Movie Review: "Pan"

Pan (2015)

PG

1.5 Stars out of 5

Director                                Joe Wright
Writer                                   Jason Fuchs
Cinematography                 John Mathieson, Seamus McGarvey

Hugh Jackman                     Captain Blackbeard
Levi Miller                            Peter Pan
Garrett Hedlund                 James Hook
Rooney Mara                      Tiger Lily
Adeel Aktar                         Smee
Kathy Burke                        Mother Barnabas
Amanda Seyfried               Mary

 

Director Joe Wright’s and Writer Jason Fuch’s 2015 “Pan” is so bad it screams for a critic to abuse the movie’s title – so, okay, I will do so. “Pan” has been panned by audience and critics alike. I will join the crowd and pan it myself. When I saw the advertisements for this movie, I was thrilled. It looked like it had great artwork, cinematography and an over the top performance by Hugh Jackman as Captain Hook; and to a great extent it does indeed have each of these elements. It even has a fine performance by Levi Miller as Peter Pan. What it also has is a complete misunderstanding of who this movie is intended for; from its anachronistic music, its exceptional use of violence, and it’s very rushed opening scenes, this movie failed almost from the beginning.

“Pan” is intended to be the prequel to J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play, “Peter Pan”. Barrie’s very popular play ran in London for nine years and inspired Barrie to publish a follow-up book in 1911 entitled “Peter and Wendy”. Peter's character is apparently inspired to some extent by the mythological Pan, but is unlike the lustful Pan, Peter is actually a childish boy who has decided to never grow up. He lives out his daydreams on the island of Neverland with fairies, mermaids, pirates, and American Indians. What would inspire Wright and Fuchs to write an origin tale about the central character in a wish-fulfillment story intended for children? Or worse yet, how could they lose a grip on the whimsy and wonder that underlay the original, and instead make use of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bob”. Great songs, yes, but a discordant emotional tone for a child’s movie; not to mention, what genre does this movie belong to anyway: musical? A worse move from a tone perspective is the unrelenting evil personified by Blackbeard and his pirates. Sure pirates can be portrayed as evil, but there is an appropriate level of violence, implied and actual that would have far better fit into this movie. The Wright/Fuchs team went far over-board in their choices for the piratical behavior. A good example of this would be Blackbeard’s first appearance. He struts onto the stage as his character would demand that he do so. He and his imprisoned miners (mostly children!) belt out “Smells Like Teen Spirit” creating an atmosphere of a surrealistic joint endeavor between the captive and their captor. But not just a joint endeavor, no to help enforce his rule, to further subjugate the minds of his slaves, Blackbeard proceeds to execute one of them to the cheers of the remaining  and for the moment, not executed workers. This bizarre scene could have worked well as a key moment in another, darker movie or video (I’m thinking of “The Wall” by Pink Floyd), but in a movie designed to show the origins of a child’s story, one set with fairies and children pretending to be animals, this was a big mistake. It was only the first of many.

This movie really seems more like a skeleton that was bedecked with CGI ornaments. They are surely there. Consider the elegance of a flying pirate ship as it flies over London (oddly chased by British Spitfires during the WWII German blitz) or the soon to follow scene of Peter tied to the ship with a rope but floating skyward/heavenward when the ship reaches low Earth orbit (!!? – what’s it doing in outer space?). These were artistically beautiful parts to the movie as were subsequent scenes of the approach to Neverland. Even the aerial scenes looking down into the mining pit have a kind of beauty. Did the art and cinematography director make this movie? The art is great, Blackbeard's costumes/hair are bizarrely diverting, but the story and its character development are deeply flawed.

The plot is simple enough: Peter is kidnapped, meets and fights with Blackbeard while making friends with Tiger Lilly and a young Captain Hook (both badly cast with the exotic Rooney Mara from “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo”, and Garrett Hedlund as a cowboy-accented Hook), but the character definition let alone development is absent. The early scenes of Peter in an orphanage run by a woman (Katy Burke as Mother Barnabas) I can only presume is the female equivalent of Blackbeard are rushed and appear to have little to no purpose beyond leading to the aforementioned flying pirate ship scenes. We are led to believe that Peter has a head on his shoulders and a heart in his chest, but there is very little attempt to show these character features. The worse blow to Peter’s character portrayal in the movie is the ridiculous speed he is transformed from a realistically portrayed young boy by Miller to a sword-wielding leader of a rebellion against Blackbeard.

One might note my criticisms are over-wrought and over-thought for a movie intended for children; and if this had actually been a consistently-made movie for children, I would heartedly agree. We come then full circle: for whom was this movie intended. The music score would suggest angry and disaffected adolescents, the original subject material of Peter Pan would suggest young children, and the CGI artwork would suggest young adults (or old, as in my case) that love to see good CGI artwork of fantasy subject material. In a final analysis though, any parent that would like their children to see a movie entertaining for both kids and adults, will find that no matter whomever this movie was actually written and directed for, it certainly was not really made for anyone. This movie was a critical and commercial bomb, and should frankly be avoided by all.