Joe Wright’s “Pan” is a bombastic blend of borrowed ideas, superfluous pop culture references, and colorful interpretations that never cohere. There are plenty of good ideas on display, but most of them fail because they pop in and out of the film with no development or sense of importance. And it doesn’t help that most of those ideas find better execution in other films.
“Pan” tries to rethink the Peter Pan narrative, but ends up overcomplicating it. Without reason, writer Jason Fuchs pushes the setting of the Peter Pan narrative out of the early 20th century and into the World War II era. During the London Blitz, a flying pirate ship from Neverland swoops out of the sky and snatches an orphanage full of boys, including 12-year-old Pan, played by first-time actor Levi Miller. The pirates, led by Hugh Jackman’s maniacal Blackbeard, toss Pan in a pixie dust mine where he meets the future Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund), now with two hands. They escape Blackbeard with the help of Indian princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara), who informs them of a prophecy in which Pan becomes a sort of superhero. The prophecy is Fuchs’ attempt to establish narrative progression, but cheeky allusions to the source material distract the plot.
Wright repeatedly makes baffling directorial decisions that result in distracting and unnecessary scenes. As the flying frigate leaves Earth
with the orphans, Wright decides to toss in a superfluous (and tone-shifting) action sequence where British fighters fail to shoot down the escaping pirates. In the Neverland mine, the slaves chant punk rock lyrics from the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And when Pan and Hook meet Tiger Lily, the Indians, for whatever reason, explode into puffs of color a la the Color Run when they die. None of this matters.
While many of the film’s scenes seem superfluous, others seem copied and pasted from other, more successful films. The mining sequence mimics George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” in its brown color palette and thematic dichotomy between Blackbeard and the plebeian miners. A later jungle setting evokes James Cameron’s “Avatar” when dragon-like birds attack Pan and Hook. And the final encounter between Pan and Blackbeard looks almost identical to any swordfight from Gore Verbinski’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” when the characters start dueling on the ship’s prow and swinging from sail ropes. All of these elements work better in other films, but they fall flat in “Pan” because none of them have primacy.
Nevertheless, “Pan” does succeed in its actors. For a debut performance, Miller grounds the film surprisingly well in Pan’s unremitting search for his mother. His search, in fact, is one of the only story elements consistent throughout the film. Mara stands out as the most nuanced character, sliding into Tiger Lily as easily as she does her more complex roles in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network.” Jackman characterizes Blackbeard through quick and exaggerated movements which work for a darkly comedic effect, but he becomes too much of a caricature by the end, even for a children’s movie. Hedlund gives the poorest performance as Hook, relying more on the character’s archetypal swashbuckling charm and wisecracks than on his own interpretation.
In short, “Pan” might have been a good film if it had settled on its own identity rather than borrowing from everywhere else. A few strong performances lend small amounts of consistency, but without visual substance, “Pan” will leave viewers scratching their heads to figure out what just happened and studio executives wondering why it didn’t sell.