12 Movie Franchises That Ruined Their Iconic Character

6. Pirates Of The Caribbean (Jack Sparrow)

There's no denying that Johnny Depp's boozed-up pirate Jack Sparrow was the main reason the original Pirates of the Caribbean was such a smash hit, and he even earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his efforts.

Though the character was fairly well-utilised in the first two sequels, the fourth and fifth movie ill-advisedly bumped him up to main character status to compensate for the absence or lesser presence of both Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom.

Much like Freddy, Sparrow became Flanderized, with any character nuance eliminated in favour of an extremely broad sketch of his most prominent traits. Given that Depp's performance felt pretty phoned-in for both of these sequels, it seems like he was as aware of it as anyone.

Sparrow was once an hilarious charmer, but by the end of the fifth film, he was a weird mix of irritatingly over-affected and depressingly lazy.