Can Margot Robbie save Pirates of the Caribbean from irrelevance?

[snoop1130]

Can Margot Robbie save Pirates of the Caribbean from irrelevance?

By Ben Child

 

Run her up the flagpole … Margot Robbie. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

 

How intriguing that Pirates of the Caribbean should be looking to Margot Robbie to lift the saga from the depths and out, once again, into the West Indian sunlight.

 

The series has regularly dipped its toe into the potentially bountiful narrative trope of the female pirate surviving and thriving in a man’s world, with Keira Knightley, Penélope Cruz, Zoe Saldana and, latterly, Kaya Scodelario among those to have swished cutlasses and swung from the rigging.

 

And yet the saga has had its issues with gender representation.

 

Scodelario spent most of 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales being ogled by Johnny Depp’s much older Captain Jack Sparrow. 

 

Full Story: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2020/jul/02/can-margot-robbie-save-pirates-of-the-caribbeans-from-irrelevance

[Matzzon]

She can probably make a lot of things lift sky high, but making The Pirates of the Caribbean lift from the bottom of the pit is impossible even for her.

[ukrules]

No, she can't. It will be like all the other feminist drivel reboot Hollywood movies - a final nail in the coffin of the franchise.

 

[Dumbastheycome]

I realize there is a recession  going  on  but is it really so  far down that  the news barrels  needs scraping !

[yellowboat]

Keira Knightley is the only one that would be plausible, but the story would have to be really good.   

[DoctorG]

Make a good story with a good female lead and we will watch it. Make a bad movie that is only there to denigrate men and guess what? 

[ChakaKhan]

Short answer..NOPE...   I assume teen boys liked here in suicide squad as she looked "hot" hence the spin off birds of prey, that flopped.....could also refer to ghostbusters female reboot

 

Maybe stop milking a movie to death with sequels and reboots.....much like the Halloween original...geesh

[Emdog]

Has anyone gone off (or not) to see that franchise because of "relevance"?

[Kerryd]

It never fares well when they try to "reboot" a franchise by suddenly becoming "gender-aware" or whatever the catch phrase of the day is.

Oceans 8 with a cast of female stars ? Meh. (Didn't make back it's budget in North America, barely made it back with worldwide gross revenues.)
Ghostbusters with all female leads ? Meh. (They even had Hemsworth in there which didn't help but at least they made more than it cost, but not by a lot.) 

The last time someone tried to make a "female" pirate movie, it became one of the worst flops in movie history. 
Cutthroat Island starred Geena Davis who was probably at the height of her stardom at the time as well. (She'd just done  A League of Their Own and Thelma and Louise not long before.)
Probably helped that she was married to the director as well. The film cost between $98-115 million to make and grossed barely over $10 mil in the US. (The film was a disaster from the very beginning it seems, even before filming started.)

Birds of Prey tried to cash in on Robbie's success from Suicide Squad. It cost roughly $84 mil to make and that's almost exactly how much it grossed in the US so it wasn't a "flop" but it wasn't a "success" either. (Worldwide gross was better but net revenue probably made the film a barely "break even" affair.)

And it seems that the woman who wrote that is supposed to be writing the new Pirates movie as well. She also wrote Bumblebee (which made a lot, mostly riding on the success of the Transformers movies).

And the Director of Birds of Prey really didn't have a glowing resume. Looking at her previous stuff, she wrote and directed 5 short films (no one has ever heard of) and before that she was a camera assistant and production assistant.
The last movie she directed before Birds of Prey was "Dead Pigs" starring Zazie Beetz (Domino from Deadpool 2). The "worldwide gross" of that movie apparently was just over $4,000. (Yeah, four thousand dollars.)

Robbie is in the second Suicide Squad movie which is in post production now so all the filming is done. If that does good, and her character doesn't flop, who knows ? 

I still wouldn't bet on a Pirates movie featuring Robbie, or any other woman, doing well at the box office.

If you want a good pirate movie series to watch, check out Black Sails. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375692/
Probably don't want to watch it with young children as there is a fair amount of T&A, especially in the first couple of seasons. 

If they'd made a pirate movie based on that series, it might have done well. (Note: the guy who plays Capt Flint is the same guy who plays John Robinson (the father) in the latest Lost in Space series, which isn't too bad.)

 

[DoctorG]

56 minutes ago, Kerryd said:

If you want a good pirate movie series to watch, check out Black Sails.

I thought this was very good.

[Kerryd]

24 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

I thought this was very good.

I wasn't sure at the beginning, but by the end of the first episode I was hooked. Too bad it ended after 4 seasons (for no apparent reason it seems). 

The theme music comes from Bear McCreary as well, who seems to do the themes for a lot of good shows (The Walking Dead, Defiance, Eureka, Agents of Shield, Outlander, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, the (new) Battlestar Galactica) and a few movies as well (Happy Death Day 2U, 10 Cloverfield Lane and the recent Fantasy Island amongst others).

[Mansell]

Pirates jumped the shark after the first one.....I walked out of the second and got my money back. I used to do that a lot if the movie was <deleted>.....I would give it twenty mins and out the door....they would ask why, and I would tell them it was a <deleted> script....money in hand.

[gomangosteen]

Just a wild guess, but I somehow doubt that Thai Visa members are within this Disney movie's target audience demographic of "youngsters, teens (13-17 year olds) and families"

I'm thinking our 14 year-old daughter may enjoy it more than the average 50-60-70 year old

It'll make millions.

[thaibeachlovers]

12 hours ago, DoctorG said:

Make a good story with a good female lead and we will watch it. Make a bad movie that is only there to denigrate men and guess what? 

How many good movies that pander to the female demographic have you seen in the past 10 years? I can't think of a single one. Good movies are not politically driven- they have good plots, good actors that fit the plot, and good directors, editors, musical people etc. When they start making it about females just for the sake of making it about females we get such attrocities as Rebel Wilson in a leading role. Not just making females important for the sake of being female- when they put actors of colour in a movie just to have actors of colour it's just as off putting. They used a black actor to portray an actual white historical character in Mary Queen of Scots. Would they use a white actor to play Mandela?

 

I have seen many good movies that had women as leads when the story called for women as leads. Eg Little women was about women, so it had women leads. They wouldn't have made one a man just for the sake of having a man, would they? Love, Rosie had a woman as lead, because the character was a female, etc

Seems political correctness has made producers go barmy.

 

As for Pirates of ......................, make a good movie with a good plot and people will go see it for the film, not because of the gender of the actors.

[ncc1701d]

It’s not just us - My daughter is a teenager and she can’t stand the female pc tv shows and movies. They do badly and score low ratings across the board.

[lust]

Remember when female leads were solid without being in your face about it?

 

Alien

Terminator

kill Bill

 

Just to name a few. Get woke, go broke.

 

[torturedsole]

I suspect Margot will be a good choice for the forthcoming BLM flick which has the potential for ultimate woke status.  It'll still flop, though.

[Seth1a2a]

9 hours ago, gomangosteen said:

Just a wild guess, but I somehow doubt that Thai Visa members are within this Disney movie's target audience demographic of "youngsters, teens (13-17 year olds) and families"

I'm thinking our 14 year-old daughter may enjoy it more than the average 50-60-70 year old

It'll make millions.

 

4 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

How many good movies that pander to the female demographic have you seen in the past 10 years? I can't think of a single one.

That would be "Wonder Woman" and they flocked to see it based on a slick marketing angle.

I was able to watch an advanced release of that movie and I was honestly shocked to see it hit such an incredible high after having personally pronounced it  "dead on arrival". 

 

............Wonders never cease to amaze.............

 

 

 

[Airalee]

13 hours ago, Kerryd said:

If you want a good pirate movie series to watch, check out Black Sails. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375692/

Thanks for the recommendation!  Just purchased the entire series on iTunes .