The
East India Trading Company arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica, to extend
its monopoly in the Caribbean and purge piracy from its waters. Leading
the expansion is Lord Cutler Beckett, a powerful and ruthless EITC
agent who arrests Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner as they are about to
be married. Beckett threatens to execute them and the absent
ex-Commodore James Norrington for aiding Captain Jack Sparrow's escape,
but he offers clemency if Will agrees to hunt for Sparrow and his
magical compass which points to what its possessor wants most. An
informant in Tortuga leads Will to the Black Pearl run aground on
Pelegosto, a cannibal-inhabited island where Jack and his crew are
captive. Jack hid there after "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Jack's former
crewmate and now an indentured sailor aboard Captain Davy Jones' ghost
ship, the Flying Dutchman, delivered Jack the Black Spot, a mark
signifying his debt to Jones is due. Thirteen years before, Jones
raised the Pearl from the ocean depths and made Jack its captain. In
exchange, Jack must now serve aboard the Dutchman for 100 years, or be
hunted by Jones' beasts, the Kraken.
Will, Jack, and a few crew members escape their captors, unexpectedly
recruiting Pintel and Ragetti along the way, and head for sea. Will
learns that Jack has been searching for a particular key. He agrees to
give Will the compass if he helps him find the key and the object it
unlocks. Seeking assistance from Tia Dalma, an obeah priestess, Jack
learns the compass fails to work because he does not know what he truly
wants. The key, Tia tells him, unlocks the Dead Man's Chest containing
Davy Jones' still-beating heart—to avoid lost love's pain,
Jones
carved the heart from his chest and buried it. Whoever possesses the
heart controls Davy Jones, thereby controlling the world's oceans. Back
at sea, the Dutchman encounters Sparrow, who deviously attempts to
barter Will in exchange for himself. Jones demands 100 souls within
three days in exchange for Jack's freedom and keeps Will as a "good
faith payment," leaving Jack only 99 more souls to harvest.
In Port Royal, Governor Weatherby Swann frees Elizabeth. Confronting
Beckett at gunpoint, she forces him to validate a Letter of
Marque—a royal document with which Beckett intends to recruit
Sparrow as a privateer, and which Elizabeth wants for Will. Posing as a
cabin boy on a merchant vessel, Elizabeth lands in Tortuga where she
finds Jack and Gibbs desperately recruiting unsuspecting sailors in a
pub to pay off his blood debt. A disheveled Norrington also applies.
Blaming Sparrow for his ruin, he tries to shoot him and ignites an
angry brawl, but Elizabeth knocks Norrington out and saves Sparrow. At
the pier, Jack reveals the compass' secret to Elizabeth; it points to
what the holder wants most in the world. When he convinces her that she
can save Will by finding the chest, she gets a bearing. Once the ship
is underway, however, an attraction arises between Jack and Elizabeth.
On Isla Cruces, Jack, Norrington, and Elizabeth find the Dead Man's
Chest. Will, who has escaped the Dutchman with help from his father,
Bootstrap Bill, arrives with the key he stole from Davy Jones. Will
wants to stab the heart to free his father, but Jack fears that with
Jones dead, the Kraken will continue hunting him as there will be no
one to call it off, while Norrington desires the heart to bargain back
his naval career. As a three-way swordfight erupts, the arrival of
Jones' crew and Pintel and Ragetti's attempt to make off with the chest
complicate matters even more. Norrington ultimately escapes with the
heart and the Letters of Marque while Jones' crewmembers retrieve the
now-empty Dead Man's Chest.
The Dutchman pursues the Pearl but, with the wind behind them, the
Pearl outruns her. Jones summons the Kraken. Jack escapes the Pearl in
the last longboat; but unable to desert his crew, he returns in time to
save them. After a fierce battle that kills every crew member except
for Will, Jack, Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti, Marty, Cotton, and
Elizabeth, he gives the order to abandon ship before the Kraken makes
its final assault. Realizing the Kraken is only hunting Jack,
a
deceptive Elizabeth kisses him while handcuffing him to the mast as
bait. Wracked with guilt over her betrayal, Elizabeth tells the others
Jack chose to remain behind, unaware that Will now believes she loves
Sparrow. Jack escapes the shackles just as the Kraken resurfaces: Jack
draws his cutlass and goes down fighting as the Kraken lunges for him;
the colossal beast drags him and the Pearl to a watery grave
Davy Jones declares Jack's debt settled, although he becomes enraged
when he discovers an empty Dead Man's Chest. Meanwhile, Norrington
makes his way to Port Royal and delivers the heart and the Letters of
Marque to Cutler Beckett. Elizabeth, Will, and the surviving Pearl crew
seek refuge with Tia Dalma, who asks if they would be willing to save
Jack from Davy Jones' Locker. When all agree, Tia Dalma sends them on a
journey to World's End to rescue Jack, saying they will need a captain
who knows those waters—the resurrected Captain Barbossa.
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