Sparrow stands proudly atop this list.

In one of those strange moments where real world headlines suddenly read like bad blockbuster scripts, the news lately (when not about Barack Obama or capitalism’s flailing death throes) has been all about pirates. From an entire New York Times topic page on the subject to a nearly investigative long-form survey of the issue by CNN (CNN for chrissakes!), the topic of treachery on the high seas is suddenly so apropos.

Never ones to be behind the curve, but rather prodding it along its arched trajectory at one degree of remove, Listicles looks at the pirate (would monetarily-motivated marine marginals be a more PC term?) problem through our favorite pop culture goggles. To help throw the current high seas drama into historical and fictional relief, we look at Top Socialite’s list: The 7 Best Pirates in Cinema.

• 1. Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: we could have predicted this the moment we saw the list’s title. Depp redefined the pirate as a silly, slithery drunken trickster where previous incarnations tended towards gruff, burly old salts.

• 2. Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook in Hook: when a Steven Spielberg Peter Pan movie is re-titled to its villain’s name, you know you’ve got a good baddie on your hands. Hoffman takes the regal pirate lord archetype to new heights against Robin Williams’s tame flying man-child, as when first introduced in this clip:

• 3. Robert Newton as Long John Silver in multiple films: if Hoffman’s pirate pastiche set up Depp’s reinvention of the character’s traits, it was by taking Newton’s incarnations to their extreme. Put bluntly, most of our ideas about pirates stem from Newton’s performances of those of his copy-cats.

• 4. Keith Richards as Captain Teague in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: Top Socialite slips up some with this entry, favoring the novelty value of this mad-cap cameo over more deserving entries not from Pirates of the Caribbean.

• 5. Tommy Lee Jones as Bully Hayes in Nate & Hayes: an 80s big budget action adventure with Jones in the unlikely pirate part, making this movie mostly valuable for its combination of novelty casting and nostalgia.

• 6. Errol Flynn as Captain Blood in Captain Blood: Before there were Hooks, Sparrows and Bullies, there were pirates with more direct names like Flynn’s star-making turn as the title character in Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood, the doctor who became a slave who became a pirate who challenged the Spanish Armada.

• 7. Walter Mathau as Captain Red in Pirates: Mathau’s sea-terrorist turn should be in the top three of this list, if only for introducing a completely different, self-deflating style of comedy to his blundering boat boss character. Also, Pirates was directed by Roman Polanski. Witness:

Forgotten in the deep: following Listicles’ young tradition of Muppet-adoration, we’d be remiss not to include the multiple pirates name-dropped in this clip from Muppet Treasure Island: