Friday, October 23, 2009

The Top Ten Most Underrated Movie Villains - 6. Captain Barbossa

- Sketch by Ori Ayalon

6). Captain Barbossa (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl): "It'll be one pistol as before, and you can be the gentleman and shoot the lady; and starve to death yourself."

Jeff: Of course everyone loves Johnny Depp's scallywag pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, but who, at least in the first film, embodies true and complete badness and shows utter contempt for morality, who else but Captain Hector Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Jack Sparrow could be considered untrustworthy, selfish and a bit of a Brigand but he would never lay waste to Port Royale in the way that Barbossa and his pirate clan did. Geoffrey Rush's, Barbossa really encapsulates the vicious, cleverly funny and often times cruel nature of a pirate.

Cody Dee Williams: Ah yes, the very much alive Aussie actor Geoffrey Rush playing the very much dead Spanish pirate Captain Barbossa in The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. Well hey, if Russell Crowe can not only get away with playing a Spaniard, but win an Oscar for it, why the hell can't Geoffrey Rush??? And to boot he does will such rakish villainy. Despite all the lavish praise heaped upon Johnny Depp for his portrayal of rapscallion Captain Jack Sparrow, by the end of the second film his Keith Richards impression grows awfully tiresome - so much so, that really the only reason to even endure the third film is to enjoy the reemergence of Rush's fiendishly fun Barbossa.

4 comments:

Captain Mike said...

Captain Barbossa is indeed Awesome, and possibly Spanish although I don't recall anyone identifying him as such (to me he sounded like some Irish/Mediterranean mishmash, even with a Portuguese name) Geoffrey Rush hails from Australia, not Great Britain.

Cody Dee Williams said...

Ah, yes. Thank you Capt. Mike. I will make the correction, love.

Captain Mike said...

Just giving a fellow pirate his due and proper.

Yar.

Pyrate King said...

Barbossa's actually Irish/English, according to Word of God, with possible Portuguese or Spanish ancestry.