Chapter 2, It’s A Wonderful Life, describes the tradition of romantic pirate fiction such as Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance and Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and the process of adapting Dafoe’s novel into a screenplay.  Chapter 3, The Pirates Awake, details how the complete cast was designed and modeled.  Further chapters (there are ten) break down the five-year production into the key pirates (and Polly the dodo); the key Victorian characters (Charles Darwin, Mr. Bobo his man-panzee, Queen Victoria) and the famous Londoners who appear briefly (Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, Michael Faraday, etc.); the sets (mainly the pirate’s ship and Victorian London); “pirate paraphernalia” (the background signs, charts, and other details that flash past so quickly in the movie); and the Aardman production team at work.

The book is a visual feast of character model designs (most by lead designer Johnny Doddle), model sheets, storyboards, metal armatures, finished plasticine puppets, the sets, finished scenes in the movie, and the Aardman stop-motion puppeteers. There are discarded preliminary character designs.  Changes from the novel to the movie are described.  For example, the movie was made with the American audience in mind.  The filmmakers were afraid that not enough Americans would be familiar with Darwin’s real-life opponent in the evolution debate, the Bishop of Oxford (who becomes an exaggerated villain in Dafoe’s novel), so they substituted Queen Victoria herself – an evil sword-swinging, super-ninja Queen Victoria.  The series’ wallowing in anachronisms is spotlighted: the setting is ostensibly 1837, but the Pirate Captain has a pet dodo which were extinct since the late 17^th century; there is a Pirate King who wears a parody of Elvis Presley’s glittery costume; and Queen Victoria has a super steamship that is an exaggerated parody of the Great Eastern from twenty years later.

 

Even if you have not seen this stop-motion masterpiece, this “making of” book is great fun.  If you have, you will enjoy The Making of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! even more.

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Fred Patten has been a fan of animation since the first theatrical rerelease of Pinocchio (1945).  He co-founded the first American fan club for Japanese anime in 1977, and was awarded the Comic-Con International's Inkpot Award in 1980 for introducing anime to American fandom.  He began writing about anime for Animation World Magazine since its #5, August 1996.  A major stroke in 2005 sidelined him for several years, but now he is back. He can be reached at fredpatten@earthlink.net.