🔒 Johnny Depp's Stupid New Movie is a Political Message

You know, there was an actual time in my childhood when I considered Johnny Depp to be my favorite actor. Looking back at the man’s filmography, I think it must have been entirely because of Edward Scissorhands because he wasn’t in anything else that I would have seen in my early teens. I never saw 21 Jump Street and I sure as hell wasn’t watching Oliver Stone’s Platoon after finishing my homework.

 As I got older I still thought he was pretty good. I even remember loving Sleepy Hollow for some reason, even though, rewatching it as an adult, I think it’s one of the worst movies Tim Burton has ever directed and certainly his worst up until that point. But Johnny Depp was quirky and funny!

 Then he beat up his wife a whole bunch and suffered the dreaded Hollywood Blacklisting, which cost him exactly two (2) film roles.

 But, good fuckin’ news I guess, because Johnny Depp is back! You’ll never guess what character this wacky “master of misfits” is tackling this time! Why, it’s none other than Charles Dickens’ classic Victorian misanthrope, Ebenezer Scrooge! Haha, humbug!!

So this is one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen, and if Johnny Depp hadn’t turned out to be, you know, the kind of person that he is, then I’d feel sorry for him. This trailer is clearly supposed to rekindle your Johnny Depp nostalgia (Deppstalgia? No wait, that sounds like a disease. Which it might be!) but kind of backfires by reminding audiences that this man hasn’t actually had that many memorable roles. At least, not memorable in a positive way.

 Recently, Warner Bros. released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Alejandro Iñárritu flick Digger, starring Tom Cruise, which has a similar nostalgia vibe to it. Tom Cruise is not a “cancelled” actor really, though many have made the case that he should be due to all that creepy Scientology stuff. A lot of people probably forget that Tom Cruise is actually a really good actor who probably would have won an Oscar had he not been fully pigeonholed as an action/stunt star around the early to mid 2000s—likely because of that same creepy Scientology stuff.

 The Digger retrospective trailer reminds you that, despite being known primarily as Ethan Hunt or Space Ethan Hunt for the last two decades, Cruise has actually led a phenomenal and diverse career, and the point of this trailer appears to be to herald his return to character acting.

If you’re fairly familiar with Hollywood movies then you probably know most of those clips. So let’s look back at Johnny Depp’s career and see how much of it has stood the test of time.

 You of course know Edward Scissorhands. You likely know Benny & Joon, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco. And remember Nick of Time? 

No? You might remember it as an interesting concept, but do you remember Depp being in it? Do you remember him in Donnie Brasco or do you remember him being overshadowed by Pacino?

 Here’s a big one: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. An absolute classic. Do you remember The Ninth Gate? You probably know it as a Polanski film, but do you remember Depp being in that? Do you remember The Astronaut’s Wife? Chocolat? The Man Who Cried?

 Okay, you definitely know Pirates of the Caribbean. Do you remember him in Secret Window? That was a Stephen King movie. Did you ever see The Libertine? Do you know Finding Neverland? He got an Oscar nomination for that. He does an okay Scottish accent. Dustin Hoffman is better in it. (No, I’m not talking about Leaving Neverland, that’s about a very different man with very different issues.)

 I’m belaboring the point. Johnny Depp is misremembered as some kind of Hollywood legend when, in reality, he’s really only known for a handful of over-the-top gimmick performances, and even then, he’s mostly bad. Everybody hated the Willy Wonka remake. He was the worst thing about Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movies. And, my god, they were so bad.

 Still, we get this bizarre trailer for a movie that seems engineered entirely around being the “grand return to Hollywood” vehicle for a man who has had to suffer though six long years of not being cast in a major motion picture. There is absolutely no appetite for another film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, let alone a god damn prequel. A full third of A Christmas Carol is already Scrooge’s origin story! You know the whole Ghost of Christmas Past thing that revisits his entire background? I’m almost certain that the whole point of this thing was to find a wacky character in the public domain for Johnny Depp, specifically, to play in a movie, and to be the entire selling point of that movie.

 So, considering that Johnny Depp is kind of a shit actor, what’s the purpose of all this? Who is this movie actually for?

 I think that the answer is political and I think it has a lot to do with David Ellison.

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