How did Jack Sparrow change the pirate character?

Before Jack Sparrow, cinematic pirates were either villains (menacing, brutal) or swashbuckling heroes (honorable, straightforward). Jack is neither: he's a protagonist who operates by anti-hero logic — he's selfish, unreliable, and frequently drunk, and also the person you want to win. This combination hadn't been done at this scale in the pirate genre.

What did Johnny Depp bring to the character?

A physical grammar borrowed from Keith Richards (Depp has acknowledged this influence). Jack moves like someone who isn't quite certain where gravity is pointing — tilted, reaching, recovering. The body language communicates a relationship with the world that's fundamentally different from straight-standing, purposeful action heroes. He looks drunk even when he isn't.

What made the character break through culturally?

The first film's opening. Jack arrives on a sinking ship, walking across the mast as it sinks, doffing his hat to the harbormaster. No music. No explanation. He's clearly remarkable; we have no context for what kind of remarkable. The question "what is this person?" pulled audiences in before a single line was spoken.

What is Jack's place in the anti-hero tradition?

He's rare in being an anti-hero audiences actively root for rather than simply find compelling. Most anti-heroes (Tony Soprano, Walter White) are people you watch with fascinated horror. Jack is someone you want to escape with — the fantasy of total freedom from competent, cheerful incompetence.

Why has the character endured?

Because the specific combination — charming unreliability, genuine competence, total commitment to freedom as a value — is appealing in a way that hasn't dated. The world keeps producing more authority and more constraint. Jack Sparrow keeps not caring about any of it. That's evergreen.