Pirates Of The Caribbean : The Curse Of The Black Pearl

As Governor Weatherby Swann and his young daughter, Elizabeth, sail to Port Royal, Jamaica, their ship, HMS Dauntless encounters a shipwreck with a sole survivor, young Will Turner. Elizabeth finds and takes a gold skull medallion from around the unconscious Will's neck and hides it, fearing he will be accused of piracy. She glimpses the ghostly ship, the Black Pearl disappearing into the mist. Eight years later, Captain James Norrington of the British Royal Navy is promoted to Commodore. At his ceremony, he proposes to Elizabeth. Before answering, she faints and tumbles into the bay because the corset she was wearing was so tight that she had trouble breathing. The skull medallion she is wearing emits a mysterious pulse through the water. Meanwhile, pirate Captain Jack Sparrow has arrived in Port Royal to commandeer a ship. Seeing Elizabeth fall, he rescues her. After the commodore come to Elizabeth's aid and attempts to arrest him due to Jack's well known status as a pirate, he escapes and ducks into a blacksmith shop where he encounters Will Turner, now a blacksmith's apprentice and self-taught expert swordsman. Following a duel with Turner, Sparrow is knocked unconscious by a third party in the fight, Will's sleeping master, and jailed. That night, Port Royal is besieged by the Black Pearl and its undead crew, called by Elizabeth's medallion. Elizabeth is captured and invokes parley—an agreement ensuring one's safety until meeting and negotiating with the opposing side. To protect her identity, Elizabeth tells Captain Hector Barbossa her last name is "Turner". She negotiates for the pirates to cease the attack on Port Royal in exchange for the medallion. Barbossa agrees, but keeps Elizabeth prisoner, believing she is the key to breaking an ancient curse they are under.

Jack and Will prepare to commandeer the Interceptor.

Unable to persuade Commodore Norrington to take immediate action, Will, who is in love with Elizabeth, persuades Jack to help him rescue Elizabeth in exchange for freeing him from jail. Jack agrees but only after learning Will's last name.

They commandeer the HMS Interceptor and recruit a crew in Tortuga. They set sail for Isla de Muerta, a mysterious island to which the pirates have gone to break the curse. Along the way, Will learns that Jack was the Black Pearl's former captain. When Jack shared the bearings to an Aztec treasure, First Mate Barbossa instigated a mutiny and marooned Jack on an island. Jack escaped three days later, a feat no one was expecting. The pirates found and spent the treasure but soon learn it is cursed—rendering them into immortal skeletal beings whose true forms are only revealed in moonlight. The curse can only be lifted when every coin and each pirate's blood is returned to the chest. William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner sent a coin to his son, William, believing the crew should remain cursed for what they did to Jack. Barbossa had Bootstrap tied to a cannon and thrown overboard only to realize later his blood was also needed to break the curse; now, a Turner kin must take his place. Believing Elizabeth is Bootstrap's child, Barbossa poises her over the Aztec chest, anoints the last coin with her blood and drops it into the chest—the curse remains in effect.

On the island, Will suspects Sparrow may betray him and knocks him out. He rescues Elizabeth, and they escape to the Interceptor. A groggy Jack, found later by his muntinous crew, barters with Barbossa—in exchange for revealing Bootstrap's real child, as he wants to once again captain the Black Pearl. Jack's negotiations come to naught, however, when the Pearl pursues the Interceptor, sinking her and taking the crew captive. Onboard the Pearl, however, Jack learns the real reason why he was marooned ten years ago in a throwaway comment that Barbossa made, after he attempts to convince Barbossa to allow him to negotiate a peaceful return of the medallion. "See, Jack, that was the attitude that lost you the Pearl in the first place. People are easier to search when they're dead." Will reveals that he is Bootstrap Bill's true offspring and demands that Elizabeth and the crew be freed. Otherwise, he threatens to shoot himself and fall overboard, lost forever. Barbossa agrees, noting again the lack of specifics with which their demands were made, and strands Elizabeth and Jack on a deserted island (the same island Jack was marooned on ten years before) and throws Jack's crew into the brig. Will is taken back to Isla de Muerta for the ritual.

Elizabeth burns a cache of abandoned rum to create a signal fire that is spotted by Norrington. She convinces Norrington to rescue Will by accepting his earlier marriage proposal. Arriving at the island, Norrington follows Jack's instructions and sets an ambush outside the cave while Jack goes inside and persuades Barbossa to form an alliance. He tells him to delay breaking the curse until after they have taken the Dauntless and killed the crew. Jack then sneaks a coin from the chest, rendering himself immortal. The Black Pearl's crew then take an underwater march towards the HMAS Dauntless. After an exchange of comments, Jack reveals his true intentions when he knocks one of the Black Pearl's crew unconscious and, throwing the man's sword to Will, send the two of them into an attack against Barbossa and his remaining men. In the ensuing fight, Jack reveals that he is immortal, and continues dueling Barbossa, until Elizabeth makes an appearance and begins running towards the chest with Will just behind her. Seeing the opportunity, Jack tosses his bloodied coin at the chest, which Will catches, and then shoots Barbossa when Barbossa turned his gun on Elizabeth. It appears that Jack had wasted the one shot he'd kept for ten years, until Will returns the last two medallions to the chest, breaking the curse. No longer immortal, the fatally wounded Barbossa falls into the gold of Isla de Muerta, dead. Realizing they are no longer cursed, the now-mortal pirates surrender to the navy, while the ones recently stabbed fall down upon the deck of the Dauntless, dead.

Barbossa reveals himself to be cursed to Elizabeth

After the fight, Jack requests to be taken back to his ship. However, his newly chosen crew from Tortuga had sailed off in the Pearl, after Jack previously informed them that, should a situation arise, 'keep to the code'. Without a ship or other methods of transport away from the waiting navy, Will, Elizabeth and an unwilling Jack sail back towards the Navy. After returning to Port Royal, Jack is about to be executed. Believing Jack to be a good man, and deserving of life, Will first tells Elizabeth that he loves her while Jack's long list of crimes against the crown are cited out towards the English crowd by a disbelieving hangman. Afterwards, he makes an attempt to rescue Jack, which Elizabeth aids, due to her love for Will and her identical judgement of Jack's character. However, Jack and Will, although making valiant progress, are both captured by the troops there, and surrounded by their weapons pointed at the pair. But Elizabeth steps in, lending her support and declaring that she loves Will. Norrington releases her from their engagement, and Will is pardoned. Meanwhile, Jack gives his version of a farewell to all of those present, and escapes the navy and their weapons by 'falling' into the bay, after noting the presence of Cotton's parrot, a parrot that talks in place of Cotton, one of Jack's tortuga crew. Taking this as a sign that his ship is near, he makes his dramatic exit. His crew, who escaped with the Black Pearl, rescue him, and return to him his trademark tricorne and coat. With the whole crew present, Anamaria announces to Jack and the rest of the crew that Jack is, once again, the captain of the Black Pearl. On top of the cliff, Norrington is impressed enough to allow Jack one day's head start before giving pursuit