The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! | |
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Directed by | Peter Lord |
Screenplay by | Gideon Defoe |
Based on | The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Frank Passingham |
Edited by | Justin Krish |
Music by | Theodore Shapiro |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Releasing [2] |
Release dates |
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Running time | 88 minutes [3] |
Countries | United Kingdom United States [4] |
Language | English |
Budget | $55 million [2] |
Box office | $123 million [2] |
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (released overseas as The Pirates! Band of Misfits) is a 2012 stop-motion animated swashbuckler comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Aardman Animations, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The second and final collaborative project between Sony and Aardman, it is Aardman's first book-based movie as well as their first stop-motion feature film since Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and Sony Pictures Entertainment's first stop-motion film. The film was directed by Peter Lord, co-directed by Jeff Newitt (in his feature directorial debut), and written by Gideon Defoe, based on Defoe's 2004 novel The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (the first book from The Pirates! series). The film stars the voices of Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Martin Freeman, Salma Hayek, and Jeremy Piven, and follows a crew of amateur pirates in their attempt to win the Pirate of the Year competition. [5] [6] [7]
The Pirates! was distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing and was released on 28 March 2012 in the United Kingdom, and on 27 April 2012 in the United States. [8] The film received generally positive reviews, [9] and was a modest box office success, earning $123 million against a budget as high as $55 million. [2] [10] The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the second film from Sony Pictures Animation to be nominated after Surf's Up .
In London, 1837, Queen Victoria is told by the Navy that the British Empire rules the entire ocean, with the exception of pirates, whom she despises. Meanwhile, The Pirate Captain leads an unorthodox group of amateur pirates who are trying to make a name for themselves on the high seas. One day, to prove his worth, The Captain enters the annual Pirate of the Year competition, with the winner being whoever can plunder the most treasure. After several failed attempts to plunder mundane ships, they come across HMS Beagle and capture its lone passenger, Charles Darwin, who recognizes the crew's pet "parrot", Polly, as the last dodo bird alive. Darwin recommends that they enter Polly in the Scientist of the Year competition at the Royal Society of London, and the Captain accepts, believing that winning the competition can help him win the Pirate of the Year award, while his assistant, the Pirate with the scarf, advises him not to. Allowing The Pirate Captain and his crew to stay at his house for the night, Darwin plans to steal Polly for himself in order to impress Queen Victoria, whom he's smitten with. He has his trained chimpanzee, Mr. Bobo, steal Polly, but their plans go awry.
The next day, the pirates disguise themselves as scientists to enter the competition, and the dodo display wins the top prize, which turns out to be a meeting with the Queen. The Queen requests that Polly be put in her petting zoo, but the Captain refuses and accidentally reveals his true identity. The Captain is about to be executed when Darwin reminds the Queen that Polly has been hidden and only the Captain knows where. The Queen pardons the Captain of his crimes and orders Darwin to find Polly by any means necessary. Darwin and Mr. Bobo take the Captain to a tavern, get him intoxicated, and attempt to steal Polly, but The Captain chases them into the Tower of London, where the Queen is waiting. She dismisses Darwin and Mr. Bobo and offers The Captain enough treasure to ensure his win for Pirate of the Year in exchange for Polly. The Captain accepts the offer and returns to his crew, assuring them Polly is still safe.
At the Pirate of the Year ceremony, the Captain is announced as the winner, but their rival pirate Black Bellamy finds a newspaper revealing the Queen's pardon and explains that if pardoned, one is no longer a pirate. The Captain ends up being stripped of his treasure and pirate attire and reveals to his crew that he sold Polly to the Queen for the treasure. Angry at him for his actions, they are prompted to abandon him. The Captain returns to London and reunites with Darwin, who has discovered that the Queen is part of a society of world leaders who dine on endangered creatures, and Polly is to be served at their next banquet. The Captain and Darwin work together to steal an airship and find the Queen's flagship, the QV1, while Mr. Bobo sets off to retrieve the Captain's crew members.
Aboard the QV1, the Captain and Darwin find Polly just before she's cooked and eaten, but the Queen finds them and attempts to kill both of them. Mr. Bobo and the crew come to their aid, but while fighting the Queen, they accidentally mix the ship's stash of baking soda with vinegar, causing a violent reaction that explodes and breaks the ship in two. The Queen tries to escape with Polly in the airship that the Captain and Darwin came on. Polly attacks her and causes her to rip a hole in the airship and drop Polly, and the Captain catches her before she falls into the ship's propeller. The Captain, along with Darwin, Mr. Bobo and the rest of his crew escape safely, leaving the furious Queen behind on her deflating airship. Due to their actions, the Captain is targeted with the highest bounty known to pirates, with 100,000 Doubloons placed by the Queen, restoring his pirate reputation as well as marking him as the most dangerous pirate alive. Darwin stays on an island to study more exotic animals, and The Pirate Captain continues his exploits with his crew, now joined by Mr. Bobo.
Additional voices by Tom Doggart, Sophie Jerrold, Sophie Laughton, Kayvan Novak, David Schaal, David Schneider, Ben Whitehead and director Peter Lord.
Aardman Animations, who primarily use stop-motion animation, extensively used computer graphics to complement and enrich the primarily stop-motion film with visual elements such as sea and scenery.
The project was originally envisioned as a CGI animated film, but when Sony executives saw the models of the Pirate Captain and his cabin that had been created as references for the animators, they requested that it be made in stop-motion. [18]
Director Peter Lord commented, "With Pirates!, I must say that the new technology has made Pirates! really liberating to make, easy to make because the fact that you can shoot a lot of green screen stuff, the fact that you can easily extend the sets with CGI, the fact that you can put the sea in there and a beautiful wooden boat that, frankly, would never sail in a million years, you can take that and put it into a beautiful CGI scene and believe it." [19]
For the release in the United States, the film was retitled The Pirates! Band of Misfits, as author/screenwriter Gideon Defoe's books do not have "the same following outside of the United Kingdom", so it was not necessary to keep the original title. [20]
Hugh Grant, the voice of the Pirate Captain, said that the studio "didn't think the Americans would like the longer title". [21] Lord's similar response was that "some people reckoned the United Kingdom title wouldn't charm / amuse / work in the United States. Tricky to prove eh?" [22]
Quentin Cooper of the BBC analysed the change of the title and listed several theories. One of them is that the British audience is more tolerant for the eccentricity of the British animators. Another is that the film makers did not want to challenge the United States viewers who do not accept the theory of evolution. He quoted science writer Jennifer Ouellette's 2010 statement at the Science & Entertainment Exchange that scientists are undesirable in American popular culture, being represented as "the mad scientist or the dweeby nerd that dress funny, have no social skills, play video games, long for unattainable women". [20] [23]
In January 2012, it was reported that the latest trailer of The Pirates! attracted some very negative reactions from the "leprosy community". In the trailer released in December 2011, the Pirate Captain lands on a ship demanding gold, but is told by a crewmember, "we don't have any gold, old man. This is a leper boat!" before his arm falls off. [24]
Lepra Health in Action and some officials from the World Health Organization claimed that the joke depicted leprosy in a derogatory manner, and it "reinforces the misconceptions which leads to stigma and discrimination that prevents people from coming forward for treatment". They demanded an apology and removal of the offending scene, [25] to which Aardman responded: "After reviewing the matter, we decided to change the scene out of respect and sensitivity for those who suffer from leprosy. The last thing anyone intended was to offend anyone..."
LHA responded that it was "genuinely delighted that Aardman has decided to amend the film", while the trailer was expected to be pulled down from websites, [26] and the final version of the film has "leper boat" replaced with "plague boat". [27]
The Pirates! Band of Misfits | ||||
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Film score by | ||||
Released | 24 April 2012 | |||
Recorded | 2012 | |||
Genre | Score | |||
Length | 51:04 | |||
Label | Madison Gate Records | |||
Theodore Shapiro film scores chronology | ||||
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The film's score was composed by Theodore Shapiro in his animated feature score debut. [28] The score was released digitally by Madison Gate Records on 24 April 2012, [29] and as a CD-R on-demand on 17 May 2012. [30] The film also includes a number of previously released songs by various artists, including "Swords of a Thousand Men" by Tenpole Tudor, "Ranking Full-Stop" by The Beat, "Fiesta" by The Pogues, "London Calling" by The Clash, "You Can Get It If You Really Want" by Jimmy Cliff, "Alright" by Supergrass, and "I'm Not Crying" by Flight of the Conchords. [31]
The Pirates! was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D on 28 August 2012 in the United States, [32] and on 10 September 2012 in the United Kingdom. [33] The film is accompanied with an 18-minute [34] short stop motion animated film called So You Want to Be a Pirate!, where The Pirate Captain hosts his own talk show about being a true pirate. [35]
The short was also released on DVD on 13 August 2012, exclusively at Tesco stores in the United Kingdom. [36] As a promotion for the release of The Pirates!, Sony attached to every DVD and Blu-ray a code to download a LittleBigPlanet 2 minipack of Sackboy clothing that represents 3 of the characters: The Pirate Captain, Cutlass Liz and Black Bellamy. [37] [38]
The film has grossed $123,054,041 worldwide. $26 million came from United Kingdom, [39] $31 million from the United States and Canada, along with around $92 million from other territories, including the United Kingdom. [2] As of 2017, it is the fourth highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time.
In North America, it ranked fifth on its opening day, taking in $2,749,959, slightly higher than Arthur Christmas ' $2.4 million opening day. The film eventually made $11.1 million on its opening weekend and reaching second at the box office behind Think Like a Man while averaging $3,315 through its 3,358 theatre’s, on its second weekend, it dropped by 50.6%, ranking fourth with $5,502,482, then to seventh place with $3,143,442, dropping by 42.9%.
In the United Kingdom, it opened to third with $3,486,095 behind The Hunger Games and Wrath of the Titans , averaging $6,443 through its 554 cinemas, it saw a 1.3% increase on its second weekend with $3,486,280, averaging $6,240 per cinema, and bringing the UK gross to $12,251,022.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 86% approval rating based on 154 reviews; the average score is 7.3/10. The website's consensus reads, "It may not quite scale Aardman's customary delirious heights, but The Pirates! still represents some of the smartest, most skillfully animated fare that modern cinema has to offer." [9] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 73 based on 31 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". [40]
Awards Body | Category | Recipients | Result |
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Academy Awards [41] | Best Animated Feature | Peter Lord | Nominated |
Annie Awards [42] [43] | Best Animated Feature | Julie Lockhart, Peter Lord and David Sproxton | Nominated |
Character Animation in a Feature Production | Will Becher | ||
Production Design in an Animated Feature Production | Norman Garwood, Matt Berry | ||
Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production | Imelda Staunton | ||
Writing in an Animated Feature Production | Gideon Defoe | ||
European Film Awards [44] [45] | Best Animated Feature Film | Nominated | |
Visual Effects Society [46] [47] | Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture | Will Becher, Jay Grace, Loyd Price | Nominated |
By August 2011, Aardman had been already working on a sequel idea, [48] and by June 2012, a story had been prepared, awaiting Sony to back the project. [49] Eventually, Sony decided not to support the project due to insufficient international earnings. According to Lord, "it got close, but not quite close enough. I was all fired up for doing more. It was such fun to do! We actually have a poster for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Cowboys!. That would have been just great." [50]
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. It consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and released in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis until 2010 when he was succeeded by Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Creature Comforts is a British adult stop-motion comedy mockumentary franchise originating in a 1989 British humorous animated short film of the same name. The film matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes, making it appear as if the animals were being interviewed about their living conditions. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The film later became the basis of a series of television advertisements for the electricity boards in the United Kingdom. In 2003, a television series in the same style was released. An American version of the series was also made. A sequel series, Things We Love, first aired on BBC One in 2024.
Sony Pictures Animation Inc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. Most of the studio's films are distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing under their Columbia Pictures label, while direct-to-video releases are released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Flushed Away is a 2006 animated adventure comedy film directed by Sam Fell and David Bowers, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, and Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies. It was the third and final DreamWorks Animation film co-produced with Aardman Features following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and was the first Aardman project mostly made in CGI animation as opposed to starting with their usual stop-motion – this was because using water on plasticine models could damage them, and it was complex to render the effect in another way. The film stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Jean Reno. In the film, a pampered fancy rat named Roddy St. James (Jackman) is flushed down the toilet in his Kensington apartment by a sewer rat named Sid (Richie), and befriends a scavenger named Rita Malone (Winslet) in order to get back home while evading a sinister toad (McKellen) and his hench-rats.
Peter Duncan Fraser Lord CBE is an English animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace and Gromit. He also directed Chicken Run along with Nick Park from DreamWorks Animation, and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists is the first book in The Pirates! series by Gideon Defoe dealing with a hapless crew of pirates. It was published in 2004 by Orion Books (ISBN 0-297-84885-2). The book was adapted into a stop-motion film by Aardman Animations.
Theodore Michael Shapiro is an American composer best known for his film scores.
In English-speaking popular culture, the modern pirate stereotype owes its attributes mostly to the imagined tradition of the 18th-century Caribbean pirate sailing off the Spanish Main and to such celebrated 20th-century depictions as Captain Hook and his crew in the theatrical and film versions of J. M. Barrie's children's book Peter Pan, Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, and various adaptations of the Middle Eastern pirate, Sinbad the Sailor. In these and countless other books, films, and legends, pirates are portrayed as "swashbucklers" and "plunderers". They are shown on ships, often wearing eyepatches or peg legs, having a parrot perched on their shoulder, speaking in a West Country accent, and saying phrases like "Arr, matey" and "Avast, me hearty". Pirates have retained their image through pirate-themed tourist attractions, film, toys, books and plays.
United Kingdom Animation began at the very origins of the art form in the late 19th century. British animation has been strengthened by an influx of émigrés to the UK; renowned animators such as Lotte Reiniger (Germany), John Halas (Hungary), George Dunning and Richard Williams (Canada), Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton have all worked in the UK at various stages of their careers. Notable full-length animated features to be produced in the UK include Animal Farm (1954), Yellow Submarine (1968), Watership Down (1978), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Christopher Sadler is a British animator, director and writer. He is primarily known for his work on Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Rex the Runt, Cracking Contraptions, Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep.
Arthur Christmas is a 2011 animated Christmas comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Aardman Animations, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film is Aardman's second mostly computer-animated feature film after 2006's Flushed Away. It was directed by Sarah Smith, co-directed by Barry Cook, and written by Smith and Peter Baynham. Featuring the voices of James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, and Ashley Jensen, the film centres on Arthur Claus, the clumsy but well-meaning son of Santa Claus, who discovers that his father's high-tech ship has failed to deliver one girl's present. Accompanied only by his free-spirited and reckless grandfather, an enthusiastic Christmas elf obsessed with wrapping gifts, and a team of reindeer, he embarks on a mission to deliver the girl's present personally in the early morning hours of Christmas Day before sunrise.
The Pirates! is a series of five comedy books following a group of pirates on their adventures. It is written by British author Gideon Defoe and was published starting in 2004 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The fifth book, The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics was released in 2012, and was published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
The 39th Annual Annie Awards honoring the best in animation of 2011 were held on February 4, 2012, at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, California.
Oscar and Friends is a New Zealand children's stop motion animated television series that aired from 1995 to 1996. The series was produced in Wellington, and was aimed at children aged 3 to 6. The series was produced by Gnome Productions Ltd., distributed by Southern Star Sales, and funded by NZ On Air and Southern Star Entertainment. Oscar and Friends has been screened all around the world including the UK (ITV), The United States, Australia (ABC), Taiwan, Germany, South Africa (M-Net) and Argentina
Wat’s Pig is a 1996 British stop-motion animated short film created by Aardman Animations and written and directed by Peter Lord. It is a tale of two brothers who are separated as babies only to reunite as adults during a war. It is told almost entirely non-verbally. It is based loosely on the story of The Prince and the Pauper.
Early Man is a 2018 animated sports comedy film directed by Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep, written by Mark Burton and James Higginson, and starring the voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, and Timothy Spall. The film follows a tribe of primitive Stone Age valley dwellers who have to defend their land from bronze-equipped invaders in a football match. The film premiered on 20 January 2018 at the BFI Southbank cinema.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
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has generic name (help)Sky Movies in the UK posted the first five minutes of The Pirates! Band of Misfits short that will plundering on DVD and Blu-ray later this year. Take a look and tell us what you think!