Nifty page design, eh? Sort of piratey, you almost expect it to say 'cracked by CrakZor the Infinity' like my old copy of Monkey Island used to say.

(Er, that's a joke obviously. It was actually cracked by someone called 'Skid Row'.)

But that Monkey Island, eh? Good game, good game. But how shameless of those bastards Disney to create a perfect carbon copy of the game in the form of the movie Pirate of the Caribbean! Right? Eh?

OR IS IT NOT THAT SIMPLE?

I want to reject some of these notions with this badly researched and poorly argued article. To begin with, and most obviously, both the game and the movie are derived (in part or in full) from the same amusement park ride, and that in an instant explains 90% of all similarities. I'm no authority on the ride itself because I've never seen it, but I do have a friend who claims to have been on it when he was about four. But now I'll take a closer look at some of the points that have been made:

* WILL TURNER? GUYBRUSH THREEPWOOD? HELLOOO? CAN YOU NOT SEE THE RESEMBLANCE?
No, not really. Some people have said 'Will becomes a pirate in the end just like Guybrush does', and although it's been some time since I saw the film, I can't really remember this happening. In fact now that I think about it, Guybrush doesn't really become a pirate either. Does he ever engage in any real piracal activity that he isn't actually forced to do for the sake of the plot? Between the first game and the second he's a sort of travelling storyteller. He sells a few books. Between the third and the fourth he's on his honeymoon. Between the second and third he doesn't do much at all except recap.
So anyway, the point is that Guybrush is more of a storyteller than a pirate, and Will is more of a blacksmith than a pirate. They feature in pirate stories and undergo character development. They have traditional pirate story exploits. I'm trying to think of similarities between them, but I can't think of any that they don't share with, for example, Luke Skywalker.

* LECHUCK? BARBOSSA/DAVY JONES? HELLOOO? CAN YOU NOT SEE THE RESEMBLANCE?
Bad guys, eh? Okay, so LeChuck and Barbossa are both undead, and LeChuck and Davy Jones are both... bearded. Good call! Look, they're all just bad guy pirates, okay? Or at least I assume Davy Jones is a bad guy, I haven't seen the film yet so he might just be a little misundersood. Bad guy pirates do bad guy pirate things, you know? As for LeChuck and Barbossa both being undead, I'm not familiar with the original theme park ride or the book One Strange Tide (I'm up to page three), but I'm fairly confident that the one being undead did not borrow from the other being undead (I told you I haven't done any research). Besides, one is ghost/zombie and the other is cursed/living, and that's like confusing goths and punks. Anyway, I don't know what else to say. Bad guy pirate captains. In pirate stories. Not much of a scandal there.

* ELAINE MARLEY? ELIZABETH SWANN? HELLOOO? ETC?
By now the links are getting a bit tenuous. Governor, Governor's Daughter. If the plot involves a woman getting kidnapped, it's generally useful if the woman is the daughter of a person of authority, for example, the Senator of Alderaan, or, in this case, a Governor. For the male protagonist to go on a crusade to rescue the Cobbler's daughter is a little less spectacular, and her kidnapping is less likely to inspire the authorities to send out their best men. Also a Governor's Daughter is going to be a little better dressed and a little more pampered, which makes it all the more shocking when she does anything so ladylike as get in a swordfight. All good reasons for her to be a Governor's Daughter.

* JACK SPARROW? UM, WALLY B FEED? ER...
Now you're just clutching at straws. Jack Sparrow, or, the main protagonist of Pirates of the Caribbean, clearly does not have any sort of doppelganger in the Monkey Island games. Has the movie struck a chord for originality? Bonus!
Actually this is an important point: the hero of the story does not bear any resemblance to any Monkey Island characters whatsoever. People look too much for similarites between the film and the game but ignore strong dissimilarities. What else is different? What does the game have that the film doesn't? It doesn't have a voodoo lady, or a Stan, or a fat Governor, or an anarchist collective island, or a giant monkey head, or voodoo dolls, or anything where 'X marks the spot', or crazy old hermits, or rubber trees. The computer game doesn't have a cursed treasure, or a ship that somehow manages to sail faster than other ships despite the fact that its sails are all ragged and full of holes. The moon doesn't play any part at all.

* THE STORIES ARE KIND OF THE SAME! IN PLACES!
I guess so. I have a book under my bed (it fell there) called "The Seven Basic Plots", and it's all about why stories all have the same stories (I'm up to page three). Woman kidnapped. Check. Been done a few times before. Guys go to rescue her. Um... what else... er...
I run out of clean comparison points. Guybrush trains to become a pirate. Doesn't happen in the movie. Guybrush tries to find a crew. Doesn't happen in the movie. Guybrush learns swordfighting. Guybrush explores mythical island. Guybrush goes to Hell. Guybrush dissolves ghost. None of this happens in the movie. Guybrush grows a beard and searches for treasure. Guybrush looks for map pieces. Guybrush blows up fortress. Guybrush constructs voodoo dolls. And so on. Not ringing any bells.
But other than that, of course, the stories are identical... they're pirate stories!

* THEY ENGAGE IN WITTY REPARTEE DURING THE FIGHTING SCENES AND STUFF. AND THEY'RE BEING ALL CREATIVE AND STUFF IN A BLACKSMITH SHOP DUEL. YOU FIGHT LIKE A DAIRY FARMER!
Oh yeah? What do you expect them to do during a fighting scene? Stand on the spot and wave their swords around in a figure eight pattern? Are they supposed to say nothing, or maybe something along the lines of "You suck!" "No, you suck and I'm going to stab you now!"? Let's face it, if a swordfight isn't witty or creative, it's dull. You gotta spruce it up a bit. Add some choreography, some lexicography, maybe a little bibliography. Make 'em tumble like circus performers or rogues with a high dexterity, make 'em taunt like Shakespearian performers or bards with a high charisma. It's called entertainment for a reason, chaps. Or role playing.

* SOME SCENES ARE ACTUALLY IDENTICAL, LIKE THE DOG BONE PRISON THING
Do you mean the dog bone prison thing that both the film and the game copied from the amusement park ride? Or some other dog bone prison thing? Anything specific like this which can't be explained by saying 'because thats what happens in pirate stories' probably originated the original theme park ride.

* RON GILBERT HIMSELF HAS PUT FORTH A PASSIONATE ARGUMENT IN HIS BLOG THAT THE MOVIE IS RIP-OFF OF HIS GAME, AND HAS GENERALLY DENOUNCED IT AND DEMANDED A BOYCOTT OF IT AND STUFF
I have nothing to say on the subject, except that the blog entry itself is probably the result of mass hallucination and swamp gas. When I myself went to investigate this so-called 'blog entry' all I found was a patch of empty land in the middle of nowhere and a small hippy commune. The hippies, when questioned, claimed to know nothing.

To conclude, I haven't seen many (any) of the old pirate films but if I did I imagine a lot of the same motifs would pop up over and again. I'd bet my left nipple that at least two old pirate films involve a woman with a noble position getting kidnapped, and some kind of wimpy youth goes to rescue her and evolves into a hardened pirate or whatever. He probably has girly hair too. He learns to swordfight from a master. And so on.

So there you go. There area few things I left out but don't think they even need to be mentioned. Fairly self-explanatory stuff. I'm going to bed. David Thomsen, signing out.