Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Davy Jones Locker and the Flying Dutchman

We just saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The story is centered quite firmly around Davy Jones' locker and the Flying Dutchman. It takes a good deal of liberty off these legends to be sure. Davy Jones is actually a character in the movie and he is portrayed as a mutated cross between a man and an Octopus with a wriggling beard of tentacles, and limbs like those of a Crustacean (an image similar to Lovecraft's Cthulhu). The movie also expands upon the origins of Davy Jones. He appears along with his crew of half-human, half-sea creature sailors aboard The Flying Dutchman. In the movie, the story follows that Davy Jones was once an average sailor who fell in love with a beautiful woman (Calypso) as "changing and harsh and as untameable as the sea." When he could not have her, the pain was so much that he cut out his still-beating heart, and sealed it in a chest, so that he would never have to feel love, compassion or the pain that can come from feeling them again. Significant creative license was taken here as Davy Jones was never really a real person (or has never proven to be) but has always been a myth or indication for the depths of the sea.

In the scriptwriter's commentary on the movie's DVD, one of the writers state that Davy Jones' Locker is not death per se, but spending an eternity with the thing you hate or are afraid of most. For instance Jack Sparrow is forced to stay in a land comprised entirely of salt, as he loves the open sea.

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