The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has needed to move on from Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow for some time now. With the news that Johnny Depp has officially stepped down from the role of Grindelwald in Harry Potter spin-off series Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, it’s a good time to revisit the controversial decision to remove Jack Sparrow from the soon-to-be-rebooted Pirates of the Caribbean franchise before the adventure series begins its sixth installment.
Depp’s decision to officially step down from the role of Grindlewald comes amid a prolonged and messy legal battle with the actor's ex-wife and alleged abuser Amber Heard, a lengthy and very public divorce which makes it clear that Depp could benefit from some time away from work. When it was first announced that the sixth Pirates of the Caribbean franchise installment would be a reboot that moved on without Depp’s iconic Captain Jack Sparrow, fans were initially devastated at the news, as Depp is frequently considered the soul of the Disney franchise.
However, even disregarding the actor’s personal circumstances, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has needed to move on from Captain Jack Sparrow for some time now, and rebooting the series without him might be the best move for the uneven series of movies. Beginning in 2003 with The Curse of the Black Pearl (directed by The Ring helmer Gore Verbinski, of all people), the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise started life as a movie adaptation of a Disneyland ride. As a summer blockbuster on par with the same year’s Eddie Murphy flop The Haunted Mansion, expectations were not excessively high for the first Pirates of the Caribbean. But the movie shocked audiences and critics alike by being a spectacular action-adventure on par with classics of the genre like Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie immediately spawned a pair of lesser sequels which nonetheless succeeded at the box office before dropping its supporting cast for the fourth sequel On Stranger Tides, which received a harsh critical drubbing, and a fifth, Dead Men Tell No Tales, which lost audience support as well as faring even worse with critics.
Depp’s Jack Sparrow Took Over The Show
The balance of comedy, horror, and action-adventure captured in The Curse of the Black Pearl was unexpectedly immaculate for a movie burdened with no more expectations than adapting a theme park attraction to the screen, so it was inevitable and understandable that the franchise’s first 2 sequels struggled to recapture the magic. But while Depp’s performances in both Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End were spotlighted as a high point of both muddled movies, the films were also criticized for centering his character at the expense of the surrounding cast. Yes, Jack was still a fun and funny presence, but both movies attempted to maximize his screen time while also telling a complex, sprawling story, and as a result, Dead Man’s Chest and particularly At World’s End ended up missing out on vital scenes such as Davy Jones killing the Kraken, leaving the movies feeling both underwritten and convoluted.
For the filmmakers, the solution seemed simple: audiences love Captain Jack, so drop everything else and hang on to his appeal for dear life. Only that approach didn’t work as, as Mordecai and The Lone Ranger have since proven, Depp’s zanier characters work best in small doses as part of an ensemble. Sure enough, despite the mixed reviews received by both Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, the critical drubbing only began in earnest when Kiera Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, and Orlando Bloom exited the franchise. In the much-derided On Stranger Tides, relying on Depp’s Sparrow too much took him from scene-stealer status to awkward center stage and, like Russell Brand moving from Forgetting Sarah Marshall to Get Him To The Greek, the movie proved that sometimes less is more. Soon, audiences were annoyed by how omnipresent the once under-seen character was.
The Supporting Cast Can Shine
Speaking of Rush and co, the brief cameos from Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom featured at the end of the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean installment were the most interesting thing about the movie for many franchise fans. Dead Men Tell No Tales offered few interesting moments of its own despite a massive budget and endless runtime, but the movie did pick up where the original trilogy left off and provide an at least somewhat solid ending to Will and Elizabeth’s tragic love story. In the absence of Depp’s Sparrow, a reboot could bring the duo back in more substantial roles. It’s often forgotten thanks to the fact that neither actor had the dazzling screen presence of Depp at the height of his powers, but Bloom and Knightley’s character arcs were a lot of what made the original trilogy so engaging.
This was particularly important when much of Jack Sparrow’s appeal is that he is unflappable and reliably unreliable, meaning it’s hard to center a meaningful emotional arc around such an inherently slippery, feckless, and above all unchanging character. Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann were the original trilogy’s necessary grounded audience insertion personae and they never got a satisfying ending (even if Dead Men Tell No Tales did at least undo their tragic original end), something a Sparrow-less sequel could improve on.
The Franchise Can Explore Its Lore
Although the Pirates of the Caribbean series essentially gave up on trying to tie everything together after the events of At World's End, the franchise has an interesting mythos filled with real-life nautical legends. The fourth and fifth installments featured standalone villains were nowhere near as memorable as the East India Trading Company vs Davy Jones vs Barbossa match-up of the original trilogy, and without Depp’s Sparrow dominating proceedings, the series could revisit this story in more depth.
Some critics claimed that the complicated series of double and triple-crossing deceptions dragged down the disappointing Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, but that assessment takes for granted the idea that each movie needed to devote chunks of screen time to Captain Jack Sparrow, meaning viewers have not yet gotten to experience the lore of the Pirates of the Caribbean universe without Depp’s character dominating proceedings. A Sparrow-less sequel could leave room for the series to revisit some of its compelling minor characters, from Davy Jones to Blackbeard to Calypso (although the jury is still out on whether anyone wants the franchise to revisit Captain Salazar, despite reliable screen villain Javier Bardem’s best attempts to make the thankless role memorable in Dead Men Tell No Tales).