I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was going to say something when I posted the topic, but then I decided to see if anyone else would bring it up, so thanks.
The thing is, people do male antagonist films all the time and most often do them back to back, so what's the difference?
Although, if you're Johnny Depp, critics are just looking for something to jump all over. And to that point, I could be misremembering but I believe the initial draft of POTC5 was worked on back when DS hadn't actually come out yet. Plus, it was originally supposed to go into production long before it did, so all these years between DS and POTC5 wouldn't have taken place. So, maybe Depp was afraid that they were going to say he was repeating himself...