea, continues
to break laws throughout the film. The crew of human-sea creature hybrids
occupy the Flying Dutchman, with this crew and ship the possibilities are
endless. Most notably is its ability to submerge and remerge under water at
will. In the process, the crewmembers are able to stay on the boat without
dying or resurfacing. However, when it comes to buoyancy, a buoyant force
pushing submerged objects upward is also due to a pressure difference. The
pressure increases with depth due to the weight of the liquid. There is now way
they could stay submerged let alone hold on when the ship id plunging into the
water. We’ll ignore the fact that it’s impossible for ships (especially with
sails) would be able to submerge underwater as if it were a submarine.
The
laws of gravity are defied as well, for example, the Kraken (Davey Jones’
pet/monster), attacks pirate ships throughout the film by emerging underneath
the ship and then breaking and pulling into the depths of the ocean. The first
time we see the Kraken attack a ship, he breaks it clean into two pieces. There
is a man positioned directly next to the tentacle that breaks the ship. The
problem here is that the man ends up being launched several feet in the air. In
actuality, if he were standing next to the break in the ship, he would have
been pulled down into the water. The only way he could be launched into the air
like that, he would have to be at the opposite end of the ship.
As
another example, the crew of the Black Pearl is trapped in a cage made of human
bones, where they are hanging from a cliff. In order to escape, Will, Gibbs,
and the other pirates swing the ball in a periodic
motion in order to reach the side of the cliff. They then proceed to climb up
the cliff's 90ยบ-rock face. The only problem is that their hair, jewelry, etc do
not reflect the gravity, which would naturally affect them, despite any wind.
At
another point in the movie, our hero Captain Jack Sparrow, finds himself
strapped to a bamboo stick by a thick rope. The rope is wound round Jack's body
and the pole at his back. At this point, Jack falls backwards after a jump
across an open cliff. However, the pole gets jammed between the cliffs, but the
pole does not break and the rope does not tear. The rope that was previously
wrapped around the pole disappears leaving the rope intact around only Jack's
body in order for Jack to twirl and unravel as he falls. This is impossible,
and was done for comedic effect.
Shortly
after the rope incident, Jack falls from an enormous height, along with various
tropical fruits. We can conceive that when Jack hits the ground, he doesn’t
fall to his death, due to the fact that his fall is broken several times over
by various wooden bridges, slowing his fall. However, the already-damaged
fruits (from being speared by the bamboo stick that was previously on Jack’s
back) survived an impact from the height, speed, and angle shown.
These are the same fruits
(papayas, mangos, and melons) that easily splattered into pulp when thrown at
Jack by the native women with far less force, a slower speed, and at a close
range.
The spectacular fight sequence between Jack, Will and Norington has
several issues with it. First and foremost, the ability to sword fight while
spinning continuously inside a wheel is impossible. In real life to accomplish
something like that the individuals would need to be strapped into the spinning
wheel. On the wheel, there are six metal
bars mounted around the circumference of the water wheel's axle. We see the
axle’s circular wood frame with its spinning bars, above and behind him, as he
runs the wheel. As the wheel is spinning, Jack is running in the interior and
promptly hits his head on one of those axle bars, then falls out. When this
happens we see a close up of jack face as he supposedly sees an approaching
metal bar about to make contact with his face. This is impossible, since the
bars are spinning behind him. Shortly after, jack hops back into the spinning
wheel, he is considerably shorter (way more than a foot) than all six spinning
axle bars, which would make that previous shot impossible, however humorous it
may be.
In
my competing hypotheses the arcs created in the film are quite accurate and
convincing. As previously mentioned, several crew members are trapped in a
round bone cage, connected to a long rope hanging off of a cliff. The crew uses
their weight to shift the cage back and forth in order to reach the side of the
cliff. The pendulum creates a convincing circular arc, slowing in and out at
the correct point when swinging from side to side, creating convincing pendulum
spacing.
In
the POTC:DMC
world, it is apparent that the laws of physics have been broken many ways throughout
the film in order to achieve comedic effect and create a fantasy-like world. Without
the ability of visual effects and CGI, the movie would have been very dull. It
is important that filmmakers today do not allow physics to limit their
creativity, but rather aid them to create a convincing world that cannot
actually exist in real life. By doing so, the artistic and creative mind’s
behind POTC:DMC,
have made appealing characters in an amazingly unique world, it has everything
you could want from a film, Action, romance, humor, and monsters.. As a result,
the Pirates franchise has become one of my favorite series of films of all
time.
Outline Differences:
I changed around various things from my outline due to the fact that I decided go with different examples that simply worked better for my final paper.
Outline Differences:
I changed around various things from my outline due to the fact that I decided go with different examples that simply worked better for my final paper.
