‘Pan’
The story of Peter Pan is one that’s been told many times and, for the most part, very well. From the original play to the 1953 Disney film to the more modern adaptations and offshoots like Finding Neverland and Hook, Peter and Neverland hold a sacred place in pop culture.
Director Joe Wright is the latest to try to tell the story in a new way, and he is no stranger to beloved text. After finding success with movie adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina, he seemed like a capable choice to craft a new sculpture of Neverland, even if his muse, Keira Knightley, wasn’t going to be involved.
But Wright’s simply-titled Pan does not bring out the subtle beauty of its source material as the three Knightley adaptations did. Instead, what aims to be an origin story for the world’s favorite boy who won’t grow up turns into an extravagant mess. It’s a mess that has its moments of awe and surely had talented people creating it but is a mess nonetheless.
The story is supposed to tell how the boy who stumbles into a London bedroom looking for his shadow became who he did. Peter, played admirably by the young Levi Miller, is left as a baby on the stoop of a London orphanage by his mother. Years later, in a scene of no explanation, a pirate ship whisks him and some of the other boys to the sky and takes them to Neverland. But it’s not Hook’s ship. It’s Blackbeard’s (a surprisingly great Hugh Jackman). He runs things in Neverland while Hook is still writing his own origin story. In fact, Peter escapes Blackbeard’s clutches with a young man (Garret Hedlund, Unbroken) named James Hook, casting what feels like an unnecessary irony over the movie.
Together, Pan and Hook head to the land of Tiger Lily and the Indians in search of Peter’s mother, who is said to have lived in Neverland long ago. Tiger Lily is played by Rooney Mara (Her), who does a fine job, but complaints that the role shouldn’t be whitewashed, persistent since her casting, seem warranted. Mara’s turn isn’t strong enough, and the juxtaposition with much of her surrounding tribe does seem odd enough in many scenes that declaring it a mistake is easy.
Peter, Hook and company have their adventures in a Neverland of bright colors and extreme landscapes. Wright and writer Jason Fuchs (Ice Age: Continental Drift) have given this movie a Baz Luhrmann-esque feel, and in some cases it really works in capturing the wonder of a story so predicated on the imagination. I called this movie a mess earlier, but hey, sometimes it’s a lot of fun to be thrown into a mess. Having said that, for every moment of wonder that feels like a true step forward, there are two steps back.
A glaring example: Blackbeard’s opening scene is a powerful one. Jackman holds court on the ship floating in midair in the middle of a huge mine. Down below are thousands of young boys, the miners, and they are singing in unison. Blackbeard comes out with a potent mix of evil slickness and starts singing with them. But the song they all sing together? Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
I don’t really have an explanation for it. As it happened, a man next to me in the theater literally put his palm to his face. I’m not sure if it was supposed to create a modern vibe, or speak to the brilliance of the lyrics, or just be funny. I was lost then and I still am.
Much of the script’s big moments come across as cheesy, but this can be forgiven when you think about it as a movie designed for kids. However, as much as I think I would have loved a lot about this movie when I was, say, 9 or 10, there are several scenes of odd intensity in which things get far too frightening for any child of that age or younger. In this sense, it’s hard to get a grasp on what Wright is really going for with this movie. It’s lingering questions like these, and the fact that much of the movie’s final act feels sloppy and disjointed, that put this Pan adaptation toward the lower end of the totem pole. There’s no doubt it’s a misfire, but it’s an entertaining one.
Most disappointingly of all, for all of its glitz and glamor, Pan fails to successfully touch on the heart of the story it’s adapting. When it comes to Peter Pan, for every scene in which the Indians fight the pirates or Peter learns to fly, there needs to be a thimble. And any and all attempts made here by Wright and company to grab at that thimble only result in a finger prick and a spillage of rainbow blood that draws your eye in a concerned sort of way.
