Johnny Depp nixed a female villain in “Pirates” for this oddly specific reason

Despite some real-life internet pirates attempting to hold the film for ransom, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales opened in theaters last week. The film sees our rum-loving Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) team up with Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) — aka the son Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann — and Carina (Kaya Scodelario) to find the Trident of Poseidon before the evil Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem) can defeat Jack…but it turns out, the original plot was *very* different.

According to Terry Rossio, who wrote the first four Pirates movies, in original plot of the fifth installment, Salazar didn’t exist and instead the film had a female villain. While we personally think this would have been a great idea, Depp was actually the one who nixed the idea, as he’d already faced a female villain in Dark Shadows.

“My version of Dead Men Tell No Tales was set aside because it featured a female villain, and Johnny Depp was worried that would be redundant to Dark Shadows, which also featured a female villain, Rossio wrote in a blog post. “Sometimes it just takes a single decision by a single person, often just a whim, to destroy years of story creation and world-building.

Using Depp’s incredible logic, wouldn’t this make *every* movie with a male villain somewhat redundant?

This news is also incredibly disappointing as the film is *severely* lacking in female characters — with the exception of (the kickass) Scodelario’s character and a brief cameo from Keira Knightley, there are no other major female characters in the film AT ALL.

Sigh. Having a female villain is certainly nothing NEW — as they range from Little Mermaid’s Ursula all the way up to Fast 8’s Charlize Theron — and it’s a shame that we couldn’t see one in this new Pirates installment. A female villain certainly would have added another layer to the movie, and one we hope to see in the next Pirates movie.

So, Disney, we’re gonna need yet another Pirates movie so we can finally have a badass female, evil swashbuckler.