It was Angelina Jolie, who plays the rough-and-ready Capt. Franky Cook in the special effects-laden sci-fi adventure.

She's wearing an eye patch.

Could this be a trend? Will A-listers (at least in movies anyway) begin wearing eye patches more often?

Daryl Hannah sported one in the Kill Bill films of the last two years, and starlets were seen sporting the classic pirate look at the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl summer before last.

What does it all mean?

In moviedom, "if you have an eye patch, it means you're a tested warrior," says Al Nigrin, curator of Rutgers University's New Jersey International Film Festival. "You have the battle scars, and you've made it to the next battle."

In the olden days, only crusty bad guys wore eye-patches. See Captain Hook in Peter Pan or Anthony Quinn in 1942's The Black Swan.

In more recent years, donning an eye patch did not immediately mean the wearer was a ne'er-do-well. Kurt Russell's Snake character in Escape from New York, despite the name and the eye patch, was a good guy.

"It could mean that you're half bad and half good," Nigrin says.

But we're not talking about guys here. What about the gals?

A significant film to our topic, says Nigrin, is the 1975 sexploitation flick Switchblade Sisters. A switchblade sister in the film, Patch, wears one.

That should be the end of it.

But Quentin Tarantino had Hannah's character wear an eye patch seemingly as an homage, if you will, to Patch of Switchblade Sisters.

Now, Jolie's wearing one. It's kind of a sign of a new, battle-tested feminism emerging in movies, Nigrin says.

An unintended result of this is that people who actually have to wear eye patches now have some glamorous role models.

"I think it's great," says Wendy Devoy, founder of the California-based Eye Patch Heaven (eyepatchheaven.com), which manufactures decorative eye patches.

"When I started to wear one in middle school, the black patch freaked people out. It won't be as devastating after people see actresses wearing them on TV and the movies."