User blog:X9 The Android/PE Proposal: Armando Salazar

Hello guys! Today, here's my proposal about Armando Salazar, the main antagonist of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

WHO IS HE / WHAT HAS HE DONE?
Armando Salazar is a respectable and efficient officer of the Spanish Royal Navy at the dawn of the 18th century. Having lost his grandfather and his father to pirates, Salazar makes a vow to wipe them out from the face of Earth. However, during his last campaign to purge piracy from the Caribbean, Salazar gets outsmarted by the young Jack Sparrow and ends up sailing to his death into the Devil's Triangle. As a result, he and his crew become ghosts and haunt the triangle for the years to come until Jack betrays his compass, freeing them. As such, they resume their pirate hunting crusade and try to avenge their deaths by killing Jack and finding the Trident of Poseidon. At the end, however, while Salazar and his crew are brought back to life, they end up all perishing while trying to kill Jack and his friends.

MITIGATING FACTORS?
A captain of the Spanish Royal Navy loyal to his King, Armando Salazar proves his worth by killing all pirates he can find because they destroyed his family. However, unlike other navy officers, Salazar has no mercy and kills pirates even if they surrender to him, not caring if they were forced into piracy or not because he deems them as an "infection". While he initially does this to ensure his country's safety as pirates are a genuine threat, it's later shown that he enjoys his work and kills anyone who stands on his way whether a pirate or not, as shown when he slays Captain Toms and the crew of the Monarch despite that they entered into the Devil's Triangle while chasing down the fearsome Captain Bonnet or when he crushes to death Lieutenant Scarfield and the crew of the Essex to pursue the Black Pearl. He also doesn't mind on using people to achieve his goals, as when he possesses Henry Turner to reach Sparrow and Carina Smyth despite knowing that if he didn't found the Trident, he would have no way to get free, showing his recklessness.

While this isn't seen in the film, he is also a liar, because Elizabeth Rudnick's novelization reveals that Armando killed his father when he was released from prison for being corrupt and accepting bribes from pirates (though some could say that it was to avenge his innocent mother's death, as she was forced to work in a workhouse until her death to pay for her husband's sins. Anyway, Salazar actually committed patricide and while he was possibly referring that the pirates destroyed the good person his father was and thus was no longer his father when he came back, he anyway lied about his death.

Although Salazar always leaves one man alive from all the pirate crews he slaughters to tell the tale of his brutal attacks, he is actually unmerciful, as seen when he allows his men to kill three crewmembers of Hector Barbossa's crew to force Barbossa into serve him to track down Jack Sparrow, whom he regards responsible of his fate. Thus, Salazar's hatred for pirates makes him a dangerous and formidable pirate hunter whose evil ways are perhaps as cruel than those of Lord Cutler Beckett, a previous hating-pirate antagonist. From all previous antagonists in the series, including Davy Jones or Blackbeard, however. Salazar is the most disturbing in appearance and his creepiness has no limits.

And finally, while Salazar's curse was ultimately broken and became human again along with his crew, he still desired revenge on Jack even though Jack indirectly helped them to break their curse, so he chases him to finish him off in spite that he could have redeemed himself and used that time to make it to the black rock island and save himself. His thirst of revenge ultimately made him a complete monster and despite that his crew served him both as humans and ghosts, including his loyal Lieutenant Lesaro, Salazar opted to leave them behind so he could kill Jack, betraying those who cared about him only to be killed by Barbossa, losing his opportunity to live a life again due his selfish obession.

VERDICT
Taking all of this into account, I would say yes about considering Armando Salazar to be approved as PE.