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There are certain things that audiences expect from a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. We demand swordplay. We demand swashbuckling. We demand wooden legs and head scarves. And most of all, we demand that Captain Jack Sparrow be Captain Jack Sparrow, in all his shifty, Keith Richards-inspired looniness.
“Jack Sparrow is one of those characters that doesn’t change,” says Terry Rossio, one of the writers behind Friday’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” “The audience doesn’t want him to change, and I don’t want him to change.”
The idea flies in the face of Hollywood convention, which demands that the protagonist travel an emotionally involving story arc. He must grow up, find wisdom or learn to love that misbehaving little dog that melted his heart.
So how to keep a franchise fresh on this, its fourth outing, with a static character? By bringing in new blood. New female blood, to be exact.
Keira Knightley, who dashed through the first three installments in a tight corset, is gone, and in her place arrive four new ladies. Even though this is a pirate movie, call them wenches at your own peril.
Penélope Cruz is the major addition, playing Angelica, Sparrow’s former love and daughter of the world’s most feared buccaneer, Blackbeard (Ian McShane). Angelica and her father are searching for the fountain of youth, and only Sparrow knows where it is, so the two kidnap the pirate and set sail. Also racing to reach the fountain first is Sparrow’s old nemesis, Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and a fleet of Spanish ships.
Cruz’s character was originally destined for the dusty plains of Mexico — in 1998’s “The Mask of Zorro,” also penned by Rossio and his writing partner, Ted Elliott. “That character was a gypsy con-artist who had learned to sword fight,” Rossio says. “We adapted that character for this story. We knew it would be interesting to set Jack Sparrow up against a female version of himself.”
Director Rob Marshall assumed Cruz wouldn’t be interested in a popcorn flick role, but he took her to dinner in London to broach the subject, anyway. (The two worked together on 2009’s musical “Nine.”)
“I tentatively said, ‘Penélope, would you ever be interested in the idea of doing ‘Pirates,’ and I didn’t even finish the words,” Marshall says. “She jumped up in the restaurant and screamed, ‘I would love to!’ ”
Cruz’s motivation — besides being able to get away with wearing a large feathered hat in public — was simple. When the Spanish beauty came to America years ago, she claims she
only knew two phrases in English: “How are you?” and “I want to work with Johnny Depp.” (The two first teamed up for 2001’s “Blow.”)
There was, however, a small complication for Cruz. The 106-day shoot was an especially grueling affair, traveling to remote Hawaiian beaches, ancient forts in Puerto Rico and sound stages in LA and London. And Cruz was pregnant with her first child by husband Javier Bardem.
“The pregnancy did impact the production,” Rossio says. “At one point on set, there was an Angelica stand-in, an Angelica stunt double, a second Angelica stunt double, an Angelica long-shot photo double, Penélope’s sister as a medium shot photo-double, an Angelica dance double, as well as the real Angelica. There were Angelicas everywhere.”
No one was perhaps more grateful for Cruz’s appearance than Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, a 24-year-old newcomer to the franchise who plays Syrena, a mermaid who Blackbeard captures in order to extract her magical tears. Bergès-Frisbey was born in Barcelona and spoke almost no English when she arrived on set.
“Sometimes I had a pain in my head just from talking all day long in English and trying to figure out the way to say something,” Bergès-Frisbey says. “To speak with Penélope [in Spanish] was great. It was the way I could rest my mind. We talked about normal life and about the movie.”
Depp also enjoyed conversing with Cruz in Spanish. “She taught me the raunchiest Spanish,” he says. “I mean, it’s so foul that I couldn’t bring myself to repeat it here and now.”
Another new face is Australian model Gemma Ward, who also plays a mermaid. Rossio says that when casting the sirens, the filmmakers were looking for a particular quality.
“Beauty, of course, but a particular type of beauty,” he says. “I think it’s all about the eyes; a sense of mystery, even otherworldiness. Astrid, to me, projects a tragic quality deep behind the eyes that can seemingly never be reached. And Gemma has a danger to her, behind the eyes, shining through in her performance.”
Producers also demanded that none of the women cast as mermaids be, er, enhanced. “I don’t think they had breast augmentation in the 1700s,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Entertainment Weekly.
The mermaid costumes definitely left little to the imagination. The tails were created with computers in postproduction, so the actors actually wore tight bike shorts covered with dots to later guide the animation. Prosthetic make-up was put over their bare chests to give a scaly look.
“I felt more dressed than some people who didn’t have a shirt,” Bergès-Frisbey says.
Besides being nearly naked, another drawback to being one of the mermaids was maintaining a pale complexion. Bergès-Frisbey forced herself to remain indoors for much of the two-month Hawaaian shoot, lest she appear pale one day and tan the next.
“I had to live like a vampire,” she says, “staying indoors during the day and only able to come out at night.”
The final addition to the franchise — and one who understandably keeps her clothes on — is 76-year-old Judi Dench. She has a brief cameo, as a noblewoman robbed by Jack Sparrow. The role is a bit small for a dame, but Dench was eager to help Marshall, who had directed her in “Nine,” and Depp, with whom she’d worked on “Chocolat.”
Now the question on everyone’s mind is, when will we see “Pirates 5”? Depp has expressed his enthusiasm to continue playing Sparrow, and Disney will no doubt lust for the booty a fifth film could pull in.
Despite reports to the contrary, Rossio and Elliott have not completed a screenplay for the next “Pirates” movie.
“The script isn’t finished, won’t be for months, perhaps years, and nothing is set yet regarding characters or story,” he says. “Until the entire story works, we won’t lock anything down — other than we’ll be seeing more and learning more about Captain Jack Sparrow.”
And, if you wouldn’t mind, seeing more of those half-naked mermaids.