The portrayal of "cannibals" generally bothers me because there is virtually no documented evidence of a "cannibal culture" in anthropology or history. There are plenty of accusations and travellers tales, but then there are plenty of accusations of witchcraft and travellers tales of monsters, too.

(The two possible exceptions come from New Guinea, which is anecdotal, and from the Anasazi in the southwest U.S., which is the only case with some physical evidence. There are reasons to be cautious in labelling any people as "cannibals" though, even if there's some evidence that such a thing might have occured at a certain period. Generally, accusations of cannibalism are used to justify mercilessly attacking and killing a group of people by dehumanizing them. Such accusations are like the propaganda of the First World War that depicted German soldiers as throwing babies out of windows.)

I find that the mythological nature of the "cannibal culture" is not well known, and in a movie like this, which mixes fact (the Carribean is a real place, there were really pirates, the East India Trading Company was a real organization) and fiction (need I list the fiction?) people are easily confused about the reality of "cannibal" people. In point of fact, the whole "missionary in a pot" image is just as false as images of Alley Oop or Fred Flintstone riding dinosaurs (and originates from cartoons of the same era) but the image is not commonly perceived as false. Many people believe that cannibal cultures existed just as pirates and vikings and cowboys existed. I have argued with these people. I have photocopied articles for them. I have referred them to textbooks. But it is surprisingly hard to shake the idea that cannibals must have existed somewhere at some time.

I actually think it would be more helpful in this movie to have made it clear to the audience that there was a cultural misunderstanding going on, rather than to just turn a whole race into a group of unsympathetic villains (as George Lucas is wont to do.) I also think it would have been better to play up the (obvious?) parallel between Captain Jack and Captain Cook (who was supposedly mistaken as a god, or at least a great leader, by the Hawaiian people - which people also later killed him.) The danger of ritual sacrifice could have been sufficiently threatening without invoking the fable of cannibalism.

I don't think this would have complicated the plot, as the problem with the film was that everything was largely episodic, with only tangental connections to an over-arching story line that is not even resolved by the end of the movie.