20 Greatest Movie Villains Of The 2000s
5. Davy Jones - Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
To get any villain to go toe to toe with Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow and not feel like background furniture was achievement enough in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, but Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) was just the beginning.
As a real juxtaposition against the eccentricity, the whimsy, and, let's face it, the downright silliness of the franchise came a bad guy of pure terror. The captain of the Flying Dutchman, and a feat of CGI that holds up 20 years later, Bill Nighy's Davy Jones.
To begin with, the character was built up in such a way as not to undersell him as a quite literal legend. The stories were scary, his ship and his crew were scary, and once he finally stepped onto the screen, everything about him was scary.
Jack Sparrow was in genuine danger to the point that he was sent down to the locker, there was no way of getting out of Jones' reach while in the open seas, and the performance of Nighy was a masterclass in cold-hearted intimidation. At World's End didn't do justice to Jones the following year, but in Dead Man's Chest, he was a villain like few others.