Review of Pan (2015) by Jason M — 18 Oct 2015

Pan.

Initial Reaction: Teflon Pan or Aluminum Pan?

Main Characters.

Peter Pan: The boy who never grows up. He's played by Levi Miller.

Blackbeard, Hook: Two pirate captains played by Huge Jackman and Garrett Hedlund.

Tiger Lily: She's a princess (what else?) and is played by Rooney Mara.

Plot Summary.

Peter Pan is left in the care (If you can call it that) of an orphanage. Problem is, every night pirates show up and take several of the kids with them to Neverland to slave away in the mines (I wonder if they told the parents about that.).

So, one night Peter is taken by the pirates and put to work. But on his first day, he gets in trouble and pushed off a flying ship - that's floating high in the air.

But it turns out he has the ability to fly, which makes Blackbeard nervous. Why? Because there's a prophecy that a flying boy will lead the fairies to overthrow the evil pirate captain.

And Hook knows it as well. He gets Peter out of the mines, and they're off to find the fairies to stop the evil Blackbeard. Oh, and Peter is looking out for information about his parents.

SCORING.

Main Characters.

I like Peter and Hook a lot. They seem to work well together, and Hook blances the flighty Peter Pan with his down to earth philosophy.

But the other two I have problems with. Blackbeard does things that make me want to rip my hair out. Why does he tell Peter about the prophecy?

And Tiger Lily is annoying because she's a princess, and she has to be involved in a romantic subplot (with Hook, no less.) SCORE: 4.

Supporting Cast.

The best of the bunch is Smee, but he vanishes about the halfway point of the film. As for the rest, they're just a bunch of pirates and slaves with almost no personality in them. SCORE: 4.

Plot.

This film was not much fun to watch. It seems like they went off on a random journey and tried to put a plot to the journey. SCORE: 3.

Originality.

This film felt like a subpar fantasy flick where the hero finds out he has special abilities. And Blackbeard plays out like your average villain from your average film. SCORE: 4.

Violence Factor.

There's a lot of fighting between the pirates and the rest of Neverland. But one thing I still can't get. On at least three occasions, Blackbeard could've killed Peter Pan, but decides to just talk and talk and talk and talk. WHY? SCORE: 3.

Other Moral Issues.

Tiger Lily is a fully-grown woman in this film (unlike in the cartoon when she's a girl about the same age as Peter), so the romance between her and Hook is okay. Except that romance isn't developed at all; it's just used as a plot device.

This film is supposed to be about a boy who learns how to stand up to adversity, but the "Prophecy" annoyed me to no end. I like my protagonists to choose to be heroes, not forced into the hero role by a prophecy. SCORE: 3.

Final Score (out of 60): 21 % Score: 35%.

Despite two great leads, I'm going have to pan Pan for having a lackluster story, a really bad bad guy, and a romance that just feels wrong.