I couldn’t decide if I should post this to the gaming community or movies community so I decided to split the difference and just post it here since I’m open to games, movies, or book suggestions.
I have an itch I seem to have trouble scratching. I want more pirate stories that involve dark fantasy elements (skeletons, krakens, ghosts, voodoo, etc.) yet there seem to be very few of these. The best example of what I’m looking for is of course the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but those have diminishing returns. Even though it’s exactly what I want, each movie is worse than the last.
I just finished playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and that was also exactly what I wanted. And I’m unreasonably excited for DAVY x JONES to come out. And yet… that’s all I can find. Those are the only properties I know of that actually scratch my itch. And I’m shocked at how few entries there are in this genre.
I don’t want a straight-forward pirate adventure like Cutthroat Island or Black Sails, or… I don’t know, Muppet Treasure Island; I want something with dark fantasy elements in it. I recently watched a Korean movie on Netflix called The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure and while it had the adventure/comedy feel of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, there were no fantasy elements in it at all.
Is there a name for this sub-genre that I just haven’t stumbled across? Are there really so few entries in this sub-genre? I created a [email protected] community awhile back, and I guess I’m really just looking for the pirate equivalent of the Weird West genre. I guess the Vampirates book series meets my criteria, but it’s at a middle school reading level and that just isn’t for me. Maybe I should just re-watch Pirates of Dark Water…
So can anyone here help me out? Is there a better term to search for than just ‘pirate fantasy’? Are there any other movies, books, or games you know of that might scratch my itch?
Interesting! Living ships would do it. And come to think of it, One Piece might also qualify.
The Peter Pan franchise is a bit of a weird case, because the pirates are the bad guys, and exist in opposition to the surrounding fantasy world with IIRC few magical aspects of their own.
For whatever reason, I think lawlessness just does lend itself more to the dark kind of fantasy, which is shared in common with the western example you gave. And at the other end, light fantasy is full of autocratic feudal nightmares painted as cool and just. It might be a hangover from the values of the original myth-makers.
Exactly, One Piece and Peter Pan are perfect examples of “pirate fantasy” but are missing that lawless aspect which (in my opinion) drives the romantic view of pirates (and the Wild West). Or maybe not “lawlessness” but the “living by their own code” aspect of it.
It’s strange how dark/light fantasy shouldn’t have any impact on whether the lawlessness of pirates is glorified, yet it seems to work out that way.