So, I watched this Korean pirate movie last night...

...and it was suprisingly very good.  Let me backtrack a bit first and mention that I generally find pirate-themed stuff to be kind of hokey or campy.  All the clothing looks like Halloween costumes.  There always has to be some guy with an eyepatch, some guy with a pegleg or hook, etcetera.  If it's done well, like in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it's entertaining and I'm quite happy to watch.  But I generally prefer to sail clear of them.

So last light I jumped on Netflix to find something to watch.  For weeks (maybe months) now this Korean pirate movie called, um, "The Pirates" (duh) has been lurking in my suggestions and daring me to do something about it.  So I figured okay, let's just get this over with.  What's the worst that could happen?   Well, THIS is what happened: [Warning: contains cool images from random internet sites!]

And it was really good!  Take three parts classic Korean historical/war/court drama/martial arts stuff, carefully blend in one part western pirate tropes, and serve immediately.  Lots of sailing around, cannons, duels, guy with eye patch, wacky sidekicks, dude with mohawk and scar, gunpowder blowing up, romance, awesome pirate warrior princess, a missing imperial seal from Ming-dynasty China, and even a baby whale are in there.

Okay, we got our characters all rolled up!

I think if I ever run a pirate type game I'll have to sandblast the traditional campiness off the genre and do up a properly re-skinned version like this movie.