This Friday, Joe Wright’s newest film Pan hits theaters, bringing us, once again, the story of Peter Pan. Its use here looks like Wright just gets bored with the idea and moves on to something else. Still, one wonders if Pan will really do much for Peter, who has endured for more than a century partly because he has no history.
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The real world does fret around the edges of Pan-scenes of the London Blitz are harrowing even though they include a flying pirate ship-but “larger than life” is the film’s true mandate, which influences everything from the elaborately constructed sets to the voices of the actors themselves.
The entertainment world keeps dredging up this 100-plus-year-old tale in its seemingly never-ending quest to give us slightly new takes on familiar properties. “I’ve played bad guys before, but I don’t think I’ve ever played one quite this bad”.
“Pan” is a totally odd, wacky endeavor that is amped up by John Powell’s schizophrenic score.
Abducted by Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman, in a ridiculously over-the-top performance) and his band of pirates, Peter and his fellow orphans are forced to toil in mines to extract fairy dust (here given the scientific-sounding name “pixum”) while inexplicably chanting lyrics to anachronistic rock songs (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Blitzkrieg Bop”). Jackman’s Blackbeard is sort of a divine evil; he relishes his ability to command thousands and to send slaves to their deaths every day.
In 2014, Allison Williams starred in NBC’s live production of “Peter Pan” on NBC – which got half the ratings of “Sound of Music” the year before. The fairies have all disappeared, and the island’s natives are waging a guerrilla war against the invaders.
Maybe it was just a hostage mentality, but somehow, in all of the craziness, the world of Never Never Land becomes strangely compelling.
At the picture’s point of departure, we witness a newborn baby being very reluctantly deposited by his mother (Seyfried) on the doorstep of the Lambeth Home for Boys, an orphanage run by an order of nuns.
It’s a handsome movie to look at and also an uncomfortably muddled one to experience. Yes, that Hook. He just hasn’t lost one of his hands yet and instead of being obsessed with killing Peter, he sees him as someone who can help him escape from Neverland.
Miller is a likable, unselfconscious kid, and we can hope that a sequel will allow him to lighten up a bit more.
“My brother came to see it… and he goes, ‘I’m so embarrassed”. I walked out disturbed to find out that fairies could be blowtorched in the first place.
“I told my friends there’s free biscuits and cookies and stuff at the office, but it didn’t work”.
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When “Pan” next picks up, the rascally Peter (Levi Miller) is a 12-year-old still dreaming of his mother’s return. It is rich cinematic territory that has been frequently mined on the big screen: Steven Spielberg put a modern spin on the tale with the classic “Hook”, in 1991, and now Joe Wright has spun his own version of the tale, an origin story of Peter Pan himself. Talk about a director (Joe Wright) leaving an actor hanging out to dry. The fugitives take shelter with Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and her tribe, and Peter learns the truth about his family’s connection to Neverland. Just take whatever they did in “Pan” and do something else.
