●●●○○
Kicking off the season that can usually be counted on to deliver a glut of family-friendly blockbusters, is Pan, Joe Wright’s prequel to the 1904 children’s classic. Pan hit cinemas this weekend with not so much a bang as a dull thud, grossing just over 10% of its $150 million budget at the US box office. The Warner Bros’ film offers a reinterpretation of the story behind the boy who never grew up, set forty years after J.M. Barrie’s original play. It takes place in an orphanage run by nuns (cornettes and all), during the London Blitz , apparently because gritty wartime London and gritty, Dickensian, Industrial Revolution London are the only times in which the city exists in the Hollywood’s consciousness. Peter (Levi Miller) is a classic baby-left-on-doorstep, and is subject to regular canings from the Trunchbull-esque Mother Barnabas. Whisked away to Neverland on what can only be described as a child-slave ship, Peter’s adventure begins.
Although the premise of Pan seems promising in the first 30 minutes, Wright’s execution of the plot eventually lets it down. At times it seems like a mishmash of multiple films of a similar genre all crammed into one, namely Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Pirates of the Caribbean, Stardust, and most strangely, Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge. Somehow it feels like we’ve seen it all before.
Miller’s performance is strained in the overtly sentimental scenes, but on the whole he delivers a very satisfactory performance for an actor of his age and experience. Hugh Jackman offers a convincing and often genuinely frightening depiction of Captain Hook’s predecessor: child-labour mastermind, kidnapper and all-round baddie Blackbeard. His accent is the most believable amongst the droves of actors imitating English accents, an oft-employed Hollywood tactic to make the fantasy-fairytale setting seem more authentic (which is completely undermined by Garret Hedlund’s remarkably out-of-place Minnesota drawl).
The controversy surrounding the casting of Rooney Mara as the traditionally Native American Tiger Lily can be seen as having overshadowed the relatively minimal promotion done for this film, which may account in part for its disastrous flop at the box office. Nevertheless, Mara performs adequately in her ultimately underdeveloped role, and Wright has responded to criticism on the choice of Mara for a character that has previously been considered startlingly offensive and stereotypical in its portrayal of a Neverland “savage”, by saying that this world is “very international and multi-racial”. In Pan, the tribe that Tigerlily belongs to is certainly filled with all colours and cultures, but this ends up giving the impression of a hodgepodge of various races and ethnicities indelicately grouped together under the straightforward category of “Other”. Critics have pointed to the use of Mara over other actors that were considered such as Lupita Nyong’o and Adèle Exarchopoulos as an attempt by Warner Bros. to avoid perpetuating previous racist interpretations. the story goes that because Lupita is Mexican-Kenyan and Adèle is French-Greek, both are outside the realm of traditionally whitewashed Hollywood, and would have been all too easy to exoticise as “tribal” and “native” princesses with foreign accents. However, it is doubtful that this adequately excuses the studio casting a white Anglo-Saxon actor, in red face, over an actor of colour, when the number of roles for women of colour in the film industry are already so limited.
Overall, Pan brings more positive attributes to the table than negatives — it’s not going to win the Palme d’Or, but it certainly delivers a satisfying hour and fifty minutes of predominantly carefree and exciting entertainment, with stunning visuals and excellent CGI that is seamlessly integrated throughout the entirety of the film. If you’re looking for a fun 3D cinematic excursion with kids this weekend, with minimal amounts of schmaltz, convoluted subplots or gratuitous gore, Pan is your ticket — just don’t expect it to think about it again once the credits roll.
Pan is currently showing in Cineworld.
