By Jonathan Hampton 
Jack Sparrow didn’t just steal gold. He stole the whole damn century. When Pirates of the Caribbean crashed into theaters in 2003, nobody was ready for the swaggering, staggering captain who would hijack Hollywood itself. Now, nearly twenty years later, the cast’s “then vs now” photos reveal something deeper: a legacy aging, changing.
Time has pushed the original Pirates of the Caribbean cast far from that first cursed treasure, but the impact of those films still feels immediate. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow transformed from a risky studio experiment into a cinematic myth, the kind of character children imitate before
