


Needless to say, the movie was a massive hit, and proved a lot of people wrong in terms of popularity. What would be the fate of The Curse of the Black Pearl? Well, that fate was a $654.3 million grossing at the box office globally, which made it the fourth highest-grossing film of 2003. There were also references to other pirate movies that had underperformed in the 1980s and 1990s.

This sentence from that specific review says it best: "The action comedy 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?" A 2003 review from The New York Times sums up the biggest question people had about the film ahead of its release -how a "ride" would be as a movie. Prior to the release of The Curse of the Black Pearl, there wasn't much "hype" surrounding the film because the expectations from a performance standpoint was low.
