Pirate Movies
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50 free Pirate Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pirate movies have been box-office gold and box-office disaster, sometimes within a few years of each other. The genre runs from silent-era stunt spectaculars and studio swashbucklers to a theme-park ride that grew into one of the biggest film series ever made. This quiz covers the lot: the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Treasure Island in its many versions, Captain Hook on screen, animated crews, cult comedies and a true-story hijack thriller. Expect questions on casts, characters, ships, behind-the-scenes stories and famous flops. It suits movie-night quizzes, pub rounds and anyone who has ever argued about the best screen pirate. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with a few new stories to tell.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rock guitarist inspired Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow and later played the pirate's father?
Keith Richards
Keith Richards became Depp's model after the actor decided pirates were the rock stars of their day. Richards then joined the series as Captain Teague, keeper of the pirate code.
Q 02Pirates of the Caribbean began as a ride that opened in 1967 at which theme park?
Disneyland
Disneyland opened the ride three months after Walt Disney died, and it was the last attraction whose building he personally oversaw. The first film followed 36 years later.
Q 03In The Princess Bride, which farmhand returns as the masked Dread Pirate Roberts to save Buttercup?
Westley
Westley reveals that Dread Pirate Roberts is an inherited title, not one man. At the end of the film he offers the name to the swordsman Inigo Montoya.
Q 04Which actor played the title pirate opposite Robin Williams in Steven Spielberg's 1991 film Hook?
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman played Captain James Hook, with Bob Hoskins as his first mate Smee. The film imagines Peter Pan grown up into a workaholic lawyer who has forgotten Neverland.
Q 05Which animal that swallowed a ticking clock stalks Captain Hook after eating his hand in Peter Pan?
A crocodile
A crocodile got a taste for Hook when Peter Pan fed it the captain's severed hand, and it has pursued him ever since. The ticking is what warns Hook that it is near.
Q 06Which actor plays the kidnapped cargo-ship captain in Paul Greengrass's thriller Captain Phillips?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks plays Richard Phillips, the real merchant mariner taken hostage when pirates boarded the Maersk Alabama in 2009. First-time actor Barkhad Abdi earned an Oscar nomination as their leader.
Q 07In The Goonies, which legendary pirate's long-lost treasure do the children follow a map to find?
One-Eyed Willy
One-Eyed Willy is a 17th-century pirate whose map the children find in an attic in Astoria, Oregon. They hope his fortune will save their homes from foreclosure.
Q 08Which Scottish author wrote Treasure Island, the pirate novel later filmed with the Muppets?
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson gave pirate films much of their furniture in Treasure Island: maps marked with an X, tropical islands and a one-legged seaman with a parrot on his shoulder.
Q 09Which giant sea monster does Davy Jones send to drag Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl to the depths?
The Kraken
The Kraken hunts Sparrow in the second Pirates of the Caribbean film over an unpaid debt: Davy Jones had once raised the Black Pearl from the seabed for him.
Q 10Which actress plays governor's daughter Elizabeth Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean films?
Keira Knightley
Keira Knightley's Elizabeth begins as a damsel in distress and ends the third film elected Pirate King. Knightley was disappointed that her character carried no sword in the first one.
Q 11Which 1995 pirate film starring Geena Davis became one of the biggest box-office bombs in history?
Cutthroat Island
Cutthroat Island was once listed by Guinness World Records as the biggest box-office bomb of all time. Director Renny Harlin had cast Davis, then his wife, hoping to make her an action star.
Q 12Which mutinous captain of the Black Pearl is played by Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean?
Barbossa
Barbossa was conceived as a classic Disney villain, but Rush felt he was playing the unsung hero of the first film, a man who dreamed only of lifting his curse.
Q 13Which composer, too busy to score the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, scored the next three?
Hans Zimmer
Q 21Which actress plays Blackbeard's daughter Angelica, Jack Sparrow's old flame, in On Stranger Tides?
Penélope Cruz
Penélope Cruz learned she was pregnant as shooting neared, so she filmed Angelica's close-ups while her sister Mónica stood in for the long-distance shots.
Q 22Jack Sparrow recruits a crew on which real Caribbean island, once the main base of the buccaneers?
Tortuga
Tortuga, off Haiti, became the buccaneers' main base of operations from 1630. By 1641 its sea rovers were calling themselves the Brethren of the Coast.
Q 23Captain Phillips dramatises the 2009 seizure of a US cargo ship by pirates from which country?
Somalia
Somalia's coast was where the Maersk Alabama was boarded, the first successful pirate seizure of a US-flagged ship since the early 19th century.
Hans Zimmer was committed to The Last Samurai, so the first film's music went to his colleague Klaus Badelt. The producer had been unhappy with the music Alan Silvestri composed for it.
Q 14Which ghost ship does Davy Jones captain in the Pirates of the Caribbean films?
Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman of legend is a ghost ship doomed to sail forever without making port. In the films its crew have traded 100 years of service for immortality.
Q 15What is Will Turner's trade before he turns pirate in the Pirates of the Caribbean films?
Blacksmith
Blacksmith's apprentice Will, played by Orlando Bloom, forges fine swords for which his often-drunk master takes the credit. He is also a self-taught swordsman.
Q 16In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which legendary prize is Blackbeard hunting?
The Fountain of Youth
The Fountain of Youth quest was borrowed from Tim Powers's 1987 novel On Stranger Tides, which the film loosely adapts. In the story, Ponce de León died searching for it 200 years earlier.
Q 17In Pirates of the Caribbean, the Black Pearl's crew are cursed for stealing which people's gold?
Aztec
Aztec gold, 882 pieces of it, had been paid to Hernán Cortés to stop his slaughter. The director objected to the first film's subtitle because the gold is cursed, not the ship.
Q 18Which actor played octopus-bearded Davy Jones through motion capture in Pirates of the Caribbean?
Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy wore a grey suit and markers on set instead of performing later in a studio. The fully digital character helped Industrial Light & Magic win the Oscar for visual effects.
Q 19Which actor plays Long John Silver, the scheming ship's cook, in Muppet Treasure Island?
Tim Curry
Tim Curry was one of the few humans in the cast, alongside Billy Connolly as Billy Bones. He had form with pirates, having voiced Captain Hook in the cartoon Peter Pan and the Pirates.
Q 20In Pirates of the Caribbean, what kind of animal is Jack, the undead pet named to mock Sparrow?
A monkey
A monkey, a capuchin, belongs to the Black Pearl's mutinous captain. Sparrow later trades the creature to the mystic Tia Dalma in exchange for a jar of dirt.
Q 24Which real scientist do the pirate crew capture at sea in The Pirates! Band of Misfits?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, voiced by David Tennant, is seized in a raid on HMS Beagle. In Britain the Aardman film kept the book's title, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
Q 25Which actor voices the title pirate in the DreamWorks cartoon Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt's Sinbad sails to recover the stolen Book of Peace from the goddess Eris, voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer. The film lost so much money that it nearly bankrupted the studio.
Q 26Which actor plays Captain Shakespeare, who commands an airborne pirate ship, in the film Stardust?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro took the part after turning down a role in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which he had expected to flop like earlier pirate movies.
Q 27Which actor plays a fairy-dust-mining Blackbeard in Joe Wright's 2015 Peter Pan prequel Pan?
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman's Blackbeard forces kidnapped children to mine crystallised fairy dust, which he uses to stop himself ageing. Garrett Hedlund plays James Hook as a fellow miner.
Q 28Which actor voices Captain Gutt, the giant ape who leads the pirates in Ice Age: Continental Drift?
Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage's Gutt is a Gigantopithecus whose crew sail on a floating iceberg. Dinklage also sings on the sea shanty the pirates perform in the film.
Q 29Which star plays Burger Beard, the live-action pirate in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water?
Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas plays a pirate whose magical book makes anything written in it come true. His character has also converted his ship into a food truck.
Q 30Which Muppet plays Captain Abraham Smollett, commander of the Hispaniola, in Muppet Treasure Island?
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog's captain is reunited on the island with the old flame he jilted: Miss Piggy as Benjamina Gunn, queen of a tribe of pigs.