A different kind of pirate

Disney's out there giving pirates a good name, making 'em appear all lovable and funny.

Well, I'm here crafting an entirely different tale of pirates, maidens, and really really bad villians. I consider my tale to be a story of loss, love, and redemption.

I've been batting it around for, oh, something like ten years now. At first it was a story about fate pulling together two diametric opposites into a conflict of good versus evil. I didn't want to tell a story about Bruce Willis being awesome and spanking evil yet again. Instead I pitted a vulnerable, naive, pure woman against a monster of a pirate lord. How's that for an apparently losing battle? See, I wanted to tell a tale of how emotional strength, purity, goodness, and fortitude can conquer any kind of physical strength or external show of violence.

What's more, I wanted to make my tale epic through making the conflict bigger than two characters. I wanted them to be mortal, fallible beings sitting in for Gods that couldn't put on mortal form, yet still needed to resolve their differences--in a sense anyway.

However, there's a really fine line between unbelievable coincidence (that my audience won't buy into) and a tale of mythical proportions and execution (which they will). I discovered that the more I thought about it, I was afraid that merely pitting good versus evil seemed shallow. Sure, it's a decent enough idea. But it really lacked a really deep emotional response. I couldn't imagine watching it and really being torn up about what might (or would) happen. I'd give the idea as it stood an 8/10.

Then I considered another possibility, one which I'm afraid has its own flaw. What if my good character and my evil character were friends from childhood who, as they grew, changed into these characters who have a shared past and friendship...but inherent conflict in the present. In some ways it's more poetic, and in others, less. On the one hand, anything nasty that one does to the other will squeeze our hearts all that much more; on the other, the premise may seem all that much more far-fetched. I get the sense that people (myself included) are tired of the "oh, you'll never guess...Bob and Sally, who're so perfect/imperfect for each other, actually know each other from a long time ago. Imagine that!" It gets old. LOST is rapidly reducing the public's tolerance for this type of thing.

But I do love the idea of telling a tale of how two people who apparently loved each other as kids grow into diametric opposites. One bad/emotionally screwed up, and the other good/pure. It's the ultimate character arc--180 degrees.

If I tell that tale, though, then I have a much more emotional movie, at the expense of the epic quality. Hmmm....