Review: Sand, Not Gold, Found in THE LOST PIRATE KINGDOM
Earlier this month Netflix premiered a great documentary about samurai and their growth in Japan, and now we are given a deeper look into the more realistic pirates of the Caribbean in The Lost Pirate Kingdom. While there are some interesting facts and somewhat realistic reenactment sequences, the overall production and general knowledge explained are subpar.
The documentary follows a handful of pirate captains and other notable people in the late 17th century and early 18th century. There’s no real need to go into specifics, but notable pirates like Blackbeard and Black Caesar have their stories better explained. I’m sure that there isn’t a crazy amount of specific information and I’m sure the writers were doing the best they could, but the factual information about each pirate seemed to only be when they became a pirate, how they died, and that they were very mean. It makes sense, but it just felt bland and like a story on repeat. There were a few plotlines of love interests and more understanding leaders that shook things up, but they were clearly vague accounts that lead to a lot of liberties being taken in the writing. It just felt overall like a lot of educated guesses showed as if they were perfect reenactments.
The stories and plots may have been a little thin and oddly put together, but the biggest issue was the production of it all. The documentary is one or two episodes longer than it needs to be, especially because they used a variety of video clips, voice-overs, and reenactment scenes multiple times. If the documentary went further into how the ships were made or other parts of pirate culture then we wouldn’t have to hear/watch literally the same thing multiple times. The reenactment scenes were mostly good, especially when it came to wide shots of the computer-generated boats, but some of the scenes of people on boats in the seas looked silly and extremely inauthentic because of the obvious green screens. I think the show would’ve benefited from a more humble and simple display instead of trying to be a Pirates of the Caribbean movie of real events.
Overall, this documentary does have some interesting facts and a few notable story moments, but the poor production, repetitive scenes, and average platter of information make it lackluster for pirate enthusiasts and not very engaging for anyone else.
