film analysis

Pirates of the Caribbean dead man’s chest

In this essay I will be analysing an action film and describing how it uses the narrative theories. I will be commenting on Tzvetan Todorov and Vladimir Propp theories and how they make films of our era full of suspense and action.

The film I will be analysing is pirates of the Caribbean dead man’s chest. Like many films the film I have chosen uses Todorov’s theory of having equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium. The advantage of all 3 is that it builds up to a grand finale at the end of the film in this case Jack Sparrow being killed at the end. This is known as the new equilibrium as it is at the end of the film and generally the finish point of the movie. The new equilibrium often involves the villain being defeated and the hero falling in love with the princess. The equilibrium is the beginning of the story and is the starting point to the film. The disequilibrium consists of Jack Sparrow finding his ship the black pearl as he lost it previously in the first film.

Many films also use the theory of Vladimir Propp. His idea was that many films use 8 main character roles. The 8 main roles consist of a villain, hero, donor, helper, princess, false hero and dispatcher. As I was analysing an action film many of the roles have been fulfilled by the main characters.

Villain – Davy Jones

Hero – William Turner

Donor- Bootstrap Bill Turner

Helper – Captain Barbossa

Princess – Elizabeth Swann

False hero – Jack Sparrow

Dispatcher – William turner

These main characters build up the story line and produce suspense as it goes along. Each character may have more than one narrative role. The advantage of this is that the audience does not know whether to trust or not to trust the character. Jack Sparrow plays around a few main roles; he has been seen as a false hero as we cannot trust him throughout the two sequels on the other hand he can also be seen as a hero as he often guides his crew to success at the end of the movie. These narrative theories create suspense throughout the movie and attract its target audience. Many films often mix the beginning, middle and end the advantage of this it adds action right at the beginning of the movie and puzzles the audience to work out the story line as the film goes along.