It is a surprisingly tender ending for a villain who spent the whole movie eating sailors. Is Armando Salazar the best villain in Pirates of the Caribbean ? No—Davy Jones still holds that cursed heart. But is he the most understood ? Absolutely.
When you hear Pirates of the Caribbean , which faces flash in your mind? Probably Jack Sparrow’s kohl-rimmed eyes and drunken swagger, or Hector Barbossa’s apple-munching menace, or Davy Jones’s squirming tentacle beard. By the time Dead Men Tell No Tales (2016) arrived, the franchise faced a familiar villain problem: how do you top a Kraken-wielding squid-god? salazar pirates of the caribbean
The ship is bisected. It has no lower hull. When it sails (or rather, seeps through the water), it leaves no wake. It eats other ships. Literally. The jaws of the bow split open to swallow vessels whole, chewing them into splinters inside the ghostly hull. It is a surprisingly tender ending for a
This design choice is brilliant. It strips away the "fun" of piracy. There are no jokes with Salazar. There is no "savvy?" There is only the silent, grinding sound of his crew mopping the deck of a ship that no longer touches the water. You cannot talk about Salazar without bowing to Javier Bardem. The man knows how to play a quiet monster (see: No Country for Old Men ). Bardem brings a Shakespearean tragedy to the role. Yes, Salazar is a villain, but watch his eyes. But is he the most understood
The answer arrived in a cloud of spectral seawater and burning vengeance. His name is Captain Armando Salazar, and he is arguably the most terrifying—and tragically underrated—antagonist to ever stalk the Caribbean’s CGI waves.
His body reforms. His hair falls flat. He looks down at his hands, sees the flesh and blood, and realizes that his vengeance has no vessel anymore. He falls into a chasm in the ocean, not as a monster, but as a sad, tired old soldier finally allowed to die.