The water was a crystal-clear turquoise, the sand a stretch of soft gold, and coconut palms towered in dense groves; the scene looked impossibly beautiful.
A skiff glided toward the beach, shadowed by a speedboat bristling with cameras.
Matthew wore a sword at his hip and a white shirt unlaced almost to the chest, the hard curve of muscle faintly visible beneath. Seated in the skiff, he asked the extra rowing opposite him, "Why have we stopped?"
The extra was a Bald Black Man. In French-accented English he said, "I can't go on—that ship is cursed!"
"We're almost at the beach!" Matthew protested. "Pull harder!"
The actor shook his head, fear plain on his face. "No, I can't!"
Matthew glanced at the green screen standing far off on the shore, then rose suddenly, expression grave.
"Farewell, sir," the black actor said again. "Good luck."
On the speedboat, director Gore Verbinski told the cameraman, "Close-up—catch him stripping."
The cameraman knew exactly what that meant: it was time for Will Turner to show off his physique again. He moved fast, following Gore Verbinski's order.
In the skiff Matthew yanked off his shirt, revealing sculpted muscle earned by years of relentless training—natural, flowing lines, nothing like the grotesque bulk of chemical enhancement.
Every inch of him had been built by sweat, not drugs.
Nebula had told him some Hollywood Stars, desperate for explosive size, injected steroids and testosterone alongside workouts. Those chemically-forced muscles looked formidable but were hollow at the core. One action star he'd fought—built like an ox—had crumpled with a single blow.
The drugs were mostly anabolic steroids and testosterone: tiny training loads, explosive growth. Quit them and the muscle deflated; worse, long-term use shut down natural hormone production, shrinking a man's own factory and sometimes even his manhood.
Yet plenty still used them—especially those whose living depended on their biceps.
Under the camera's gaze,
Matthew straightened, tossed the shirt away, and dove into the sea in a clean, graceful arc.
"Cut!" Gore Verbinski nodded in satisfaction, shouting over the water, "Matthew, that's a wrap!"
A splash answered; Matthew surfaced, wiped water from his face, swam to the speedboat and was hauled aboard. Someone thrust a blanket at him.
Though Dominica sweltered, the wind was constant. Matthew wrapped the blanket round his shoulders as the boat sped to a nearby dock where the Crew waited for the next setup.
A makeup artist hurried forward, but Gore Verbinski waved her off. "Leave it—just like that."
Without pause they moved to the green screen on the beach for the next shot.
Matthew dropped the blanket to Bella Anderson and waded into the surf as planned.
In fact he wore no makeup now. Gore Verbinski had kept the first film's look: anyone long at sea—himself, Depp, Keira Knightley—would appear weather-beaten, sun-scoured, rough.
In short: everyone looked filthy.
Especially Keira Knightley. Matthew had seen Elizabeth Swann's look boards; after weeks on the ocean her curls would straighten, skin darken and coarsen.
Those details mattered. Sailors with baby-smooth faces would be laughable.
When they'd first arrived in Dominica, Matthew, Depp and Keira Knightley shot fresh character posters against local seascapes. One of Elizabeth Swann showed her brandishing a curved pirate blade.
For that shoot, aside from lighting and contouring makeup to darken Keira Knightley's skin, she wore no base at all. The camera captured every freckle, every wind-chapped patch, her skin's texture matching the pitted, salt-corroded steel of the cutlass—one coherent, gritty whole.
Back where Matthew once lived, such a poster would be unthinkable: no actress would dare. Whatever the role, the lead female's skin had to be glass-smooth—scratch it and you'd leave a groove.
Of course, there's nothing to criticize; different looks simply reflect the tastes of different audiences.
The texture of a costume is hard to explain. Matthew once watched some eighties or nineties TVB wuxia shows and wondered why the heroes were so impeccably dressed—swirling silk robes and brocade cloaks—surely all that finery would get in the way during a fight. He never dwelt on it, though; after a while he simply accepted it.
When he himself began shooting action films, every fight sequence—even those involving the gentlemanly Will Turner—was staged in simple, close-cut clothes, the designers terrified that a sleeve might slow a punch.
Different aesthetics create utterly different cinematic styles.
If the mainstream taste on The other side of the Pacific favored that kind of grit and raw power, wuxia heroes would strip off before every duel. Instead of scholarly swordsmen in silk, they'd all be built like him—muscle-bound brutes.
A pirate picture set in the seventeenth or eighteenth century has to please North American viewers, so for Matthew, Depp, and Keira Knightley—apart from the odd scene like Elizabeth Swann's debut as a noble lady—the costumes almost always project a classic Western look: primal, rough, untamed. In short, pirates of the caribbean isn't after realism; it's chasing the market.
Pirates, after all, are supposed to look scruffy—cleanliness would ruin the image—and the Crew push that further into the flamboyant and theatrical. So you can't just call the pirates shabby… even if they really are, and come off a bit comical and disreputable, creating an indescribable comic effect.
In the footage already shot there are looks so wildly inventive they defy description: Barbossa's gold-leafed peg-leg; the fat and thin pirates with their bald scalps and wooden eyes, plus a penchant for women's clothes; Davy Jones playing an organ with his beard; the Flying Dutchman's Crew sprouting fish-heads and seaweed from every pore.
Director Gore Verbinski, when you get down to it, is a man of huge imagination.
Now his clash with Jerry Bruckheimer is no mere power struggle—it's also a fight over content. On these two sequels Verbinski wants to let his imagination run, adding every quirky idea he finds amusing.
Bruckheimer, the producer, instinctively opposes anything too novel or risky.
In the surf, the rolling breakers kept knocking Matthew off balance. The makeup artist hurried over, spritzing his face and chest with warm water so he'd look as if he'd just crawled from the sea.
The moment she stepped away, filming began.
With a sword at his hip and his torso bare, Matthew strode toward the greenscreen beach as though it were the black pearl he sought.
He stopped beside a cable anchoring the screen and shouted, "Jack! Jack Sparrow!"
No answer came. He pressed on, calling other names: "Marty! Cotton! Anyone!"
Still silence.
Without pausing he pushed into the coconut grove, halted at a snapped palm, and spoke to the air: "I know that face."
Per the script, the parrot perched here.
After a beat he shook his head at the stump. "I won't eat you. I don't eat parrots."
With that he strode out of frame.
Director Gore Verbinski's voice rang out again: "Good, that's a wrap!" Then, "Get the Dominica actors ready!"
The Action Director found Matthew and briefed him on the choreography for the next shot.
They were about to film Will Turner captured by natives; the tribesmen were played almost entirely by local Dominicans, some actual members of island tribes.
"You're searching for Jack and the others…" the Action Director said, leading him to a huge tree. "You spot a clue here, trigger a trap, and the natives nab you."
Matthew frowned. "Just like that?"
The Action Director nodded. "That's the design."
Matthew's frown deepened. The script only said Will is taken; how it happens was left to the director and stunt team, and this felt too simple.
Unhappy with the sequence, he said flat-out, "I think the fight design's wrong."
As one of the lead actors, Matthew carried weight; the Action Director couldn't argue. "Well… Matthew, you'd better take it up with the director."