Pirates Pirate Pirates of the Carribean, Hold Disney To Ransom

[Small Man Big Horse]

Those pesky pirates are back (though I'm not sure if it's the same ones who recently uploaded all of the new season of Orange Is The New Black), and this time they're trying to extort money from Disney:

Hackers demand Disney pay Bitcoin ransom or they'll leak new Pirates movie

Today in news that practically demands that we repeat the word "pirate" as many times as possible, Deadline is reporting that hackers have stolen a copy of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and they're threatening to release it online if Disney doesn't pay a ransom. These movie pirates aren't just looking for treasure chests full of doubloons, though—they want "an enormous amount of money" paid in Bitcoin, presumably so they can all live like kings with lifetime Reddit Gold subscriptions (or whatever else someone would buy with Bitcoin).

Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the hackers did claim to have pirated an upcoming Disney film during a meeting with ABC employees in New York, though he wouldn't say which one, and he added that the company has no intention of paying the nerdy Bitcoin ransom. Also, Iger says Disney is working with the FBI to try and expose the digital Jack Sparrow behind this act of piracy, but he didn't offer any details beyond that. However, Deadline's sources have confirmed that the stolen movie is indeed Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which won't be released into theaters until May 26.

Unfortunately, Disney's Pirates movies have made an effort to show that pirates are cool and sexy, while people who try to stop pirates are stuffy and boring, so it may be difficult for the company to actually find any noble pirate hunters to enlist in this quest to get its movie back.

http://www.avclub.com/article/hackers-demand-disney-pay-bitcoin-ransom-or-theyll-255376

I won't be watching it either at the cinema or for free but it is a bit of a fucked up situation. I mean when compared to the NHS hack it's obviously nothing, and it might ruin Johnny Depp's career, so, um, well actually maybe it is a good thing.

[Glebe]

Just saw this. Mad stuff.

[Small Man Big Horse]

A week on and I haven't read anything more about this story, and the film hasn't leaked so either Disney paid them off or they backed down for some unknown reason.

Anyhow, the reviews are coming in and quite shockingly apparently it's a very very average film. From The AV Club:

Pirates Of The Caribbean slogs out to sea for the fifth time in Dead Men Tell No Tales

Plot is never the best part of a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. It's always some mumbo jumbo about maritime curses, lost treasure, and seafaring ghosts—and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth entry in this long-running series adapted from a Disneyland ride, is in no way different. Returning to the basic formula of the three Pirates films directed by Gore Verbinski, in which Johnny Depp's louche and campy Jack Sparrow played second banana to an insipid love story, Dead Men Tell No Tales finds the dipsomaniacal pirate trading away his magical compass—the one that leads anyone who holds it to what they need most—for a bottle of rum, thereby freeing a ghostly Spanish ship of the line from the Devil's Triangle. The requisite dull courtship comes courtesy of Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's characters from the earlier films, and an orphan named Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario). Both are badly written and bereft of chemistry, but that's how it has to be. All Pirates Of The Caribbean movies have their share of tedium and lard (Verbinski's Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End was almost three hours long), but these are inseparable from the more irreverent and grotesque qualities that make these things fun. Their stronger moments foster a kind of surrealism that is specific to grossly over-budgeted blockbusters, with Sparrow looking like a silent slapstick comedian as he stumbles and sashays through the mayhem.

There's nothing in Dead Men that comes within spitting distance of the Davy Jones' Locker portion of At World's End—a Samuel-Beckett-by-way-of-Chuck-Jones absurdist theater piece realized on a Hollywood effects budget—or suggests that the duo of Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, who previously directed Kon-Tiki, can match Verbinski's pictorial eye. What it does have is a long, cartoonish chase sequence in which Sparrow's crew drags an entire bank through a colonial town after trying to pull the safe out through the wall; a macabre set piece involving a guillotine; plenty of verbal gags involving dim-witted pirates; some relatively inspired effects, including a Ray Harryhausen-esque figurehead animated by magic; and a Paul McCartney cameo that not only doesn't stink, but is actually very funny. (It helps that unlike in the case of Keith Richards, who cameoed as Jack Sparrow's father in At World's End and On Stranger Tides, the casting isn't the whole joke, as the former Beatle gets to use his deadpan comic timing with dialogue that wouldn't sound out of place coming from Eric Idle's mouth in a Monty Python film.) And there is the series' tradition of visually interesting villains. Here, it's Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), a Spanish pirate-hunter who drowned in the Devil's Triangle; in one of the movie's more evocative special effects, his black hair and rotting uniform swirl as though he were underwater. He captains a supernatural shipwreck with a huge gash in its prow that can bend open like the toothy maw of a sea monster.

But then there are the two romantic leads, who have their own reasons for finding a fabled doohickey called Poseidon's Trident (they both involve father issues, the thematic focus of this very special episode of Pirates Of The Caribbean) and succeed only in making the shortest movie in the series seem just as long as the rest. It's not uncommon for critics to refer to Sparrow—the role that, once upon a time, gave Depp his first Oscar nomination—as the Pirates movies' equivalent to Fonzie, the popular greaser on the '70s and '80s sitcom Happy Days who started as a breakout supporting character, became the excruciating focus of the show, and eventually got a spin-off series where he had a time machine and fought Dracula. Echoing the Fonz's most infamous moment, Sparrow even jumps over a shark in Dead Men—a zombie shark, but a shark nonetheless. It's a strange fact of the series: Depp has always been its top-billed star, but even Verbinski's original Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl recognized that he was best used in moderation. Place the brunt of swashbuckling on his swishing shoulders, and you end up with the dull On Stranger Tides. But waste enough of the audience's time with the adventures of a couple of uncharismatic dinguses, and Depp's stage-drunk, innuendo-laced, cabaret-emcee shtick starts to creep back into being funny.

Also, here's more news concerning Johnny Depp's treatment of women. Again, from The AV Club:

Johnny Depp vetoed a female villain for Pirates 5

We like to imagine Hollywood as a precision machine, with every million-dollar decision motivated by an enlightened blend of business savvy and artistic intent, while auteurs and producers battle it out in the honest assumption that their conflicts will create masterpieces of commercial cinema. The truth, of course, is a little more blurry, as we were reminded this week via a column from prolific screenwriter Terry Rossio.

Rossio—whose credits include Shrek, the 1998 Godzilla, and a host of Disney films, including Aladdin and most of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise—revealed that his version of the script for the upcoming Pirates sequel, Dead Men Tell No Tales, featured a female villain, but the character was nixed by star Johnny Depp. Why didn't Depp want to face off against a powerful female adversary? Because he'd already done that, a mere five years earlier.

Depp apparently cited his work on Tim Burton's Dark Shadows—where he faced off against Eva Green, playing an evil and lovestruck witch—as his reason for rejecting the script. It's not clear if Depp was motivated by Dark Shadows' lackluster box office returns, or if he just thinks "one evil woman per career" is a good rule to live by. It's also not clear whether this decision was made recently enough that he might have had an ulterior motive for keeping the phrase "Johnny Depp fights a woman" out of the day's entertainment reporting.

So, yeah: The next time you wonder which complicated negotiations or flashes of genius motivated the choices in your favorite blockbusters, be sure to remember that it might have just been a dude with a ton of power tossing off a "Nah," pretty much on a whim.

I mean it makes perfect sense, he's only ever fought one bad guy before so he's clearly a fan of equal rights.

[Mr Brightside]

I don't like pirates.

[Old Gold Tooth]

Geoffrey Rush is always entertaining. But the rest of this sounds like such blatant reheated bollocks.

I can remember going to see the first Pirates in the cinema and really enjoying it. But then over time I also saw 2, 3 and, christ help me, 4. Not sure how you can make swordfights, black magic and mermaids boring but they bloody well managed it.

The real downside is that the 4th one was cobbled together from parts of Tim Powers' fantastic pirates and voodoo novel On Stranger Tides, which Disney held the rights to for years before thinking fuck it, let's just rip it apart and stitch bits into the latest in a dying Johnny Depp franchise. Bastards. (The novel really is an ace read though, and was the chief inspiration for Monkey Island. Nuff said.)

[kidsick5000]

Not sure how you can make swordfights, black magic and mermaids boring but they bloody well managed it.

Exactly this. They should have everything there. One of them's got the bloody kraken in it. And I don't care what the Kermodes of this world say, the first one was great fun.
But from the second one onwards, if ever films needed to be 2 hours max and done, it's these.

[mothman]

I've seen them all but struggle to remember much about them (or even kept track of what was going on at the time). The one thing I remember about On Stranger Tides is when they're all in the boat waiting for the mermaids, and arguing - and then they realise there's one hanging into the boat, calmly watching them. The impact of that image is extraordinary. And you know immediately it's bad news even though she's not doing anything threatening. You don't get an "oh, wow, naked chick" feeling, you instead sense that things are about to go South rapidly.

[Head Gardener]

going tonight, well 5pm

[Head Gardener]

just back, but don't bother with it, 
as it is actually... shit

[Twed]

But earlier you said it was "well 5pm".

[Head Gardener]

I know, it was actually 5.45pm after all the ads but it's still shit, sorry for the confusion and I hope it hasn't put you off seeing it

[Mini]

Salazar's Revenge is the worst subtitle ever. They should have called it Plumbing The Deppths.

[mothman]

Yeah, why do we get a different sub-title to the US?

[Dex Sawash]

Should have called it
Pirates of the Carribean; now with Effy off Skins

[Head Gardener]

Should have called it
Pirates of the Carribean; now with Effy off Skins

and Stephen Graham off This Is England

[Dex Sawash]

That's a Combo!

[ieXush2i]

A week on and I haven't read anything more about this story, and the film hasn't leaked so either Disney paid them off or they backed down for some unknown reason.

Anyhow, the reviews are coming in and quite shockingly apparently it's a very very average film. From The AV Club:

Also, here's more news concerning Johnny Depp's treatment of women. Again, from The AV Club:

I mean it makes perfect sense, he's only ever fought one bad guy before so he's clearly a fan of equal rights.

I think the kidnappers vastly overestimate their leverage. OITNB is on a streaming service that almost everyone has access to, and if you want to watch the latest season you've probably got Netflix already. Easier to just wait until it's officially released rather than faff with torrents and he like.

As for Pirates, people would still flock out to see it in droves even if it had been released. It's almost like a too big to fail kind of thing. After leaks of that Wolverine film failed to make much of an impact on the box office, I don't think the hackers are going to be making much money out of this harebrained scheme.