On Stranger Tides
Johnny Depp is an actor that can wear more than one hat fedora. He’s played a pirate, a drug dealer, a weird barber with scissors for hands, and a weird barber. After the recent Depp flops, including The Lone Ranger and most recently Mortdecai, I thought I’d try to offer some of my insights for the next few Johnny Depp movies. If he wants a hit movie, I suggest he consider these potential block busters. Spoiler alert: there will be scarves.
Tim Burton’s Pirate’s Barber Shop of the Caribbean
This movie will combine two of Depp’s greatest characters: Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands. In this film, Johnny Depp reprises his roll as Jack Sparrow, but has found a new hobby cutting hair after a recent battle in which he lost his hand. He elected to have the unsalvageable hand replaced with a pair of scissors instead of a typical pirate hook. With his new found passion for styling hair, he opens a small barber shop in town which quickly gains traction as word spreads of his unique haircutting styles. There’s a comedic scene in this growing business montage where a pirate with one bad eye has his eye patch over his good eye and thinks he’s received a terrible haircut. Jack simply smiles and assists the distraught pirate by moving his patch over to the correct eye. The pirate sighs with great relief and thanks Jack for the beautiful hair.
Right after this scene, a woman walks into the shop and asks if she could speak to Jack Sparrow. Jack takes a swig out of a flask and swayingly replies, “Why do you seek such a man? Your hair seems to already be quite pleasant.” The woman is named Ms. Burton and is played by Helena Bonham. If you don’t know who Helena Bonham is, she’s probably better known as, “that chick from all those Tim Burton movies.” Ms. Burton explains that she’s just graduated from Pirate Beauty School and is looking for a job. Jack pretends he’s not Jack Sparrow and comically hides his distinguishable scissor hand behind various objects as he moves around the room and asks what she’s heard about him. She admits that she’s heard he does great work, but is a bit unorthodox and often cuts hair while drunk which she finds appalling. Soon after, someone walks in and says, “Oh hey Jack I’ll take the usual.” She gets angry, calls him a liar, and storms out. Jack runs after and convinces her to come back the next morning for a trial run since he’s been overwhelmed by new clients.
He begins to try and train her for his barber shop, but they have many arguments because Jack believes she is cutting by the book instead of by feeling it. There’s a montage where Jack starts drinking rum before a cut, and requires Ms. Burton to do the same. She reluctantly gives in after much persuasion, and ends up butchering a pirate’s haircut. Luckily, it was the same eye patch wearing pirate from earlier and Jack comically switches his eye patch to now cover his good eye. He is again pleasantly relieved and thanks Jack for his help.
Their slight moment of bonding is interrupted when the owner of a nearby pirate hat store says he’s losing all of his business because everyone wants to show off their hair instead of buying his hats. This part will be played by Alan Rickman – the guy who played Professor Snape. Rickman’s character continues to give them grief, threatening to shut them down, because Jack is cutting hair drunk and doesn’t have his hair cutting license. This causes an argument between Jack and Ms. Burton where she eventually slaps him, but then they make out. Eventually Rickman’s character reluctantly allows Jack to give him a haircut. He falls in love with the style, and adapts his hats to accommodate Jack’s great haircuts. He offers Jack an apology and he agrees in a weird Jack Sparrow way and the film fades into the credits as Jack and Ms. Burton kiss in front of their store front.
Tim Burton’s Fear and Loathing in Charlie’s Wonderland
In this revolutionary film, Johnny Depp reprises his role as Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Throughout the movie, we follow Raoul’s psychedelic fueled journey as he tries to make it to a double feature of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland in 3D. When he finally arrives, we see how Raoul reacts to those film’s insane visuals while on psychedelics. For more authenticity, Depp agrees to watch both movies while on real psychedelics. The first part of the movie is his journey to get to the theater, and then both movies are played in their entirety as Depp reacts to the drugs and the visually jarring films he appears in. The movie is seven hours long.
Johnny Depp’s The Discarded Scarf
Tim Burton voices a lonely scarf named Wallace Scarfington in this animated film that follows the struggles of a scarf who feels like he’s underutilized. The beginning of the movie shows a group of scarves in a retail store at night discussing their dreams of getting picked out by an owner, and seeing the outside world. (Think Toy Story rules – they can only be animated when they’re alone.) Eventually Wallace is picked up and is quite content during his first few months as a scarf spending a majority of his time on his owner’s neck outside in the cold seeing many wonderful things. He spends some time in the closet conversing with other hats and coats, but eventually winter ends and Wallace faces the long months of summer stuffed away in the closet. When winter rolls around again Wallace notices he has been replaced by a new scarf. There’s a moment of hope when Wallace is picked up by his owner and taken outside of his closet prison. Unfortunately, he is dropped off at a thrift store where many scarves go to die.
While in the thrift store, he meets a group of other like-minded scarves who once had homes, but now fear certain death. A villain quickly emerges in a young male storekeeper who gets enjoyment out of taking old inventory off the shelf and destroying it. Many of the hats in the store make fun of the scarves as they brag about how they are always in season. The climax of the movie arises when the young clerk begins to grab all of the scarves with intentions of destroying them to make room for their summer inventory. Suddenly, an animated Johnny Depp enters the store wearing a fedora, and demands a chance to look through their scarves. Depp buys every one of the scarves and offers all of them a life of being worn year round. Moments after purchasing the scarves, an animated Steven Tyler of Aerosmith walks into the store and asks if there are more scarves available, but he’s just missed them. The hats look at each other in awe as they realize they’ve greatly undervalued the scarves. “Depp must have been here,” Tyler mutters to himself as he leaves the store. Cut to a shot of Wallace enjoying the red carpet for Depp’s newest film, Tim Burton’s Pirate’s Barber Shop of the Caribbean. Wallace winks to the camera and the credits roll.
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