Pan

The enduring popularity of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan character stems from a desire to reject the painful necessity of growing up, to retain innocence in the face of responsibility and compromise

Film Review by Lewis Porteous | 07 Oct 2015
Film title: Pan
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Rooney Mara, Garrett Hedlund, Cara Delevingne
Release date: 10 Oct, Scotland; 16 Oct, rest of UK
Certificate: PG

Audiences enjoy spending time in the protagonist's company as he flits from one whimsical adventure to the next, but ultimately we find ourselves pitying his stasis. Our attentions are fleeting and he'll inevitably be left behind as we forge ahead in pursuit of personal fulfillment.

This origin story from Joe Wright (Atonement, Hanna) offers a promising, albeit revisionist, take on 'the boy who never grew up' when we find him abandoned outside a Lambeth workhouse. Twelve years later, the second world war is in full swing and it's from the horrors of the blitz that he's uprooted to Neverland.

Wright's austere vision of London is precisely the kind of fraught reality from which a dreamer would yearn to escape, but the director shows little interest in exploring wider thematic concerns. Instead, he presents us with a charmless, overly-literal action fantasy. Here Peter comes to Neverland because he's a chosen one, destined to follow his mother in defending an ancient tribe of natives and pixies from pirate oppressors who chant the lyrics to alternative rock staples.

The creative forces behind this misfire have underestimated the darkness of Barrie's original vision, vainly burdening it with an outdated goth aesthetic and a series of empty CGI set pieces.


Released by Warner Bros.