Ian McShane: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Blackbeard - Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

When Gore Verbinski signed on to direct the first Pirates of the Caribbean, he could never have imagined that his bloated yet entertaining romp would re-invigorate a genre that had been sent to a watery grave with Cutthroat Island. Two terrible sequels later (both of which I covered here), Verbinski made for Rob Marshall, the man behind Chicago and Nine. Despite his best efforts, the result was depressingly awful, and McShane didn't exactly help matters. Nominally inspired on the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides sees Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp - duh) being sent on a quest by King George II (Richard Griffiths) to find the Fountain of Youth before the Spanish do. Teaming up with his old nemesis Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), Sparrow sets sail and soon runs foul of an impersonator, Angelica (Penelope Cruz). Angelica is the daughter of the legendary Blackbeard, who practices voodoo magic - and the whole plot slowly un-spools from there. It's pretty much accepted that, along with Rush, McShane is one of the best things about On Stranger Tides. But that doesn't make it good by any means, with much of his screen time being taken up by a hamming-up contest between him and Depp. Despite the impressive wigs and make-up, his Blackbeard is far too pantomime to be remotely threatening, with the dialogue is far too ripe and silly to take him seriously. It's not McShane's worst performance, but it is one of his most disappointing given how good his villains have been in the past.