You summer is about to get looted, but you won't even flinch about it.
Black Sails, Starz's Original TV series, set twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic 'Treasure Island', is a short, eight-episode sensational adventure/drama mini-series, featuring Captain Flint and his pirates, which took place on New Providence Island and its surrounding sea.
Unlike the disastrous start of another Starz Originals, "Da Vinci's Demons", which had some catastrophic post-productions issues earlier on Season 1, Black Sails had earned its growing affluence by securing a group of talented actors and filming with detailed, vivid scenes, as though the life of pirates had been revived decades later.
The whole series, which spun around Captain Flint as he forced his way into the hunt of a Spanish treasure galleon--Urca de Lima, based in the goodwill of Spanish Gold and the promise of a well offed life, was filled with unceasing lies and murders. It was also during the period when New Providence Island faced the imminent threat of being overtaken by the England, provided it wasn't overtaken by the harbouring pirates first.
Without saying, the show had managed to steer itself into loosely regulate boobs, sex, and blood-spilling scenes as seen in most cable shows. Black Sails didn't take it too far though. It had excelled in portraying the pirates' daily life without abusing its freedom in involving adult contents.
Other remarkable characters, such as Eleanor Guthrie who control the island's trade and swore an awful lot, Captain Vane who turned its back against his old lovers, Anne Bonny who I had no idea what she was doing, fueled up the life on the tropical island as much as Captain Flint was away on his ship chasing his crown.
Truth to be told, I haven't read 'Treasure Island'. But I'll be reading it in the coming weeks (currently finishing off Thomas Harris' 'Hannibal' and 'Hannibal Rising'). I knew nothing about 'Treasure Island', or Captain Flint, or his pirates, but nonetheless, I've enjoyed the show very much. And I have also learned one thing from the show.
Captain Flint is bad. And he's not just, bad, he's also a murderer and a psychopath. He seeks vengeance and fortune at all cost, even if it meant the life of his crew. He has no planning other than following a blind lead. He has no real power other than delegating and giving orders. He has an ego deeper than the ocean, and he has a heart darker than the skin of those African Americans working under his command.
Overall, the show never had a boring scene. It carried an unique momentum that created motions and responses. The transition from one event to another is crisp and clean, it solved mysteries as way as creating problems. The cinematography of Black Sails is phenomenally well done, the clear blue water and exceptional props design had given the show an authentic slice of piracy at that time. Although some CGI occasionally "empty" the scenes like those cutscenes in a video game, it wasn't really that much of a problem at all considering the intense plot rush alternating between the sea and the island.
The only thing I want to see more now from Season 2 of Black Sails, is how Captain Flint could rebuild his reputation and regain the trust from his crew once again, and that he could survive long enough to make it back to New Providence, to solve that sovereignty issues.
I hope Captain Flint in 'Treasure Island', after 20 years of struggling in the sea, would be a different man. Though we as people don't change much, right?
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