Pirates: A Review With Scientists

Without making so bold a claim so as to say that we’ve never watched porn, it’s fair to say that neither of us are connoisseurs of the cinematographic genre. However, the 2005 feature-length Pirates, with its million-dollar budget, was the most expensive pornographic film ever made at the time, a title now held by its 2008 sequel. This seemed like it would be viewing worthy of our comparatively innocent eyes, and certainly stood to be a good candidate to meet his quality standards.

I wouldn’t say that it’s the best film that I’ve ever watched, but it was definitely the best porn I’ve ever seen, in terms of cinematographic value. Being 129 minutes long, it did start to drag in some parts, but the storyline did hold its weight (being very similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, although not so identical that it was boring).

The film follows a pirate hunter as he, along with his first officer (played by the well-known Jesse Jane) embark on a mission to catch the most feared of all pirates, and rescue the husband of a beautiful girl that they’ve picked up along the way. This is all done in an attempt to foil his plan to gain great powers from the Sceptre of Inca, which obviously requires a descendant of the family to which it was entrusted to activate. I’m sure you can see where this is going. There is a surprisingly long plot diversion following a Chinese gunner, Wu Cho (who is as stereotypical as you can imagine), as spends almost the entire duration of the film searching for potassium nitrate. Despite it being 1763, it’s never referred to as saltpetre; clearly the writer of the script was insistent that the scientific accuracy be maintained for a modern audience.

Until I watched this film, I wasn’t aware that silicone implants, peroxide, or extensive waxing were commonplace in 1763. All of the actresses were artificially modified in the breast department, which I think is an occupational hazard of the genre. That said, as obvious as I found this, it was apparently not apparent to a non-female observer. A commendable aside of the historical inaccuracies is that the participating male actors wore condoms during penetrative sex. This practice, although fairly commonplace, and sometimes legally required now, was fairly unusual in 2005 (and certainly in 1763), and shows how progressive this film was, in terms of the genre.

We were in agreement that the aspect that let the movie down was the acting. Obviously, the actors in a film such as this are chosen at least partially for reasons other than their ability to act as though that giant CGI sea-monster (ooh-er) is real, and the pool from which they can be chosen is far smaller. Although some of the (non-sex) acting was indeed very good, there did appear to be an inverse correlation between the ability to make the character believable and the ability to perform a really hot sex scene, which was slightly disappointing. The biggest name in this film, Jesse Jane, was definitely the weakest actor, but certainly drew in viewers in her own right. Despite this, the script was strong enough that it was possible to imagine good acting, and the stiff reading of lines didn’t really detract any enjoyment, merely adding some comedic value. Several of the leading actors won AVN awards for best actor and actress, which might say more than I could about the quality of acting compared to other competing productions. What was unusual about this film, in comparison to most extended pornography, was that the erotic scenes didn’t appear contrived; for all the scenes, there was context and build up. Yes, this could have been better, but as the New York Times described it, “a relatively high-budget story of a group of ragtag sailors who go searching for a crew of evil pirates who have a plan for world domination. Also, many of the characters in the movie have sex with one another.”

This film is described as having been made to appeal to women as well as men, and this is evident. The film opens to a young, newlywed woman, nervously stripping for her husband for the first time. This is unexpectedly well-acted, and is initially realistic. However, the sex rapidly became too porny, and I think the producers missed a trick by skipping the niche appeal of a virginity scene, which women could have related to. What disappointed me most, watching this film as a woman, was the ratio of male to female orgasms in each of the erotic scenes. There were no female orgasms shown in any scene where a man was present, and in only one of the all-girl sex scenes (where it wasn’t really clear, but I’ll give it). This inequality particularly saddens me, because I find it thoroughly unnecessary. I don’t think there is anyone who is going to be turned on by a pornographic (male and female) sex scene, who would be turned off by watching a female climax. I’m sure that these world-famous actresses are perfectly capable of a magnificently faked orgasm, and certainly, there is time to include it in a film this long.

Even with a million-dollar budget, there’s only so much money left for CGI, and we were left wondering which of the sex or battle scenes were more realistic. They seemed, at times, to have plumped for quantity rather than quality, with a large number of beautiful sweeping shots of what could have been Play-Doh boat models. That said, the non-computer-generated scenes were, on the whole, very well-composed and shot, with the exception of a few rather oddly-placed light sources (and I’m not talking about the non-conventional use of candlesticks in the final scene).

This is a critical analysis, and I am picking on the bad points of the film, but I should end by saying that as far as pornographic films go, this was definitely of very high quality, and I would go as far as to say that it preaches far fewer bad habits that most porn. The media frequently reports on how damaging it is for young people to learn about sex from pornography, a sentiment that I would agree is true to an extent. However, with an immensely popular pornographic feature such as this moving towards a more realistic portrayal of sex, I see no reason to artificially shield the next generation as ours never was in the days before parental controls.

All this said, the best judge of porn has to be its ability of inspire carnal lust. And did it succeed? Sadly, the only se[a]men to be seen that night were of the onscreen variety; Mr Wu’s puny gunshots were unable to arouse any other kind of shots that night, something which no amount of saltpetre could fix.