Kraken (Pirates of the Caribbean)

The Kraken is a fictional sea monster in the . The monster made its first appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as an antagonist portrayed through computer-generated imagery (CGI). Although a creation of Industrial Light & Magic for Dead Man's Chest and designed by the film's producers, this Kraken derives from the eponymous mythical creature. Walt Disney Pictures also became the first studio to produce this creature using CGI. The Kraken makes a small, symbolic appearance in the third film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
In the films, the Kraken is a sea creature of monstrous proportions, controlled by Davy Jones, often to destroy ships that threaten him. Various pronunciations are made of the name: Kevin McNally (Joshamee Gibbs) pronounced it as , so that pronunciation was adopted on the set. In Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, Jack later refers to the Kraken as "beastie".
Film production
The Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla which had a real octopus crawling over miniatures. During the filming of the attacks, Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann) divulged that "the Kraken, at the moment, is just Gore running around, going, 'I'm a tentacle. I'm a tentacle. Be afraid.'" Gore Verbinski worked with Industrial Light & Magic to create the scenes for the film involving the Kraken. When filming the attack on the Edinburgh Trader, they used the ship as a set in shallow waters. Many more sailors were digitally added on board the ship, and others were digitally replaced for complex shots. When the time came to film the Edinburgh Trader being broken in half, two massive pipes were filled with 30,000 pounds of cement for a total of 60,000 pounds and crushed down onto the set. To prepare for this event, most metal and the masts were removed, because the metal would prevent the ship from satisfyingly breaking in half while the masts would prevent better camera close-ups. Furthermore, the interior middle of the ship was lined with cables of explosives to blast the wood apart in the air. After the shot, other men were filmed on another blue tilting set and digitally added on deck. John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor, confessed that it was extremely complex to add the Kraken's tentacles between all the environmental effects of water and wood debris.
When the time came to film Jack Sparrow in front of the Kraken's maw, Johnny Depp's stand-in, Scott Sener, was used to experiment with what worked best with the slime at their disposal (which would represent the phlegm of the Kraken). The slime was spattered about him with jets of air. For the actual filming, Depp was spattered with the slime and acted his part without any representation for the Kraken. It was afterward digitally added along with sound, tentacles, and other visual effects. When a Cypriot sailor retrieves Sparrow's lost hat from the sea, he unwittingly calls the Kraken,
Davy Jones later summons the Kraken to destroy the Edinburgh Trader, a Scottish merchant ship that rescues Will Turner, killing nearly all the crew and breaking the ship clean in two before dragging it to the depths. While momentarily underwater, Will (and thus the viewer) briefly glimpses the monster.
When the Flying Dutchman falls behind the Black Pearl during a chase, Jones calls upon the Kraken to finish it off; whereupon Will orders the crew to fire the deck guns into the monster's tentacles, forcing the Kraken to retreat. Moments later, the Kraken destroys the cannons before attacking the rest of the ship. Will then has kegs of gunpowder, rum, and other combustibles loaded into a cargo net and hoisted aloft; and when the Kraken returns, Sparrow shoots the barrels, blasting the monster's tentacles in the resulting explosion, whereupon the Kraken again withdraws. but recognizing that the Kraken is only hunting Sparrow, Elizabeth Swann distracts Jack with a kiss and chains him to the mast, then escapes with the crew. After Jack Sparrow is rescued from Davy Jones' Locker, he proclaims his desire to become "Immortal Jack Sparrow, the last pirate"; The suction disks are powerful enough to pull down a ship from its underside and have contorted a human's face to the point of leaving it smothered by its own skin in Dead Man's Chest. According to the writers' commentary on the Dead Man's Chest DVD, those marked with the Black Spot are taken by the Kraken to , where they must experience their worst fears for eternity.
Methods of attack
The Kraken attacks by stealthily approaching a ship, slithering its tentacles up the hull's sides, and gripping tightly, yanking it underwater. In one case, a survivor is left without a face, it having been contorted by the suckers. Also, the Kraken appeared to have eaten at least six of the crew-members of the Edinburgh Trader.
Other appearances
*The Kraken makes its debut appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series in Kingdom Hearts III. Though the world based on the film follows the events of At World's End, the Kraken is shown to still be alive and serves as a boss during the maelstrom battle. After Sora obtains the Wheel of Fate Keyblade, a formchange known as Storm Flag climaxes with an attack using Kraken-like tentacles.

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