10 Movies Way Better Than They Have Any Right To Be

A pirate movie was a bad bet in 2003, since the genre had been relegated to TV movie hell since the Golden Age of Hollywood, but Disney wanted a pirate movie, and Gore Verbinski abided.

Sure, it had Johnny Depp and Legolas from The Lord Of The Rings, but on paper (or a tea-stained, flea-bitten scroll of parchment), there was no way Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl was going to be a commercial or critical success. Functioning as a technicolour global advertisement for the Disneyland ride of the same name, the film was set to bomb, and with a $140 million price tag, everyone would feel the sting.

But Depp strutted out in eyeliner and braids, doing Keith Richards on benzos, and the world went apeshit. The film single-handedly revitalised the dead-and-buried genre, managing not to betray its 1700s setting while giving a distinctly 21st century flavour to proceedings.

While each entry to the series has been a slide farther downhill, there is no denying the power and joy with which The Curse Of The Black Pearl treats its subject matter, and the film icon it created in Jack Sparrow. Stand up, me hearties, yo ho!