Pan review- a critique of the 2015 film by Beyond The Trailer

Full-text transcript of the Pan review:

[00:00:00] When it comes to live action fairy tales, why should Disney have all the fun you’re watching?

[00:00:06] Beyond the trailer is a review of Warner Brothers PAN.

[00:00:27] Have you come to. I believe at times, Doris. Thanks to decades of Disney

[00:00:41] Animation, the mouse house is the trusted brand when it comes to fairy tales, yet the fairy tales themselves are actually in the public domain. The only thing that Disney owns the rights to are the elements that they added to their animated and now live action adaptations. And as Warner Brothers tries to build their own superhero division, like Disney’s Marvel, they’re also trying to launch their own live action. Fairy tale division. Pan is hitting theaters first, followed by Tarzan and King Arthur in 2016 and Jungle Book origins in 2017. Now, ideally, Pan, which is actually co-produced by Greg Berlanti, who oversees Warner Brothers popular DC Comics TV shows, would set the stage for all these upcoming films. But, well, Pan has had a rough time of it. When the picture first came together with Hugh Jackman as the mysterious pirate Blackbeard and Hanna director Joe Wright at the helm, it seemed like a very strong contender indeed. Although casting Garrett Hedlund, whose promised stardom is yet to materialize as the young hook was somewhat worrisome. But when Rooney Mara was cast as the Native American Princess Tigerlily, it shook the picture to its core audiences and the media went into a frenzy. And Warner Brothers has tried to repeatedly defend Amara’s casting by saying they went with the best actress for the role regardless of skin color.

[00:02:03] Also, it’s worth noting that Marra has a very similar look to Keira Knightley, who is Director Wright’s leading lady in Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina. Sometimes directors just favor a certain look when it comes to their leading ladies. Although to be fair, Wright is married to a woman of Indian descent, and one has to wonder how she felt about his Tigerlily casting anyway. Well, for decades, Hollywood has gotten away with whitewashing films. The recent implosion of Fox’s Exodus has gone to Warner Brothers worried, and their confidence in Pan does seem shaken as well. It was originally said to be a big summer release. Warner Brothers blinked and moved the pic to October, when none other than Disney scheduled Antman to open opposite the picture. Now it does have an entire weekend to itself, but Sony’s Goosebumps is debuting the very next weekend. And as for adult moviegoers, not only is awards season starting up, but the very genre, a crimson peak, almost a Gothic fairy tale itself, also opens the very next weekend. But still, at least publicly, Warner Brothers says they’re eager to make a PAN

[00:03:08] Sequel and soon

[00:03:09] Before newcomer Levi Miller gets too big for the role. Oh, too late. So much for I won’t grow up damn child actors in their hormones.

[00:03:20] Maybe that’s why Disney animated these fairy tales in the first place, huh? So I’m sure that there are actually a number of people who are culpable for this absolute mess. But I’m going to pin it all on Greg Berlanti because he is zero for two when it comes to movies and the stink coming off of Pan is eerily reminiscent. I’m getting a serious case of deja vu to the stink that came off of his first movie that he ever produced, also for Warner Brothers. And that is Green Lantern. Oh, boy, I tried so hard to like this movie, but at the end of the day, it’s just a waste of really good production design. I mean, the production design on this movie is Disney level good, right? I mean, this is actually I looked it up after I saw the movie because I was so incredibly impressed. And it’s a French production designer. I have her name here named Ilene Beneteau, and she did Amily who doesn’t remember the production design on that movie. But thankfully, it was paired with a decent script. And other elements will get to the specifics of PAN in just a moment. But she also worked on McMath’s Max, which I’m sure you might recall the trailer for that at least it didn’t become quite as big here in the U.S. as Emily. And then also the U.S.

[00:04:32] Lorrel movie, which is currently making the rounds. And that has a very impressive trailer. I haven’t seen that one either. But, boy, her production design single handedly held up this whole colossal mess, however. Well, Ilene Beneteau did a great job pulling off an eclectic mess. The movie itself does not. It is just a plain old mess. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t some good elements here, particularly the cast. Just two members of the cast. Actually, half of the cast is great. Half of the cast is absolutely abysmal. So the good members are Hugh Jackman, who is certainly game. I think he really wanted to try and do something special here and just was not provided with the opportunity, but he tried his darndest also. The only time we laughed out loud during the movie is when he had Pirate Purulia. At least I imagined it was pirate bureau. I thought it was hilarious. And of course, pirates get awfully dirty, so whatever can cleanse their hands must be some pretty powerful stuff. But you can imagine what the what is performance must be like. If that’s my big takeaway, then of course Levi Miller, who I think just perfectly embodies or embody. Peter Pan, I mean, fantastic casting and a great actor, I think he did a really nice job, but as we saw in the open, he is growing like a weed.

[00:05:48] But I don’t necessarily know if that would preclude him from revisiting this character for a sequel because he could maybe become teen heartthrob PAN. Right. Maybe he’s in a weird space where he seems too old to be, like just kid pan, but he still seems a little bit young for, like, you know, the kind of twilight romance that maybe you could bring to this. You know, the whole Wendy Peter Pan, Tinkerbell love triangle. Right. What team are you on? I’m not sure what team I would be on, I guess I guess I’ll be Team Tinkerbelle when he’s a little bit of a wet blanket. But anyway, I was the the best elements of the film, the production design and Hugh Jackman and Levi Miller. Otherwise, you know, I just really couldn’t understand why they were changing so many things about Pan. Right. Like when the trailers came out, I was like, this seems unnecessary to me, but I’m going to trust that you’ll be able to, you know, convince me when I watch the movie. But the movie didn’t convince me. It just seemed like a lot of change for the sake of change to a classic, by the way, and a classic that does feature an origin story for Peter Pan, which they just totally flushed down the toilet, which seems particularly blasphemous, considering what they replaced it with is so subpar.

[00:07:00] Now, at the very end of the movie, it gets a little bit good because Peter Pan, like Peter Pan, as you know, we all know him, finally shows up. And that was pretty cool. I did like that quite a bit, but it also made me angry at the same time because I was like I could have been watching this for like two hours. But instead you made me watch that horrible, convoluted, unnecessarily complicated origin story when I could have had two hours of awesome, you know, pixie flying, pixie dust, Peter Pan. I thought that that was really, you know, really a shame. I think that they should have just made that movie right away. You know, sometimes you don’t need an origin story. Sometimes an origin story just drags things out unnecessarily. Again, as I said. Now, also, as for the rest of the cast, I said the other half was abysmal. So that, of course, includes Garrett Hedlund, who I really just did not enjoy, not only because I didn’t think his performance was very good, but because I didn’t understand the point of his character, especially when Hugh Jackman was standing right next to him playing a perfectly serviceable Captain Hook. I was like, that looks a lot like Captain Hook. I don’t know what your I mean, your name might be Captain Hook, but that guy is like Hugh Jackman is actually playing Captain Hook.

[00:08:08] So I don’t know why there are two of you. And they never really, you know, gave a good reason for creating this crazy backstory where Pan and Hook used to be friends. You know, you were just like, why did you put a middleman in there? Also, I’ve seen some people say that Garrett Hedlund was playing Indiana Jones, but I didn’t get that. I felt he was trying to do Johnny Depp. And I have to say, we make fun of Johnny Depp and we tease him and we say he, like, overreacts and gets paycheck gigs these days. But I think Garrett Hedlund makes it crystal clear that it’s pretty darn difficult to do it. Johnny Depp does. And we shouldn’t take them for granted because this cheap, this cheap Johnny Depp was not working. And then, of course, Rooney Mara, you know, I already talked about the whitewashing in the open, which, of course, is just so disappointing on its own. But I mentioned that the excuse Warner Brothers made was because they just wanted to get the right actress for the role. Right. Regardless of skin color. Well, regardless of skin color, Rooney Mara was just really boring in this in this role. I mean, if this is the best actress of the role, they didn’t look very hard.

[00:09:08] I think she just did a really poor job. She was not at all compelling. And I also felt that the girl power elements with both Tigerlily and Peter’s mom, Amanda Seyfried, were just really shoehorned into the movie like they were not necessary. It’s like Peter Pan is not a girl power story. It’s a Peter Pan story. And the other thing that I want to mention is that this movie has a tremendous amount of depth in it. Like a lot of people get killed, including children. But nobody in my theater cared. They didn’t care about much when they’re watching this movie because the movie didn’t make us care about anybody and they didn’t really show any consequences. And we all knew where it was headed. We were like, yeah, I know it’s going to fly. That’s Peter Pan. We all know where this is headed. So that was another thing that really sucked a lot of the life out of the movie because, you know, you you know, the destination and they made the journey not very good. So the only reason I actually see this movie, the only reason is if you’re a fan of really great visuals like production design, if you appreciate that, then maybe you should go as a matinee for like half price. Also, if you’re going to go, you have to see it in 3-D.

[00:10:13] The 3D is very well done. It’s actually, you know, really brings the production design right to you, to life. And I think it’s very well utilized. There’s a lot of 3D ness in the movie. And and also the flying pirate ships are pretty darn neat and they look particularly good in 3D flying over the skies of London. That was really nice. That’s when I still had some hope for the movie. I was like, it’s really pretty. And then it just became do. You don’t for me to continue a conversation with so that’s my review of Pan, I’m very curious to hear what you thought of it if you if you decided to go and see it. And what do you think of Warner Brothers future when it comes to live action fairy tales, if this is their opening salvo? And Greg Berlanti, how do you feel about that booster gold Blue Beetle movie that he wants to make considering his horrible track record? Should may be just, you know, stay away from it, let someone else do it, like, not even produce it. He’s horrible. He’s like he’s really, really bad. All right. But as TV shows, I’m sure. Wonderful. All right. So thank you so much for tuning in. And you can check out some other episodes right now from. And.