![]() ![]() None of this matters greatly in such fantastical material, except when (mild spoiler) the film-makers still seem to want us to care deeply when major characters lose their lives. But we’ve also seen Sparrow himself and Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner dipping in and out of mortality as easily as slipping on a new waistcoat. The most infamous example is that of Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa, brought back by Tia Dalma, in the final scenes of Dead Man’s Chest, after being killed off in Black Pearl. ![]() There are hints in Salazar’s Revenge that Nighy’s Davy Jones might be back in part six, which would mark the umpteenth time that a character has been restored to life. For this is a series that delights in invoking the name of whichever god might be convenient at any given time to resurrect. Events in the latest instalment suggest the Olympian, Poseidon, is the daddy of the sea gods, but it would be of little surprise to find the screenwriters of the next movie deciding to raise a different set of deities to the salty throne, should it suit them. In short, there is so much theological gravy floating around in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that it is hard to know which gods are in charge of which situation. One character, Naomie Harris’s Tia Dalma/Calypso even combines elements taken from ancient Greek mythology with resurrection skills drawn from the Vodou-like Obeah cult. Faced with a deficit of source material, screenwriters have dipped into a hotchpotch of fables, from nautical superstition (Bill Nighy’s tentacle-faced Davy Jones in 2006’s Dead Man’s Chest and 2007’s At World’s End) to Aztec mythology (the titular curse from Curse of the Black Pearl). Where the Marvel superhero movies have more than half a century’s worth of comic books to draw upon, Pirates of the Caribbean was originally a fairground ride at Disneyland in California. The reason we should be hoping that Salazar’s Revenge sees the final outing for Sparrow is that the scurvy seadog creative team behind him seems to have long ago stopped caring about these movies. Both parts helped to parachute their stars into A-list leading-man status, but it is Downey Jr who has had more help from Disney over the years when it comes to retaining it. In Hollywood’s grand pantheon of singular blockbuster cinema creations, perhaps only Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man currently stands taller. Nor has Sparrow shifted greatly in terms of moral compass: he is always out for himself, though he retains a passing fondness for those who accompany him on his adventures. The swivel-eyed pouting and charmingly floppy-wristed mincing with which our hero flounced on to the scene in 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl have become no more extreme in the past decade and a half, while the familiar Keith Richards-esque brogue sticks to the pirate lord with barnacle-like tenacity. ![]()
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