Pirates of the Caribbean, the real phantom menace

I recently saw Pirates of the Caribbean and realized that it has an eerily familiar theme...cue 20th Century Fox drum roll, followed by text scroll on star field space backdrop: Turmoil has engulfed the British Colonial Empire. There is unrest in outlying trade routes…evil is everywhere...You got me, it’s Star Wars I’m talking about. I must admit that it is going to be awfully difficult to draw comparisons without turning this article into a spoiler but I’ll give it a shot.
I recently discovered that Pirates of the Caribbean is now a trilogy. I will compare it to the only Star Wars trilogy that mattered, the original with Harrison Ford et al.
Watching Pirates, I noticed that Dead Man’s Chest takes off where the original left off. There is a love triangle forming that we are all familiar with. Jack Sparrow played by Johnny Depp assumes the role of devilish rogue Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Orlando Bloom as Will Turner the nancy boy hero modeled after Mark Hamill’s, Luke Skywalker and let us not forget the feisty heroine Elizabeth Swan played by Keira Knightley replacing Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). The similarities are so close that the only thing that Ms. Knightly’s character didn’t do was call Captain Jack Sparrow a “nerf herder”. Hmmm, Sparrow and Swan? I fully expect that Knightly will wind up with Bloom at the end of it all but, there is this curious battle between light and dark for both Sparrow and Swan. I’m waiting for Darth Vader a.k.a. Davy Jones to pronounce “the force is strong with this one” when he meets Swan.
You have your usual cast of beasties, meanies and other subversive characters that drive the plot. There’s Jack Davenport’s Norrington as Boba Fett and Jack Sparrow’s right hand man Gibbs (Kevin McNally) as Chewbacca. He’s certainly hairy enough to be Chewy. There’s the characters Pintel and Ragetti as R2D2 and C3PO. Finally, while Johnny Depp’s character wasn’t frozen in carbonite at the end of Dead Man’s Chest he wasn’t far off (you’ll see what I mean), setting off another adventure for the final installment. C’mon It’s painstakingly obvious. Does George Lucas know that Disney is ripping off his plot lines?
Somehow though, I don’t think that Dead Man’s Chest will be the only film in the Pirate’s of the Caribbean trilogy that mattered unlike “Empire” was to Star Wars…ouch.
For more Sci-Fi, check out the smashing Adventures of Space Squadron.
Peace.