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It's hard to imagine a movie more misguided than "Pan," an attempt to rewrite the origin of "Peter Pan" that is so thoroughly terrible that it boggles the mind.
How many ways does "Pan" go wrong? Let's count:
1. The setting • For starters, director Joe Wright ("Atonement," "Anna Karenina") and screenwriter Jason Fuchs (who worked on "Ice Age: Continental Drift") place 12-year-old Peter (newcomer Levi Miller) in a London orphanage during The Blitz. The problem isn't that it's nearly four decades after J.M. Barrie created Peter Pan; it's that placing Peter amid the horrors of World War II robs the character of a certain innocence Peter needs to exist.
2. The confused tone • Peter's orphanage is depressingly Dickensian, but Wright and Fuchs make it comically so, with a cartoonishly monstrous Mother Superior (Kathy Burke) hoarding rations while serving the boys gruel.
3. A dark Neverland • Evil pirates grab Peter and the orphans, dragging them to a nasty Neverland. There, they are enslaved as miners working for the baddest pirate of them all: Blackbeard, played to campy heights by Hugh Jackman.
4. What's that song? • When the movie first enters Blackbeard's mine, a scene reminiscent of the War Boys in "Mad Max: Fury Road," the miners are singing tunelessly. After a second, the lyrics hit: "With the lights out, it's less dangerous / here we are now, entertain us." Yup, it's Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The inclusion of that song (as well as The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop") is a half-hearted attempt at creating a "Moulin Rouge"-style pop-culture pastiche that Wright doesn't try to maintain.
5. The "Fairy dust" problem • What are the miners mining? Fairy dust, also called pixum, a rare element Blackbeard desperately seeks for his own ends. Yes, the stuff that makes Peter Pan fly has been turned into a commodity — possibly the worst explanation of a magical thing since George Lucas introduced midi-chlorians to explain The Force.
6. Reimagining Hook • Speaking of "Star Wars," "Pan" recalibrates James Hook (played by a mugging Garrett Hedlund) as a roguish Han Solo type, rather than as a foppish pirate — and Freudian symbol (by tradition, the actor playing Hook also plays Mr. Darling). It's a dumb rewrite of the character.
7. The "Tiger Lily" problem • Barrie created the Indian princess Tiger Lily a century ago, and it was a bad American Indian stereotype then. Wright and Fuchs turn the tribe into a multicultural hodgepodge, with an Australian native (Jack Charles) as chieftain and a Korean martial-arts star (Tae-joo Na) as its mightiest warrior. But casting a white American, Rooney Mara, as Tiger Lily signals the cultural insensitivity continues.
8. Special-effects overkill • From start to finish, "Pan" is swimming in computer graphics, over-the-top effects and two overworked animated sequences to explain Peter's new mythology. The technological overkill suffocates the humanity, lightness or joy that has made Barrie's source material a staple for the past century. By the end, the only happy thought "Pan" inspires is a desire to flee the theater.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'Pan'
A poorly conceived origin story for Peter Pan fails at every level.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Oct. 9.
Rating • PG for fantasy action violence, language and some thematic material.
Running time • 111 minutes.