PotC a MI-Ripoff or merely an influential connection?

 Noch ein (letzter?) Vergleich zwischen der Videospielserie Monkey Island und der Filmreihe Fluch Der Karibik. Ein relativ kurzer und ziemlich gelungener, IMHO, der die Aehnlichkeiten und daraus resultierenden Schluesse so darstellt, wie ich es eigentlich auch bisher sah. [...]
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Is Pirates of the Caribbean A Rip-Off Of Monkey Island?
Marc McEntegart, Eoin Hurrell June 26, 2007 06:54
Pirates of the Caribbean, Monkey Island Take 2

We blame Disney for a lot of things; High School Musical, The Goof Troop and the death of Bambi's mother among them. One of the most recent accusations levelled against the company has been that its Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy bears some remarkable similarities to Lucasart's adventure series, the Monkey Island series.

For anyone not familiar with Monkey Island, players take on the role of Guybrush Threepwood, intrepid pirate to-be. It's an unusually well put together point-and-click adventure game, starring our naïve pirate-in-training, an array of spirits, cannibals, a swordmaster, a strange voodoo priestess and an even stranger used boat salesman.

The Secret of Monkey island, the game that started it all?

The Secret of Monkey Island
At the games' opening would-be pirate Guybrush Threepwood who has just arrived on Mêlée Island to seek his fortune, and whose only aptitude is a claimed ability to hold his breath for ten minutes underwater. Action, romance, comedy and adventure on the high seas, The Secret of Monkey Island has it all.

By way of comparison, the Pirates of the Carribbean trilogy features William Turner, also an intrepid young pirate to-be (though he's unaware). It too is an exciting tale, featuring a host of undead, cannibals, a strange voodoo sorceress and an even stranger Johnny Depp. If you've noticed any similarities, you're not the first. In fact, both are said to have been based on Disneyland Florida's famous Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert however, commented in his blog that his initial response to seeing the trailor for Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest was, ""Hey, I've seen this before... no... I've played this before... no... I've designed this before!" I'm thinking "This is the Monkey Island Movie!"". Indeed, it wasn't long before long-time fans of the series started making some unfavourable comparisons.

When you see them lined up like this, it's amazing they got away with it.

Gilbert went on to say that his inspiration for the Monkey Island series instead came from Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, "Some people believe the inspiration for Monkey Island came from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride - probably because I said it several times during interviews - but that was really just for the ambiance. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were plagiarized derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game." This of course, raises the question of the healthy amount of voodoo in Pirates of the Caribbean... if indeed any amount of voodoo can be thought healthy.

While the similarity between the two is immediately apparent given the barest overview of the themes, details and even entire characters can be seen to be paying homage to character themes, motifs and ideas laid out over the course of the Monkey Island series. That is, paying homage if we're optimistic, and plagerised it we're not.

The character of LeChuck plays the part of evil antagonist to Guybrush's bumbling heroics. LeChuck changes dramatically over the course of Guybrush's adventures; transitioning between ethereal, demonic and even zombified forms to curse the name Threepwood. His resurrected corpse (some say his most terrible incarnation), as seen in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, bears a striking resemblance to the zombie pirate Hector Barbossa (as he appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl).

We've included a photo, for comparison's sake.

"Yeah, they kind of screwed up his beard, but that's LeChuck, and let's be honest, if I'd thought of the squid tentacles for a beard, I would have done that." - Ron Gilbert on Davy Jones

More than Just a Monkey Island Movie
What's most interesting about the above comparison is that the zombie-pirate LeChuck acts as a kind of missing link between the two key villains of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. What is perhaps more interesting is that while these aspects of Monkey Island seem so thoroughly to have been plundered (sorry, pirate mindset) for Pirates of the Caribbean, those characters with no obvious parallel in Monkey Island seem to be among the most popular of the trilogy.

Again, Elaine acts as a kind of missing link between incarnations of Elizabeth Swann.

This is best seen in the most recent offering, At World's End. Elizabeth Swann's (Keira Knightley) transition from Governess' daughter to brutal, Chinese-slaying corsair in the space of the somewhat clumsily bridged gap between Dead Man's Chest and At World's End represents something of a departure from the character of Elaine, who Elizabeth had aped to closely so far. The character grows in the change, becoming more than the perpetual damsel in disress that was Elaine Marley.

Of course, the one character who bears no resemblance to anything found in Monkey Island is Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) himself. The uncoordinated character of Jack Sparrow manages to fit into the role of a master pirate to William Turner's apprentice brigand. This of course is a role best left unfilled in a game context, where players are expected to learn for themselves the behavior necessitated by life on the high seas. None-the-less, Jack Sparrow has long been a favourite of Pirates of the Caribbean fans.

This handsome devil bears no relation to any of the characters of Monkey Island.

Likewise Davy Jones, while he may take some of his visual cues from the dread pirate LeChuck, represents a kind of emotionally developed villain seldom seen in any games, and certainly not in LeChuck. His characterisation, as well as that of Barbossa, leads the Pirates of the Caribbean series further and further from the Monkey Island series.

Pirates and Monkeys
It'll probably never be clear whether or not Monkey Island acted as a direct influence on the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, though given the similarities, it seems at least fairly likely. Of course, it's worth remembering how much of the original Secret of Monkey Island was taken from Tim Powers' on Stranger Tides.

Given the sheer volume of differences in both plot and character development alongside the (if we're honest) relatively scant comparisons, it's probably fairer to say that Pirates of the Caribbean was, more than likely, influenced by the Monkey Island series, though not in the unseemly fashion that so many avid gamers seem to believe.

Regardless, Pirates of the Caribbean has whetted a seaborne appetite, and we wait in hope for some confirmation of the long-rumoured fifth entry in the Monkey Island series. Hopefully we might even be lucky enough to discover just what the Secret of Monkey Island really is.
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