O Cap’n! My Cap’n! – The Movie Filter

Save for perhaps The Matrix’s machine-fighting savior Neo or resilient super spy Jason Bourne, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is, like Indiana Jones or James Bond before him, the iconic action star of our age. And where the two-dimensional Neo and Bourne boast the charisma of cardboard, Sparrow appeared on the horizon seemingly out of nowhere as a fully realized rascal, equal parts sly and silly, inept and unequalled. Inspired by the loose-lipped rock ’n’ roll mojo of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Sparrow’s popularity has grown beyond the success or failure of the Pirates films that he anchors. He is above criticism precisely because he so fully captures the kid in all of us, that unpredictable mix of innocence, lunacy and rebellion.

“You are without doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of,” the straight-laced British officer Norrington declares in 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

“Ah, but you have heard of me,” Sparrow says, correcting his authority figure with a dark twinkle of unabashed glee.

Sparrow can engage in sword-swiveling duels to the death on screen, then show up at a school or hospital to entertain children as Depp has done in character and full costume. He’s the wayward bad boy with a good heart, and we all want to see him win in the end.

Sparrow returns this month in his fourth big screen epic, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, a misadventure on the high seas as Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s gargle-mouthed Barbossa race to find the Fountain of Youth before the evil pirate Blackbeard and a shadowy woman from Sparrow’s past can unlock its powers.

Long before face lifts, Botox and breast augmentation, people were obsessed with finding not only a cure for their ailments, but a cure for aging itself.

Accounts of magical waters that grant health to the sick, youth to the elderly or eternal life to all are found in cultures across the globe. Take the fanciful legends of Alexander the Great, the explorer’s tales of Greek historian Herodotus and Spanish conquistador Ponce de Leon, the Caribbean traditions of the spring of Bimini, or the Qur’an’s fountain of immortality and others.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes a Sabbath visit to invalids crowded around the Pool of Bethesda, a natural spring believed to hold restorative properties. There he encounters a man crippled for 38 years who could not crawl his way into the water. Instead of carrying the poor man to the pool, Jesus instantly heals him by commanding, “Pick up your mat and walk.”

Last time we saw Sparrow on screen, the eccentric sailor survived his own miraculous transformation by returning from a mind-altering abyss. With the romance between Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom wisely cast away this time, fast-talking Penelope Cruz on board as Sparrow’s hard-headed ex Angelica, and gruff Deadwood star Ian McShane as the dreaded Blackbeard, the Pirates series could use the Fountain of Youth—and a true rebirth—perhaps now more than ever. Savvy?

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides arrives in theaters everywhere May 20.