PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES
The fifth movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was much like its predecessors: excellent scripting, interesting plot and progressively poor acting from Johnny Depp.
Aesthetics aside, there's really one thing I'd like to pay attention to: the obvious piece of imagery at the end of the film.
Barbossa is by no stretch an admirable character. He has done deplorable actions, acts selfishly and endangers lives at his own expense throughout the Pirates series. Some would even go so far as to call him cruel, but each to their own.
Come the end of the latest film, however, we see a moment of "redemption" for the character. Barbossa is standing on a ship's anchor as the camera moves. By the time the cut happens, all the audience sees is Barbossa standing on top of a crucifix. Have a look for yourself:
At the end, we see the other characters climbing onto the anchor and start clambering up the chain. Salazar, the antagonist in the film, is knocked off said anchor, falling into the watery abyss, while the others manage to escape (barring one, of course).
In this scene, we see a lot of one ideology. The primary image is that of Christ with the crucifix, cleverly disguised as a ship's anchor. Following this, Barbossa exhibits self-sacrifice in order to [spoiler alert] save what turns out to be his own child. As if that wasn't enough, the audience passively watches the protagonists boarding the crucifix in order to save their own lives.
What we see is Christian propaganda, specifically the virtues of altruism. In Christian theology, Christ sacrifices himself to save others from sin. Barbossa sacrifices his own life to save the lives of his comrades. According to Christianity, because of this sacrifice that Christ made, Christ is the only saviour from eternal damnation...which is immediately represented by everyone hurriedly getting onto the anchor. And considering that Salazar is relegated to the bottom of the sea during his final moments of life, he is obviously representative of Satan and the theological Fall from Grace - the only difference being that Salazar fell to a watery end, the opposite of Satan's flames.
Thoughts poorly conveyed explained simply: Barbossa, symbolic of Christ, arrives on anchor, looking remarkably like a crucifix, to save the lives of not only his family but his peers too, and protects them all by sacrificing himself by taking the antagonist to a watery Hell.
Disney, the producers of such otherwise wonderful films, have once again, in remarkably surreptitious ways, revealed their agenda.
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