The announcement of a new Pirates of the Caribbean [1] movie could have been another instance of franchise fatigue, but the news that it's a female-led reboot [2] starring Margot Robbie and written by Birds of Prey screenwriter Christina Hodson has me intrigued and already thinking about theories. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new movie is not directly spun off from the long-running original series, which means there's even more room to create something interesting and recapture the fun that made it popular in the first place [3].
Watching the original Pirates trilogy [4] was such a formative part of my tween years, and it's that nostalgia that keeps me invested, even as the more recent movies have been massive disappointments. Where the later movies cranked up the cookie-cutter fantasy and turned into Captain Jack's Wild Ride more than anything, the original trilogy was full of dashing adventure and surprisingly three-dimensional, morally murky characters that were all too rare in the fantasy worlds I'd consumed up until then.
Front and centre, of course, was Elizabeth Swann, the kind of heroine I rarely saw growing up and still see too rarely even now, more than 15 years later. She was a woman whose curiosity was rewarded, who wasn't relegated to the role of caretaker, and who rescued others as often as she needed rescuing. I always loved that she got to be deeply romantic without it defining her character or undermining the fact that she was also a total badass and one of the shrewdest people in the entire story; she got to be both (without being either a villain or oversexualized, no less), and there was no question about it. And she wasn't the only one! Surprisingly, for a story about a bunch of amoral, mostly male pirates, the trilogy largely did OK by its female characters, giving us minor characters like Anamaria, Ching Shih, and Tia Dalma, who all, for the most part, avoided "action hero girl" stereotypes.
If that's what an all-male creative team managed back in the early 2000s, I can't wait to see what a women-led team can do now! These are just a few of the storylines that could theoretically happen in the reboot. What would you want to see in a Pirates reboot centreing women?
A Female Antihero Like Jack Sparrow
Robbie is fresh off of Birds of Prey, which gave her another chance to shine as the quirky, complicated antihero Harley Quinn. It's easy to imagine her tackling the role of a Jack Sparrow-esque charming rogue on the high seas, who's out to recover some lost glory and isn't really bothered by stepping on anyone who gets in her way.
Inspiration From the Ride
Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride [5] famously inspired the original franchise, of course, so what if this reboot were to take its inspiration from other segments of the ride? The most recent update to the ride includes a few vignettes that the movie might pull inspiration from: the rum-drinking female pirate captain, the abandoned wedding dress, or, perhaps, even the "wench auction" scene from the original that's since been removed. Any of these characters could potentially be a jumping-off point for a female protagonist for a new franchise.
An All-Female Reboot
The 2018 success of Ocean's 8 proved just how stellar an all-women reboot [6] of a dude-heavy story can turn out to be! And, really, what is a pirate movie but a heist movie at sea a few centuries ago? An ensemble full of interesting, creative pirate women might be just the thing the franchise needs to reset from a few disappointing entries.
A Gender-Flip of the Original
Sure, Margot Robbie would make a top-notch gender-flipped version of Captain Jack Sparrow, but what if the reboot took things a step further and winked at the original by flipping all the original characters? There could be a young working-class woman, a blacksmith's apprentice in a most unladylike profession that she still excels at, or a spoiled but fundamentally decent young man, scion of a powerful family but yearning for adventure. Gender-flipping the original characters wouldn't necessarily mean following the original storyline beat by beat, but it would be a fun way to tie in the old universe to this new, women-centric one.