An excerpt from my script review for Captain Blood (1994) which will be available 04/01/26:
2.) Plot Stability
My biggest complaint, aside from the similarities in the previous section?
Way too many sea battles.
Listen, I get that they’re exciting, and this is an action story, but think of the ending of At World Ends, which is arguably my favorite Pirates movie in the franchise…that one runs a bit long, all the back and forth between ships…
This script’s ending?
Double what we saw in AWE…easily.
Again, is it absolutely horrible? No, but sooner or later your audience is going to want to go home.
This one was so heavy on three separate parties attacking one another that as soon as one group was finished, another jumped in, only to have all three coming back to fight one another for the finale.
At 124 pages, boxing me in with description laden entries, I was ready to call it a day.
The second complaint, and maybe it should be the first but I stand by my argument, is that Peter Blood never really faces any true challenges.
Anytime he wants to get out of a situation he can and does.
Great fighter. Great doctor, despite any formal training. Great sailor.
(That last one again despite any shown or declared training.)
Oh, and great navigator of a busted longboat that goes over, not three, but four waterfalls!
Fucker’s swinging through the sails on a rope, parrying this guy, killing that guy, and landing with what I can only assume is Puss in Boots flair.
And don’t get me wrong, I like the guy! He’s a stand-up character that we root for.
He’s just too good at everything.
(Think of the criticisms of Rey from the newer Star Wars films. She’s instantly great at everything because…The Force. Same could be said for the good Captain.)
Now, Peter Blood does face some shit early on when he’s a slave, but looking back on the torture and punishment bits, you almost wonder if he couldn’t have escaped those too.
The issue later is that once they choose the pirate life, everything goes perfectly, from sea battles to looting to nary a hint of mutiny.
The last issue is there are three separate narratives to keep track of.
We have Peter Blood, which of course we care about, but then we’re also following the English Major Bishop (think Norrington from the Pirates films) and then we have a Spanish pirate named Don Diego.
The problem here is that we spend too much time with the other two, which we really don’t need to see and bogs us down.
The overall argument I’m making for this section is that this script could easily be trimmed down a bit. Sure it’s under 125 pages, but there are a lot of description heavy scenes in there that’ll boost this over two hours, and I’m not sure it would be entertaining enough to keep the audience happy for the duration.
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