A look back at the first opus in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” saga, and in particular on the duel between Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, during which we can clearly see Orlando Bloom’s stunt double.
Released in 2003 and directed by Gore Verbinski, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the first installment of the famous saga adapted from the Disney attraction of the same name, is a great spectacle that offers its viewers many epic sequences, and classic sword duels.
As is generally the case with productions of this magnitude, multiple special effects were used, and skilfully introduced throughout the film, in order to make the action scenes even more spectacular without harming their credibility. However, despite the efforts made by the feature film teams to camouflage all these little tricks, some of them failed to fool the watchful eye of Michel and Michel, our Faux Fitting experts.
Indeed, as can be seen in the program dedicated to Gore Verbinski’s film, and even if the actors have undergone rigorous training with fencing master Robert Anderson (known for having worked with Errol Flynn or on the Lord of the Rings trilogy), some more technical stunts were performed by professionals.
Walt Disney Pictures
You will be able to see it for yourselves by taking a freeze frame at exactly 24 minutes and 30 seconds into the film, when Jack Sparrow and Will Turner cross swords for the very first time in a Port-Royal forge (see below). above).
When Will is disarmed by his opponent and tries to escape him by performing a spectacular roll in the middle of the workshop, we can see – by pressing pause at the right time and increasing the brightness – that the actor present on the screen is no longer Orlando Bloom, but his stunt double Zach Hudson, who also accompanied him throughout the trilogy.
A cleverly concealed little staging trick that you won’t notice unless you know exactly where to look for it.
As you will be able to see by (re)discovering the False Fitting dedicated to this first opus of Pirates of the Caribbean, several small gaffes and errors are also present in the film…
