The Pirate Fairy

The sixth and most recent Disney Fairies film, The Pirate Fairy was released in April of 2014. Once again, the cast came back and included Christina Hendricks and Tom Hiddleston. With exclusive screenings at the El Capitan Theater for about a month, it grossed $64.5 million.

Zarina (Hendricks), an extremely inquisitive dust-keeper fairy is amazed by the magic behind pixie dust and has secretly experimented with some blue dust. But they eventually cause an accident and she takes her experiments and leaves Pixie Hollow. But a year later, she returns as the captain of a pirate ship, with a young man named James (Hiddleston) as her first mate.

For some reason, the Fairies films always seem to have to add a new character in each film. But they don’t really do much in following stories. Case in point is Periwinkle, who only seems to appear on screen for about three shots.

On the other hand, what’s really interesting about The Pirate Fairy are the numerous call forwards and foreshadowing latent throughout it. At one point, one of the fairies hatches an alligator who follows them everywhere. It ends up causing trouble for the pirates, one of whom decides to throw a clock at it, which it swallows. Another time, James grabs one of the sail hooks and starts using it to fight. In the end, he’s chased by the baby crocodile, yelling how he’s not a codfish.

In addition to the origin story, Zarina’s arc is a pretty interesting character, kind of emulating Tinker Bell at the beginning of the first film. She’s a dust-keeper but has more of an interest in how thing work. So much so that she discovers new dusts and spends a year as a pirate perfecting it because she’s essentially chased out of Pixie Hollow. Her escapades end up discovering a new talent: Dust Alchemy. It really shows how many innovators aren’t really appreciated until the moment their creations are needed.

The Pirate Fairy is pretty good. Not only because it prompts those to continue working at their discoveries, but also because of the amount of backstory.

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