Was it the script, or the direction? Or was it just a complete mess?
I ask because this Jason Fuchs guy wrote the Wonderwoman script, and I have semi-high hopes for that movie, and Pan is really the only thing besides Ice Age that Fuchs has written.
If you ride like lightning, you're gonna crash like thunder
Just watched it. Dark and weird.Whole family liked it. Reminded me of a Terry Gilliam film.
shareOverall I found it to be an enjoyable movie, just after viewing it my thoughts were:
Of course most of it is silly, over-the-top acting, especially by Blackbeard and Hook.
My only complaint is what I call "sensory overload" during the last half-hour or so of the movie, lots of chases by flying pirate ships, ascent into the Stratosphere, cannon shots, lots of things going on ... a bit too much at times.
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes not.
I thought the movie was pushing a 5/10. Not terrible but nothing special either. There were worse films in 2015 - Self/Less, The Fantastic 4 or Jem & the Holograms - or else stuff that was just tacky and offensive - The Imitation Game, Exodus: Gods & Kings. Pan's main problem is that it's just dull.
The story is a cliched one that's been done to death. Peter's origin story is that he's the chosen one left behind as an orphan on Earth. Once he gets to Neverland, he meets someone who knew his mother and even has an 'orphan's plot trinket' to save the day. You've seen this story a hundred times already and Pan doesn't even do it with any particular style to differentiate itself from the others. Oz The Great & Powerful had its flaws but it still created a pretty good story underneath it all.
There's some weird changes to the Peter Pan mythos that really didn't need to be done. For one, Peter's apparently a child in 1940s London. The original story happens in the Edwardian Era, so that just shows they didn't care enough about their source material. Hook is suddenly an American cowboy for no real reason, when he's always been Charles II lookalike from possibly 17th or 18th century England. To a lesser extent, Tiger Lily is now a sexy adult warrior princess. And yes, she's white. Notably the tribe is made up of a mix of ethnicities - and the only one to play any role in the story is the white girl. Who is also the one with the authority. This also opens up a can of worms with the fact that Tiger Lily is now presented as a direct love interest to Hook - and she can only be a love interest if she's a pretty white woman. Further muddying the issue is the fact that there was a big announcement over Wendy being black - and she doesn't even appear in the finished film.
On a superficial level, the performances are a mixed bag. Levi Miller and Hugh Jackman try but they can't salvage things. Garret Hedlund and Rooney Mara were all wrong for their parts. Amanda Seyfried was completely wasted. I didn't even know she was in the movie until I looked it up online.
There's also some really weird tonal shifts in how the story is. For example, Peter's orphanage is run by a cartoonishly evil nun (who's also a rather rude Irish stereotype) that would be more at home in a Roald Dahl book. Then the movie tries to get serious and dark, which doesn't match the more cartoony parts.
So this movie fails on several levels, and the race issue is one of them. The special effects are good and there are a couple of moments where you think the film will kick into gear and redeem itself. But it never manages to be anything more than average.
There's no problem with this film, just the critics being stuck in preconception. Artistically wonderful, and I've seen all the Peter Pan renditions. This is my favorite
shareIt was another movie ruined by greedy studios wanting a "franchise" rather than making a good movie. There was a good Peter Pan origin movie that could have been told, about Peter's origins, the origins of his war with Captain Hook, the origins of the lost boys etc. Instead we got the bare basics of the story with most of that stuff set up for future movies that will never be made with hardlyt anything we know and love about Peter Pan shown in this film. And because there was so little story to be told in this film, the last half of the film is essentially one awful CGI fest of an action sequence.
Oh and dont forget the "chosen one" story about the prophesied, reluctant outsider coming to lead the people against their oppressor that has been used in every second fantasy movie of the last few years.
People are crazy and times are strange