Johnny Depp says new Pirates movie will be like the first

By Tribute on May 4, 2011 | 1 Comment

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW

Johnny Depp talks about bringing the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, to the big screen, working with Penélope Cruz, and whether or not this is the end. —By Toni-Marie Ippolito

Captain Jack Sparrow is back in all his gold digging glory and, as usual, Depp’s rendition ofthe Keith Richards-inspired pirate always has his hand in trouble. In the fourth installment, directed by Rob Marshall, Captain Jack faces some big obstacles and also goes toe-to-toe with a woman from his past.

This time around Captain Jack, along with Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), is trying to find the Fountain of Youth, but so are his enemies—namely, the pirate of all pirates, Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his daughter, Angelica (Cruz). As with all Pirates movies, there’s a catch: the one thing they need to help them complete their mission is a mermaid. And these mermaids aren’t so friendly. When Angelica forces him aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of the formidable pirate Blackbeard, Jack finds himself in a predicament: whom does he fear more, Angelica or her father Blackbeard?

“She wants to be good,” Cruz told Entertainment Weekly. “She’s a fighter for the troops on board the ship and wants to change her father, but she also has the mind of a pirate. So she can be tricky, the perfect liar. [She and Jack] were lovers in the past and things have not been resolved. Angelica is very angry and he is the same; they hurt each other but they get back together for this mission; it’s an interesting game they have going on.”

One thing’s for sure: the fourth in the series seems to be every bit as exciting and intriguing as the first. “Pirates 2 and 3 became quite sub-plotty,” Depp admitted to Collider.com. “The mathematics of it. All of these people went to see them two or three times just to figure out what was happening. This one is a little closer in tone to the first: more character-driven, more subject-driven. It has a freshness to it. Less mathematics.”

Although Depp has admitted that there’s nowhere else he can really go with this character, the one thing that’s different for him on this one is that he had a hand in writing the script. “It’s like going into a think tank basically, and just kind of throwing ideas around—if something sparks, it sparks. And if they accept it, they accept it, and thankfully they did,” Depp said. “I mean hopefully for the better. But no, everyone was very receptive to just kind of throwing ideas around, just to make it different and to keep it very fresh. As opposed to just, ‘Well, here comes another one, another sequel’ or something. But just to try to keep things different.”

Depp reunites for the first time in 10 years with his Blow co-star, Cruz, which he said was a real treat. “She’s a heavy hitter,” Depp says of the Oscar-winning actress. “You can throw all kinds of stuff out there into the atmosphere and she’ll snatch up something and throw a curve ball back at you. It’s very stimulating and she’s someone I adore, and she’s one of my best friends. So yeah, it’s been great having her.”

Newcomer Penélope Cruz faced her own challenges entering the franchise. During filming the star was pregnant, and although she was a trooper filming an action adventure movie while carrying her first child (she recently gave birth to a baby boy, Leo, with husband Javier Bardem), she had support. “Rob and Johnny [Depp] and Jerry Bruckheimer all really took care of me and made all the changes thatwere necessary to have total safety,” Cruz told Entertainment Weekly. “But they left Johnny and me on a deserted island with no bathrooms to do a helicopter shot. That, for a pregnant woman, can be a little bit of a problem. So for those few hours I had to keep going into the water every 15 minutes. That was one of those things that you remember forever.”

As the fourth sails into theaters this month, Depp has admitted that a fifth one may be in the works. “As long as we can put all the puzzle pieces together, I would most definitely consider it,” he says.

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1. C-Dub • May 4, 2011 @ 4:45 PM

   I’ll be watching it like the others.

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