Released: October 9th,
2015
Rated: PG
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Starring: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett
Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried
Directed by: Joe Wright
Written by: Jason Fuchs
Personal Bias Alert: likes Joe Wright, not a big Peter
Pan lover
5.7 of 10
It’s
been a mere 113 years since J. M. Barrie introduced the world to Peter
Pan. In that short amount of time, the
impish boy has become ingrained in Western culture, carving out a place next to
centuries-old fairy tales in the pantheon of childhood standards. Today, the character is considered a personal
favorite by many, a wondrous ode to childhoods we can never get back. This love sets the bar high for any new version
of the story, and anyone brave enough to meddle with the formula must either
turn in a masterpiece or contend with the remonstrations of its ardent fans.
Director
Joe Wright and screenwriter Jason Fuchs are two souls brave enough to invent an
origin story for Peter (Levi Miller), Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund), and Tiger
Lily (Rooney Mara) that shakes up their usual relationships. Unfortunately, their gamble didn’t pay off
well enough to be embraced by the masses, and the immediate backlash has made
the off-kilter but enjoyable film out to be one of the biggest flops of
2015. Hopefully its reputation softens
over time, both because there’s a lot to appreciate here and because we should
never discourage anyone from being bold enough to reinvent instead of just
retelling the classics.
Wright,
who has made his fair share of good and bad movies, always turns in marvelous-looking
films, and if for nothing else, this is why you should see Pan in theaters. Few people
pull back the camera quite like him, capturing big, meticulously staged sequences
that are apt to take your breath away. Shot
for shot, few other filmmakers give us as consistently glorious visuals as he
does, and the magical world of fairies and flying ships featured in Pan proves to be a ripe playground for
his sweeping style.
Wright
is also well known for his scores, and while Pan features an appropriately swashbuckling one, it’s unlikely that
anyone will walk out of the theaters remembering it. Any commentary on the music in this film is
sure to highlight the odd use of contemporary songs, most notably the
jaw-droppingly weird sequence where we are introduced to Hugh Jackman’s Blackbeard
by having thousands of men singing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Why?
This is never explained, although there is another similar scene a few
minutes later. Both take place early on
in the film when everything that happens is so broad and utterly strange that none
of it makes much sense. These are some
gratingly disjointed scenes, and if the rest of the film had continued to be
that weirdly incongruous, we would be having an entirely different discussion.
But
eventually we are introduced to Tiger Lily, and the film is given a goal to
steadily work towards. The overt
oddities subside, and we are left with a jaunty kids movie that has a delightful
amount of weirdness. The cast, who was
previously hamstrung by Wright’s decision to go big and broad, settle into some
actual relationships, and a calming force tamps the whole thing into
submission. Rooney Mara, inadvertently,
I believe, is that force, as she was likely told to go big like everyone else
but just didn’t have it in her. She’s
not a great physical actress, and while everyone else is prancing about, she
walks through the film with the same shuffling gate as her version of Lisbeth
Salander. This isn’t to say that she
doesn’t make her part work; if anything, Mara makes Tiger Lily into the most
well-defined character in the whole shebang.
She just also brings the energy
level down to a more palatable level.
With
such slapdash success, it’s wrong to label Pan
as an outright failure. It may not
reach the heights that previous iterations of Peter’s story did, but there’s some
wondrous moments to be found if you give it a chance.
Other Notes:
Ø Some
of the CGI here is atrocious, but I saw the same sort of doughy people in the
opening of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Ø I
wasn’t as annoyed with Garrett Hedlund’s toothy performance as I thought I
would be.
Ø Maybe
I’m just a sucker for Joe Wright’s style?
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