The Top 10 Best Pirate Movies
These Pirate Movies Will Shiver Your Timbers!
Avast ye movie lovers! This week, we be plundering the best pirate movies of all time. I set sail across the cinematic seven seas and return with tales of big-screen privateers and their wondrous adventures. Unfortunately, pirate movies don’t seem to be as popular as they once were, but I managed to get a little creative with a few of the picks below. That being said, in order to qualify, the film has to feature actual pirates. That means it needs ocean-faring bandits that pillage, loot or plunder other ships and seaside towns. I’m not going to include any “space pirates” in this list. You start down that path you’re going to be arguing about whether “land pirates” are a thing or not. Oh, and we all know that Pirates of the Caribbean is going to appear on this list, but I’m only including one film from the Johnny Depp franchise. So, prepare to be boarded, because this list of pirate movies takes no prisoners.
10. 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
Look, I just said that the pirates had to be ocean-faring. I never said anything about whether they had to be on top of the water or not. Kicking off this list of pirate movies is a film that not many people associate with buccaneers. However, when Captain Nemo isn’t doing battle with giant squids, he attacks ships and steals supplies to take back to his secret island lair using his submarine. That’s about as pirate as you can get. Just because his ship doesn’t have a mast and sails doesn’t make it any less effective. In fact, he’s probably the most innovative pirate you’re going to see on this list. 20000 Leagues Under the Sea might seem like an unconventional choice, but it fits all the parameters to earn a spot here and is one of the great underwater adventure movies of all time.
9. The Pirates of Penzance
When you’re stuck at sea for weeks at a time, you need to find some way to keep from dying of boredom. Most pirate movies feature the swashbucklers singing a jaunty tune at some point or anything, but The Pirates of Penzance is pretty much all jaunty tunes. Based on the opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, this musical follows a young man who has been apprenticing with a gentlemanly group of pirates and is now ready to head out into the world as a young man. The problem is that the pirates really like having him around. So, they discover a loophole in the boy’s contract. He’s allowed to leave the group on his 24th birthday, but since he was born on a leap day they claim it’s only his sixth birthday. There might not be a lot of bloodshed and carnage, but it’s a delightful musical well worth a spot among the rest of these buccaneers flicks.
8. Swiss Family Robinson
The literary tale of a shipwrecked family got a big-screen adaptation by Disney in 1960 that is a perfect fit for this list. As if being shipwrecked on a deserted island wasn’t bad enough, the Robinsons had to deal with pirates on top of that. Luckily, this family was pretty much the original Gilligan’s Island, except without the hindrance of a geeky buffoon running around wrecking everything. Because of that, they managed to set up a home-field advantage with some wicked traps and a super-sweet treehouse. Thanks to their impenetrable tree fort, the Robinsons are able to fight off the pirates long enough to get rescued. Despite the fact that it’s kind of funny how both those things happen on the same day (Deus Ex Machina much?), it was a no brainer to include The Swiss Family Robinson on this list.
7. Captain Phillips
Fun Fact: Pirates still exist. Crazy right? Still, the Somali ones have managed to make quite a name for themselves over the years. One incident, in particular, was turned into a featured film starring Tom Hanks as a container ship captain taken hostage by a group of pirates. These guys might not be as theatrical as the ones back in the day, but they are packing automatic rifles which makes them probably much more dangerous overall. Captain Phillips features an intense stand-off between the pirates and the ship’s crew that escalated to the point where the U.S. Navy got involved. Considering it’s based on a real-life incident with modern-day pirates, I simply couldn’t bring myself not to include it on this list. Besides, there’s a surprising lack of diversity when it comes to pirate movies, and I was glad to find at least one movie featuring some that weren’t a bunch of white guys.
6. The Sea Hawk
A lot of people these days might be obsessed with Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, but before he was swinging a cutlass around there was another bad boy with an eyepatch, Errol Flynn. Flynn was known as the big dawg of cinematic swashbucklers back in the golden days of Hollywood, and The Sea Hawk featured him at his best. Like The Pirates of Penzance, Flynn’s character, Geoffrey Thorpe, was a gentleman pirate who wouldn’t dream of being a scallywag, especially when a lady was present. Instead, he was more of a loveable rogue. He’s the kind of guy who flashed a dazzling smile before swinging in to save the day. Despite being a pirate, Thrope was better at stealing hearts than gold, which must have really sucked for his crew who were probably working for a percent of the treasure plundered.