Pan
Directed by: Joe Wright
Written by: Jason Fuchs - Based on the characters by J.M. Barrie
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Amanda Seyfried, Kathy Burke
Adventure/Family/Fantasy - 111 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 Oct 2015
Written by: Jason Fuchs - Based on the characters by J.M. Barrie
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Amanda Seyfried, Kathy Burke
Adventure/Family/Fantasy - 111 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 Oct 2015
There was no audible audience outcry for a Peter Pan origin story. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone wonder how exactly the boy who does not grow up first arrived in Neverland. Recently, studios turned to reimagining childhood classics such as telling Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent’s point of view and showing us how the Wizard of Oz first came to the Emerald City. Now that the prequel gates are open, prepare for the trilogy of Bambi’s parents, how the Seven Dwarves became roommates, and Gepetto: The Early Years.
Most of us remember the decent 2003 live action version of Peter Pan which hinted slightly at more adult issues about the consequences of never growing up. A bit more than a decade later, director Joe Wright (2012’s Anna Karenina) whisks us back to Neverland and ignores the later themes and rules about stiff-arming puberty. Peter (Levi Miller) seems eager to age and get bigger. Sticking with the status quo and leading a ragtag group of lost boys are all in the future.
Most of us remember the decent 2003 live action version of Peter Pan which hinted slightly at more adult issues about the consequences of never growing up. A bit more than a decade later, director Joe Wright (2012’s Anna Karenina) whisks us back to Neverland and ignores the later themes and rules about stiff-arming puberty. Peter (Levi Miller) seems eager to age and get bigger. Sticking with the status quo and leading a ragtag group of lost boys are all in the future.
Peter was a London orphan during The Blitz under the supervision of the Sisters of Eternal Prudence. Could there be a more foreboding name guarding the entrance to an orphanage? I always thought Peter’s adventures with Wendy and her siblings occurred before World War II in the later Victorian era, but I stand corrected. At 12 years old, Peter enjoys rebelling against the strict nuns and hatches a plan to prove the chief warden, Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke), is hoarding all the kids’ war rations. It’s all quite Dickensian. To Peter’s surprise, Mother Barnabas is up to much greater mischief involving selling orphans to pirates.
Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman, 2015’s Chappie) ships in unwanted children from all over to throw in his gargantuan mine to dig for pixum, a mineral deposited by fairies which functions as a fountain of youth. Blackbeard makes his larger than life grand entrance like a rock star as all the children are forced to sing Nirvana and The Ramones to exult the premier pirate. Jackman is fantastic as the bad guy, able to turn from funny and entertaining to menacing and a child murderer the next second.
In the mine, Peter meets James Hook (Garrett Hedlund, 2014’s Unbroken), a Han Solo type character who does not care about your mission or your cause; he only looks out for yours truly. Hook sees Peter as his way out and through a series of action and accident, the two end up teammates navigating the wilds of Neverland. I don’t believe Hedlund as an action star and headliner. He yells all of his lines in a distracting, over-the-top manner. Hook also suffers from a severe case of nominative determinism – where your name is your destiny. There are a couple sight gags about his particular appendageless future and the script answers all the smartass questions about whether Captain Hook’s name was Hook before the crocodile incident.
While running for their lives from a pack of Neverbirds, an awkward bag of bones concoction of puppets, Peter and Hook meet Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara, 2013’s Her), the princess of the natives. One of the most racist moments in the Disney pantheon was the original animated Peter Pan where the Indians were straight up colored red and said “how” and “smoke-um peace pipe”. Now, they are known as the natives and are multi-ethnic. Tiger Lily is Caucasian, their best fighter is Asian, and the shaman is…Hindu? Hard to tell. This story occurs before the animated movie you grew up on, so it appears folks were more PC in the old days. Warner Bros. still did not escape controversy since they cast a Caucasian in the role of a minority. Petitions with thousands of signatures were launched begging movie studios to put a stop to that.
Despite the somewhat weak story of Blackbeard running a mining corporation overtly ignoring child labor laws, this Pan prequel is a lot of fun. Most of the credit goes to Jackman’s Blackbeard performance and some witty tongue-in-cheek foreshadowing jokes to the latter story we are familiar with. Pan succeeds despite Hedlund’s wooden performance and some eye-rolling fart jokes for the kids. It’s quirky. There is no reason for the kids to sing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but it will make you smile because it is so out of place it just about fits. Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan sequel, Hook, is not standing the test of time and neither did Disney’s 1953 cartoon. For now, the 2003 version remains the leader of the pack, at least until someone serves up Peter Pan Graduates and Faces an Uncertain Job Market.
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