For a franchise that isn’t exactly bound by historical accuracy, giving the
Australian Actor free swashbuckling rein shouldn’t be too big an ask
How intriguing that Pirates of the Caribbean should be looking to
Margot Robbie to lift the saga from the depths and out, once again, into the West Indian sunlight. The series has regularly dipped its toe into the potentially bountiful narrative trope of the female pirate surviving and thriving in a man’s world, with Keira Knightley, Penélope Cruz, Zoe Saldana and, latterly, Kaya Scodelario among those to have swished cutlasses and swung from the rigging.
And yet the saga has had its issues with gender representation. Scodelario spent most of 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales being ogled by Johnny Depp’s much older Captain Jack Sparrow. Previously, Knightley’s journey from damsel in distress to (briefly) pirate king of the famed nine pirate lords ended with her back on land and spending her days longing for the once-a-decade return of Orlando Bloom’s tedious Will Turner.