Captain Jack Sparrow is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and franchise. An early iteration of Sparrow was created by screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, but the final version of the character was created by actor Johnny Depp, who also portrayed him.
The characterization of Sparrow is based on a combination of The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards and Looney Tunes cartoons, specifically the characters Bugs Bunny and Pepé Le Pew. He first appears in the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He later appears in the sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006), At World's End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).
In the films, Sparrow is one of the nine pirate lords in the Brethren Court, the Pirate Lords of the Seven Seas. He can be treacherous and survives mostly by using wit and negotiation rather than by force, opting to flee most dangerous situations and to fight only when necessary.
Sparrow is introduced seeking to regain his ship, the Black Pearl, from his mutinous first mate Hector Barbossa. After succeeding, he attempts to escape his blood debt to the legendary Davy Jones while fighting the East India Trading Company. Later, when searching for the Fountain of Youth, he is abducted and taken upon Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge and is forced to lead him to the Fountain while the Black Pearl is trapped in a bottle. In a later adventure, when the ghost spanish Captain Armando Salazar comes after him, he searches for the Trident of Poseidon while also seeking to restore the Pearl to its original form.
The Pirates of the Caribbean series was inspired by the Disney theme park ride of the same name, and when the ride was revamped in 2006, the character of Captain Jack Sparrow was added to it. He headlined the Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios, and is the subject of spin-off novels, including a children's book series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, which chronicles his childhood years.
Concept and creation
Character
When writing the screenplay for The Curse of the Black Pearl, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio envisioned Captain Jack Sparrow as a supporting character in the vein of Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx. The producers saw him as a young Burt Lancaster. Director Gore Verbinski admitted, "The first film was a movie, and then Jack was put into it almost. He doesn't have the obligations of the plot in the same ways that the other characters have. He meanders his way through, and he kind of affects everybody else." Sparrow represents an ethical pirate, with Captain Barbossa as his corrupt foil, though both characters viewed as both light and dark tricksters. His true motives usually remain masked, and whether he is honorable or evil depends on the audience's perspective. This acts as part of Will Turner's arc, in which Sparrow tells him a pirate can be a good man, like his father.
Following the success of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the challenge to creating a sequel was, according to Verbinski, "You don't want just the Jack Sparrow movie. It's like having a garlic milkshake. He's the spice and you need a lot of straight men ... Let's not give them too much Jack. It's like too much dessert or too much of a good thing." Although Dead Man's Chest was written to propel the trilogy's plot, Sparrow's state-of-mind as he is pursued by Davy Jones becomes increasingly edgy, and the writers concocted the cannibal sequence to show that he was in danger whether on land or at sea. Sparrow is perplexed over his attraction to Elizabeth Swann, and attempts to justify it throughout the film.