The adventures of Guybrush Threepwood They’re enough for one or two films. In fact, Steven Spielberg himself tried to bring Monkey Island to the big screen. Things went wrong and his script, already completely finished, ended up as a dead letter. Years went by, although not too many, and in the summer of 2003 Walt Disney Pictures released the first film in the successful Pirates of the Caribbean saga. It’s not the same, but it’s the closest thing. Too similar, perhaps. Coincidence? At all.
Let it be said in advance that when comparing Monkey Island con Pirates of the Caribbean We are not based on subtle coincidences, but on repeating the same situations, some jokes and we even come across characters that are a carbon copy. Without going any further, the evil LeChuck from LucasArts and Captain Hector Barbossa fulfill very similar roles. And Ron Gilbertthe creator of the video game saga, always knew it.
But let’s be more specific: The scene with the dog guarding the prison keys? You have it in both the video game and the movie. Aunt Dalma practically shares powers with the Voodoo Lady. If we start comparing the scenarios and situations we’ll never finish. And although it’s logical to think that Disney plagiarized the Lucasfilm games, the truth is that, as you’ll see, technically one could almost say the opposite.
Guybrush or Captain Jack Sparrow… Who came first?
The success of the first Monkey Island It was born from three names that are now legends: Ron Gilbert captained the project, while Tim Schafer gave it brilliant strokes of surrealism and Dave Grossman He was in charge of dialogues that are now iconic. But of course, to bring all these ideas together, they had to find a suitable setting. And, lacking a time machine, they found one in Disneyland.
It’s worth noting that all three drew on countless works based on the golden age of piracy to create their own take on the Caribbean, but Gilbert had a very clear vision of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it: the grand plan was that playing his next video game would be like riding one of those mind-blowing rides with colourful animatronic characters who almost seem to tell their own stories. Even the ones lying down holding a bottle. Pirates, scoundrels and adventurers who you’d like to ask how they got there.
And, in that sense, the attractions Pirates of the Caribbean Disneyland fit perfectly with what Gilbert had in mind.
I’ve been wanting to make a pirate game for a while now. In fact, one of my favorite rides at Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean. You hop on a little boat and it takes you on a pirate adventure, culminating in a heated cannon fight between two large pirate ships.
The ship you’re on keeps you moving through the adventure, but I’ve always wanted to be able to get off and wander around, learn more about the characters, and find a way to get to those pirate ships. With The Secret of Monkey Island, I wanted to create a game that offered that feeling, where you could step off the boat and be transported into that fascinating world.
In other words: The Secret of Monkey Island It is openly inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, from which it took many of the scenes and situations. And, in turn, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie is directly based on the same attraction, recovering those same elements and, in the process, in its sequels and throughout the saga it also borrows many elements from Monkey Island.
What does Ron Gilbert think about Disney movies?
The current attractions of Pirates of the Caribbean are based more on the films and their characters. However, the original aesthetic was one of the biggest influences for Lucasfilm’s video games. And as a sample, here you can see some footage with The Pirates of the Caribbean attraction as it was shown to the public in 1967.
So, What does Ron Gilbert think about Disney movies? Well, after the Lucasfilm purchase, both the cult video game series and the film franchise now belong to the licensing portfolio of the most famous mouse in the world, so there is no conflict. What’s more, not too long ago Disney and Lucasfilm gave him the opportunity to return to the deepest part of the Caribbean. So Gilbert is happy to have fulfilled his dream of making a legitimate continuation of his saga.
And not only that: he even added a curious homage to the Disney film saga in Return to Monkey Island.
Now, as he declared more than ten years ago, he is also clear about two things: the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow draw on the pranks of Guybrush, but he also recognizes that Monkey Island It wouldn’t be what it is today without the attraction of Disney.
Well, the Pirates of the Caribbean saga is a copy of Monkey Island, which in turn is based on the Disneyland attraction. So it wouldn’t be fair to get mad at Disney when I technically started it.
We were left without a movie Monkey Islandbut in the process we gain a film saga that, without being the same, transports us to a universe of pirates, picaresque, great expeditions and dangers that, in one way or another, get tangled up and solved based on voodoo. And who knows? Maybe in the next film we will see a three-headed monkey.
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