James Norrington

Admiral James Norrington is a major character in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Norrington was a commodore in the Royal Navy, as well as the admiral in the East India Trading Company. He is the rival and temporary ally of Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, and friend and ex-fiancée of Elizabeth Swann.

He was portrayed by Jack Davenport.

His Evil Ranking[]

His Villainous Deeds[]

• While he claimed that he wanted justice for all people in the world by destroying piracy, that's still partially hypocritical. Because while Norrington was indeed a well-intentioned extremist who wanted to save the humanity from pirates, but he was still willing to kill and execute the multiple innocent pirates, who were honorable and merciful. For example he showed this two times in the first movie. Despite Captain Jack Sparrow twice made two non-pragmatic honorable deeds, such as saving Norrington's fiancée Elizabeth Swann's life and helping him and Governor Swann defeat zombified Hector Barbossa's crew, the commodore was still willing to execute him without hesitation.
• While he joined Jack Sparrow's crew in the second movie and fought together with them against Davy Jones and his crew, Norrington eventually betrayed them and even tried to kill Jack by blaming him for the ruining of his life. Also, Norrington was still willing to kill Will when the latter protected Jack.
• He steals the Heart of Davy Jones and brings the artefact to Lord Beckett, while perfectly understanding how powerful the East-Indian Trading Company would become with it.

Why He Doesn't Stand Out?[]

• Despite his selfishness and lethal personality, Norrington is pretty bog-standard villain, because fails the heinous standards to his master Lord Cutler Beckett, Davy Jones, King George, Hector Barbossa (who is also a VB), and overall all other villains in the series. While someone could argue that James had much smaller resources than them, but his villainy is still not as nearly compatible to their and his worst actions are typical kill-the-hero actions.
• He has far too many redeeming qualities to become even IH. Such as the following:
  • He is well-intentioned anti-hero, because he has strict sense of honor not to kill innocents, and his extremism still stands out because there were multiple dangerous pirates, who posed a threat to the world. He also prefers die than serve Davy Jones and Cutler Beckett.
  • He prefers fight fairly and never cheat and is even capable to give some advantages to his enemies, like giving fair battles to the pirates..
  • He has real friendship with Governor Swann because he is chocked when he learns that Beckett has ordered his death. It led Norrington to redeem himself.
  • He geniunely cares about Elizabeth and was geniunely in love with her, and his friendship with her was the primary reason why he betrayed Beckett and was unfairly killed by Davy Jones and Bootstrap Bill Turner.
  • His death scene is played for sympathy, because he sacrificed himself to save his ex-fiancee and help Elizabeth escape from the Flying Dutchman.

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