10 Awesome Movie Characters Ruined By Terrible Writing

There's no denying that Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) was the easy breakout character of the original Pirates of the Caribbean, earning Johnny Depp a Best Actor Oscar nomination and cementing him as the series' most vital mainstay.

Yet as the sequels became increasingly bereft of ideas, they also began to lean back ever more enthusiastically on Depp's sozzled pirate-rock star shtick, nudging it to the foreground in favour of the actual protagonists, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom).

With neither Knightley nor Bloom returning for the fourth film, On Stranger Tides, Depp was shuttled into the lead role as Jack Sparrow effectively became a parody of himself - an excessively buffoonish goof whose prior charm had basically worn thin.

It was too much of a "good" thing, really, as was confirmed by the fifth film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, which more or less left him in a forgettable holding pattern.

By this point he was more of a prop than a character - a movie branding asset to be exploited for every last possible buck.