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The great names of destinyNotable movie characters often start with nifty monikersBy Todd Leopold  Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." ON CNN TVWatch "Showbiz Tonight" on CNN Headline News, 11 p.m. ET weekdays.
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Captain Jack Sparrow. Great name, right? And it becomes even better when you think of Johnny Depp's flamboyant performance as the lead pirate in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," to be followed Friday by its sequel, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." Indeed, as much as a performer can invest a character with three dimensions, a great name does a lot of the work. "Star Wars" had two of the best: the ominous Darth Vader and the heroic Luke Skywalker. "The Usual Suspects" would have been less unusual had it not been for the mysterious Keyser Soze. Brickley Paiste, the patrician incumbent senator in "Bob Roberts" (played by Gore Vidal), conjures up a ponderous stick-in-the-mud, which, given the alternative as exemplified by Roberts, isn't such a bad thing. Jake Gittes, Jack Nicholson's gritty detective in "Chinatown" and "The Two Jakes," is an excellent name for a '30s private eye. Norma Desmond, Gloria Swanson's fading film star in "Sunset Boulevard," reeks of royalty -- and dust. Addison DeWitt, George Sanders' catty critic in "All About Eve," practically demands that he be an above-it-all guttersnipe. Novelists often give filmmakers a head start. Charles Dickens was a master at evocative names -- Mr. Pecksniff, Miss Havisham, Uriah Heep, Bill Sikes, Lady Dedlock. Ian Fleming was equally brilliant, giving the movies blueprints for bounteous Bond girls Pussy Galore and Kissy Suzuki, villains Rosa Klebb and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, M's assistant Miss Moneypenny, and James Bond himself (a name Fleming borrowed from an ornithologist). And Scut Farkas made the journey from Jean Shepherd's page to the big screen in "A Christmas Story." And what of the movies with crummy character names? They can still be successful, but who knows what might have been. The worst is probably Tom Cruise's character in "Days of Thunder," a race-car driver named Cole Trickle. Yes, there was a real-life NASCAR driver named Dick Trickle, but he was mercilessly needled on the Dan Patrick-Keith Olbermann "SportsCenter." If someone was going to create a fictional race-car driver, you'd think they'd go for something gutsier -- like "Steve McQueen." "Cole Trickle" sounds like he has sand kicked in his face on a regular basis. Two names need no comment. In "The Man with Two Brains," Steve Martin played Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, which, of course, is pronounced just like it's spelled. And in the Austin Powers movies, Mike Myers' Dr. Evil (a fine villain name) has a hairless cat named Mr. Bigglesworth. I'm laughing just typing that. So Jack Sparrow follows in a fine tradition. Now the question is, will the new movie follow in the tradition of the first, a crowd-pleaser that grossed more than $300 million? Eye on Entertainment walks the plank. Eye-openerThe first "Pirates" earned Johnny Depp an Oscar nomination for his performance as Sparrow, the fey pirate partly inspired by Keith Richards. More important for Disney (which had the idea, based on its theme park ride) and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the film was a blockbuster hit, paving the way for two sequels. The first of them, "Dead Man's Chest," comes out Friday. From all accounts, it's more of the same outlandishness, turned up a notch. This time around, Sparrow has to resolve a debt to Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) or lose his soul. Jones isn't a figure to be trifled with: Octopus legs dangle from his face, and his pet is a sea monster. Meanwhile, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) are set to be married, but find their plans interrupted by the pirate captain's adventures. And then there's the East India Company's Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who has his own plans for the chest everyone is pursuing. Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics calling the film overstuffed and others saying they couldn't get enough. Either way, the reviews are unlikely to matter, given that "Pirates" has been long touted as the blockbuster of the summer. If Disney has any disappointment coming, it will only be if the film doesn't race to the top of the box office. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" opens Friday. On screenOn the tubeSound wavesPaging readersVideo center
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