The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise may have transformed Johnny Depp‘s entire career in 2003 and turned one of independent cinema’s most eccentric leading lights into an A-list movie star, but over the course of the last decade, a series of subpar Pirates sequels, box office bombs and critically-panned efforts have seen his star fade dramatically.
In fact, since 2010, the 57 year-old has appeared in 28 movies, only eight of which currently hold a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Out of those eight, his role in the Academy Award-winning Rango was voice only, his involvement in 21 Jump Street and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was restricted to brief cameos, and 2013 drama Lucky Them and this year’s Minamata combined to bring in just $50,000 from theaters.
That leaves Into the Woods, Black Mass and Murder on the Orient Express as the only three of his starring roles in the last ten years that found both critical and commercial success. In fact, the biggest hit of Depp’s entire career where he wasn’t playing Jack Sparrow came in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which surprised everyone when it raked in over a billion dollars back in 2010.
A lot of people believed that it was all a matter of timing, with Alice the first major blockbuster to arrive since Avatar had changed the game and the live-action fairy tale benefitting from premium 3D pricing. When sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass dropped six years later and flopped spectacularly by making over $700 million less than its predecessor, failing to even crack $300 million globally in the process, it looked like they were right.
The first installment is hardly a classic, but James Bobin’s follow-up was a whole lot worse, and it comfortably ranks as one of the weakest entries in Johnny Depp‘s entire filmography, one that subscribers can check out for themselves now that Alice Through the Looking Glass has arrived on Disney Plus.
Published: Aug 28, 2020 07:29 am