Pan film review- a critique of the 2015 film by Chris Stuckmann

Full-text transcript of the Pan film review:

[00:00:04] Pan is directed by Joe Wright and stars Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Rooney Mara, as well as Garrett Hedlund and is a retelling of Jamborees Original classic tale of Peter Pan. It’s a prequel in the sense that it does tell the origin of Peter Pan. However, it’s not quite a prequel because it really takes elements of jamborees classic story and rearranges them in strange ways to make a different story altogether. So it’s really clear that they were trying to go for a more unique version of Peter Pan, something we hadn’t seen before, something new, something fresh, which is commendable. And I was really hoping that Pan was great because I’m a huge fan of the Peter Pan story. I love Finding Neverland, the Peter Pan from 2003 Hook, as well as the original Disney classic. So I was excited to see this movie because I grew up loving Peter Pan throughout the entirety of this film. However, I was assaulted by an aggressively unpleasant experience and one of the most artificial looking films I’ve seen all year. There is barely a shot in this movie that I believed, and that is sad. We’re telling a story about Neverland, the world of which we’re supposed to use our imagination and feel free and excited and happy and just joyous like anything can happen. And every shot in this movie looks as if it was manufactured on a green screen set. If the original animated Disney classic is like one hundred percent pure Welch’s grape juice pan, the 2015 edition is like Grape drank Kool-Aid. It’s this watered down CGI mess filled with virtually no character development because it’s such a rushed movie movie opens with little Peter being dropped off at some orphanage.

[00:01:43] Then we cut to 12 years later in World War Two is going on and he’s like, please. So I’d like some more. I mean, basically as Oliver Twist and then all of a sudden he’s being taken away up to the sky through a cloud system. And then he plays around with Saturn for a second and within like two minutes, he’s thrown into Neverland. There’s children everywhere. Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard appears and everyone starts singing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. I’m not kidding, they’re all singing it and there’s no explanation for this, for why they’d be singing this song as well as Blitzkrieg BOP, which appears a few seasons later. I sat there with my mouth dropped and my eyes squinted, watching Hugh Jackman sing Nirvana as Blackbeard, wondering what the hell I was looking at. As I already stated, the movie also tries to rearrange certain characters that we know and love, like Captain Hook and Peter Pan and Tigerlily, and takes their positions in the story of Peter Pan and makes them out to be something else to set up some other future of Peter Pan movies or I don’t know, and it just doesn’t work. I never bought Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily. What a strange casting choice. Garrett Hedlund is Captain Hook and this movie, this is what I call a teeth talker. He’s like, Hey, Peter Pan. I talk with my teeth. And just so you know, I kind of sound like bones in the Star Trek movies.

[00:03:06] I don’t know why I’m talking like this, but I’m Captain Hook and this is how I talk now. I just heard my own voice talking like that and I enjoyed the shit out of myself. So imagine watching that for two straight hours and having it being one of the most beloved villainous characters in all of book history. Levi Miller as Peter Pan is really trying. He is really trying. He does an OK job for the most part, because you can really tell that Joe Wright, the director, is instructing him to just do everything quick and fast because this is a very fast movie. And what I mean by fast is that shit’s flying like everywhere. And it’s always something that’s in front of a green screen or some CGI thing is just like in the way all the time. The entire film feels so incredibly artificial that I just couldn’t buy into the world of Neverland. I couldn’t buy into these characters. And because of how much shit is constantly just flying in front of you, there’s like no time for character development. You really ever feel as if anyone’s growing in this movie without spoiling anything? There are sequences in this movie in which characters are doing amazing things. I’ll just put it that way. And it is the most painfully obvious, uncompleted CGI person jumping and flipping around a fully rendered CGI person. I didn’t believe it for even a second. It looked so fake hook from nineteen ninety one, a movie that is twenty four years old made it look better.

[00:04:32] It’s astoundingly unforgivable how terribly obvious the CGI in pain is. As a fan of Peter Pan, as someone who grew up loving this story, I could not stand this film. I left the theater actually angry. As someone who loves movies that try to harness your imagination. There isn’t a single moment in this film that reflects that. There isn’t a single moment of all, because there isn’t one part of this movie in which our characters halt for just a second slow down or stop for just one human moment. I was vastly disappointed with this film. I’m going to give Pan a D. My recommendation to you would be to check out the original animated classic Peter Pan or the two thousand three live action, Peter Pan or Hook, which, by the way, I recently reviewed as part of my Steven Spielberg series. That review is on my channel right now. I did not even think about how just reviewing that would sort of tie into pan. It just happened. Or check out Finding Neverland with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. The story of J.M. Barrie, much better films all around. Just Skip Pann. Not worth your money, guys. Thank you so much, as always, for watching. And if anyone has any ideas as to why Nirvana or the Ramones was part of this soundtrack, I would love to know because it’s bugging me. Thank you guys very much. And as always, if you like this, you can click right here and get stuck, monetized.