by Frank Calvillo
Its no surprise that Joe Wright’s Pan was originally scheduled for a prime summertime release, rather than the low-key autumn bow it’s instead receiving. The film possesses three of the most essential ingredients to entice summer audiences: breathtaking visuals, a decent amount of action, and an involving enough plot to charm younger moviegoers.
And the end of watching Pan, however, I was convinced they should have waited for January.
Pan attempts to trace the beginnings of the ageless boy who would come to be known as Peter Pan, crusader of all the lost boys and endless fighter of menacing pirates. The story begins in war-torn London, where young orphan Peter (Levi Miller) lives a miserable existence at the hands of strict (and ridiculously cartoonish) nuns. Upon his attempt to escape from the orphanage’s clutches, Peter and his friends find themselves kidnapped by a gang of flying pirates and taken to the mythical wonderland where he and a collection of orphans of different ages mine in search of fairy dust for the menacing Captain Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). When its discovered that Peter may in fact be the pre-destined beacon of hope for the natives of the island, including the warrior princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara), its up to them, and fellow orphan James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), to keep Blackbeard from taking control of Neverland.
The end result of Pan is most definitely a shame, especially when taking into account the kind of filmmaker Wright typically is. The director’s Hanna (also featuring a child taking charge for survival in an adult world) was revolutionary in its own right while his earlier drama, The Soloist, brought some of the best work out of Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.
With Pan however, Wright is so hopelessly out of his element with his approach to the material that it’s hard to believe its the same director. It’s not any one misstep that Wright makes which effectively brands Pan as awful. (Although Jackman’s entrance as Blackbeard, which shows him growling the lyrics to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” is something the Peter Pan universe could have definitely done without.) Rather, it’s the overall direction in which Wright decided to take the film, where he continuously mistakes the grandiose for the dramatic and the flashy for the heartfelt, which proves the reason for the film’s downfall. A lone scene featuring Blackbeard slowly and menacingly hunting Peter through a maze of sweeping orange and yellow curtains as he taunts him throughout does slightly hint at the kind of poetic, storylike vision Wright was after. But at the end of the day, it’s just hard to fear a gang of pirates whose guns fire nothing but brightly colored powder.
To be fair to Wright, a director can only do so much with the script in front of him. And sadly, the script for Pan feels like one that’s been passed around a few too many writers’ circles. Peter Pan is one of the most mythologized and beloved characters in all of children’s literature, so that surely the idea of exploring how he came to be the hero of generations of children would make an interesting story, let alone film.
Unfortunately, any such prospects are quickly dashed by a patchy screenplay lacking any heart whatsoever. Intended laughs (including when Blackbeard informs Peter of a magical key in his possession) are horribly placed, while supposed philosophical lines such as “Death is the greatest adventure” feel hollow. Pan’s script also makes the near-unforgivable disservice to the audience of failing to explore the fate of Peter and Hook’s friendship; it’s a move that’s insultingly compounded by the film’s last line, in which Hook states that he and Peter will be friends forever.
As much of a chore as Pan is to sit through, it’s a small, but shining compensation that the film features some of the best production design of the year. No expense was spared when it came to the visuals in Pan, whether in Blackbeard’s majestic ship or the land of the fairies. Every inch of this film is truly stunning. At one point, I tried to think of what album from my favorite artist that Pan would play well against thanks to its powerful visuals, since there’s very little other use for this movie as entertainment.
I always hate when I see great acting in a sub-par movie (I’m still not over Meryl Streep’s brilliance in the otherwise awful The Iron Lady). Here, the same fate has befallen poor Miller. The young actor is simply amazing in the title role, giving off enough adventurous spirit and sensitive emotion that it almost makes you angry his work has to be squandered in a film such as this.
By contrast, his fellow actors are a mixed bag. Jackman overacts a bit (forgivable to a point, given the character), but has a ball as Blackbeard, while Hedlund is embarrassingly miscast, turning Hook into a Texas cowboy and Mara, unsurprisingly, plays Tiger Lily as if she was performing Chekhov. Knowing her, though, she might end up hating her performance and the film later on, much like the way she has some of her earlier work.
As a child, I had fond memories of seeing Steven Spielberg’s incredibly fantastic Hook when it played in movie theaters. The film was critically reviled when first released and its reputation among those evaluating the legendary director’s filmography remains forever chilly. For me and many others of the same generation though, no such criticism has been successful enough to take away from a what so many consider magical cinematic experience. Part of me really wishes I could say the same for Pan, but I can’t. Who knows though, maybe some kid out there one day might.
