WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for Jungle Cruise.
Disney's Jungle Cruise has been accused of trying to replicate the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise’s success, and one of the blockbuster's biggest twists is undeniably similar to the ending of Jack Sparrow’s screen debut. Much has been made of the similarities between Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. Both are ambitious historical action-adventure movies based on Disneyland rides that aim to become franchise-spawning summer blockbusters.
The two projects also have similar tones, with both Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise mixing comedy, action and fantasy elements in their stories. That said, many of these similarities are also shared by the likes of 1999's The Mummy and are hardly a surprise when both movies are big-budget mainstream adventure stories. However, one of Jungle Cruise’s best twists is very similar to a specific surprise at the end of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Initially, Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson’s likable antihero Frank Wolff is depicted as a charming scam artist who ferries tourists down the Amazon river and offers them a scary trip for a quick buck. Already, the character’s charismatic con-man act makes comparisons to Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow inevitable, but Jungle Cruise does not help its case with one late twist. The revelation that the Rock’s roguish antihero Frank is not, in fact, an average human but rather a cursed immortal conquistador is strikingly similar to the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie’s revelation that Jack, as a member of the Black Pearl’s crew, is as immortal as the rest of them.
The titular curse of the Black Pearl is revealed early in the movie’s action when viewers discover that Captain Barbossa and company cannot die due to their possession of the cursed treasure. However, Jack’s status as another cursed Black Pearl crew member is hidden until the movie’s ending, when the viewer (and Jack) realize he, too, cannot be killed: although Jack originally avoided the curse, he had secretly taken a piece of treasure before facing Captain Barbossa. In Jungle Cruise, the opening scenes depict Don Aguirre and conquistadors massacring a village of indigenous locals who tried to help them, but it is only in the closing third of the movie that viewers discover Frank was one of them and therefore is also cursed with immortality.
In fairness to Jungle Cruise, the twist is not a replica of The Curse of the Black Pearl's reveal. For one thing, the internally tortured Frank is in on the secret and chooses to hide his true nature until the third act of Jungle Cruise. In contrast, the eternally fortunate Jack Sparrow only recently made himself immortal, and only discovered that it had worked when he is stabbed through the midsection and suffers no injuries, prompting the legendary under reaction "That’s interesting." However, while this difference does affect the motivations of both characters throughout the rest of their respective movies, the twist that Jungle Cruise’s Frank is an immortal thanks to a curse is still very similar to Pirates of the Caribbean’s revelation that Jack Sparrow can’t be killed for the same reason.