I saw a comment online awhile ago which I'm going to paraphrase here (and most likely butcher it). When discussing the creation of a new genre, you can usually argue which work was the first to embody most of the elements but there's always some definitive work that achieves widespread success and it's impossible to argue anything invented the genre after that work. For example, you can argue punk rock existed prior to The Clash but once The Clash hit the scene, you can't argue punk rock was invented after them. Similarly, you can argue cyberpunk existed prior to Neuromancer but you can't argue cyberpunk was invented after Neuromancer. When creating a new genre, there's always some work that sets the template for all others to follow and after that, the genre simply exists.

That's how I view Pirates of the Caribbean. There might have been some earlier works that were close but the PotC series defined the template for what this genre means. It's pirate protagonists in a world with supernatural elements. If the Weird West genre is the Wild West with supernatural elements, this is the pirate equivalent. I'm calling this genre "Dark Fantasy Pirates" for lack of a better name. See my first post in this community for more of a rant on that topic.

I'm not going to pretend PotC is the greatest movie franchise ever; each movie in the series is worse than the one before. But it's easily the most well-known example of this genre. And it's still crazy to me that Disney invented this genre in 2003. How had this not been done prior to 2003?? But that's why I created this community; I want to find more works like this. And maybe a better name for it.