Please Can We Not with Johnny Depp Anymore?

By Rebecca Pahle | Celebrity | May 4, 2017 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Celebrity | May 4, 2017 |

Every day, the universe contrives me to remind me that Johnny Depp still exists and is still paid good cash money to be in movies, despite my wishes to the contrary. Someone has to keep the overgrown scarf rack in outrageously expensive cotton ball money, I guess.

There’s the steady stream of news about how Depp is a jackass in real life. The domestic abuse and the divorce settlement fuckery and, more recently, the revelation that Depp doesn’t even bother to learn his lines anymore, which… color me shocked.

Also, Johnny Depp smells, right? No one’s come out and said that he does or anything. It’s not News. But he must. There is no way this man does not reek of BO, stale beer, and patchouli. I know it like I know Top Gun sucks, and if you think Top Gun doesn’t suck, congratulations: you’re a Johnny Depp fan now. You probably have a Mortdecai poster over your bed. TK. I don’t make the rules. I only enforce them with rigid cruelty.

And then there are the movies. Depp has been named Forbes’ most overpaid actor two years running, because he’s entered this career phase where he’s shit in shit movies. I blame Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s probably not, rationally speaking, Ground Zero for Depp’s career meltdown. But I’ll blame Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a lot of things.

Global warming: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Donald Trump’s presidency: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Star Wars prequels: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

TIM BURTON HOW IN THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE AN “EDGY” VERSION OF WILLY WONKA WHEN IT IS A GOD-DAMNED ROALD DAHL BOOK AND THUS ALREADY EDGY BY ITS OWN DAMN SELF. “HEY KIDS ISN’T WILLY WONKA WEIRD A LITTLE.” “WHY YES TIM HE—” “GREAT JUST CHECKING I’M GONNA TURN HIM INTO A QUASI-PEDO” FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FU

Ahem. Sorry.

Let’s take a look at what Depp’s given us over the last five years: Dark Shadows (chill, Tim Burton), Transcendence (flop), The Lone Ranger (racist flop), Yoga Hosers and Tusk (PFFT), Into the Woods (did well financially and critically, but his brief turn as a zoot suit-ed Big Bad Wolf was embarrassing with a capital schadenfreude), Lucky Them (eh?), Black Mass (was going to be his big awards movie—how’d that turn out?), Alice Through the Looking Glass (forgot that happened already, didn’t you?), and

MORTDECAI.

More recently we got Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, where Depp swooped in in the last five minutes to facejack Colin Farrell’s character. It says something that Fantastic Beasts and Into the Woods, the two best movies Depp has been in recently, are A) fine, but not even that great and B) don’t even have Depp in them all that much, and yet C) Depp still manages to be the worst thing in them. Who’d have thought, circa 1992, that “surprise! Johnny Depp is going to be a major part of this franchise going forward” would be met with a profound grrrrrrroannnn and a deeply felt fuck offffffff from the once-loving masses. You see that face at the top of this post? That’s the face I made with Colin Farrell’s beautiful visage transformed into this heinous monstrosity:

YOU DON’T DESERVE TO STAND WHERE HE STOOD.

Even with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which despite flopping domestically made a billion dollars worldwide, the Powers that Be at Disney kindasorta wised up and realized “Jack Sparrow is popular, but he’s a supporting character, and making Pirate Keith Richards the main character in your movie is stupid.” Maybe I’m being optimistic here, but Dead Men Tell No Tales comes out later this month, and Depp hasn’t really been in the marketing all that much. From what we can glean, it seems like he’s less a major character than he was in Stranger Tides. Fuck, Disney even brought back Orlando Bloom for this one. It’s 2017. No one wants Orlando Bloom in anything. (Apologies to Orlando Bloom.) And yet here we are. With Orlando Bloom. Because Disney knows—not nearly enough, but on some level—that Depp’s schtick is getting stale.

Like I said. Not enough, though. HE’S A DOMESTIC ABUSER, DISNEY, STOP IT WITH THIS SHIT.

That brings us to today, when I was flipping my merry way through the first pictures from Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Murder on the Orient Express, out this November.

“Hmm, Kenneth Branagh’s ‘stache is remarkably Extra. He cheated on Emma Thompson that one time.”

“I’m glad the Michelle Pfeiffer Comeback Tour is kicking off. I wonder what superhero franchise is going to snap her up for a supporting role and then shamefully under-utilize her first.”

Daisy Ridley and Leslie Odom Jr. in the same movie. CHARM BOMB CHARM BOMB CHARM BOMB.

Lord, make me a fly on the wall during Judi Dench and Olivia Colman’s drinking sessions.

Lord.

Well, fuck.

And Gad?!

I’d say Depp is the “and Peggy” of this cast, but frankly that’s an insult to Peggy Schuyler, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and all of American history.

Sweet baby Jesus, please. When you take Scott Eastwood off to the Island of Forgotten Actors, can you scoot Depp along, as well? His presence in a movie has gone from “yay”-inducing to “eurgh”-inducing with remarkable alacrity. His name no longer means good things. He’s not going to voluntarily take off into the sunset to jack off into Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes or whatever the fuck he does when he’s not hitting women or failing to dry clean his clothes. It’s on directors and producers to stop hiring him. There are so many up-and-coming actors who have so much more to offer than Depp’s paint-by-numbers hamfest. It’s time to stop letting him be the fly in the ointment.