PAN (2015)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In PETER PAN J. M. Barrie provided the perfect mythic representation of the child's desire to be free of all parental constrictions and go seeking adventures. Barrie clearly showed that this desire was ambivalent, as the Lost Boys do miss the blandishments of home life. Nevertheless, Peter Pan still incarnates all the rebellious aspects of male childhood-- vanity, quarrelsomeness, and even a tendency to "edit" his memory to erase experiences that don't suit the young hero. A prototype of Peter was a very small child, but clearly, in both the play and book, Barrie aged the official version up, since it would hardly be credible for anyone younger than a preteen to go around crossing swords with pirates.

One's enjoyment of PAN may be affected by the viewer's insistence on all versions of the title character following the Barrie template in terms of character, for the Peter of director Joe Wright and writer Jason Fuchs lacks any vanity, adventurousness, or lapses in memory. Fuchs apparently decided to invert Barrie's idea of Peter Pan's origins, in which Peter deserted Earth for Neverland because he thought his mother had left him alone. In this movie, infant Peter is left on the doorstep of an orphanage by his mother, who has a complicated history of her own. This Peter (Levi Miller) grows to ten years of age under the control of corrupt and greedy nuns, but he always remains steadfast to the idea that his true mother will someday come for him again.

In the film's most confusing plot-thread, it's suggested that the nuns are in cahoots with the pirates of Neverland, who stage a raid upon the orphanage one night. From the deck of their ship-- able to fly around the Earth-skies thanks to fairy dust-- the pirates cast down sky-hooks and simply snatch several boys from their beds. 

However, the flying pirate ship is under the command of a captain named Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who's never expressly said to be identical with the 17th century buccaneer. Blackbeard and his crew of rowdies (among whom is comic-relief character "Mister Smee") periodically kidnap young boys to work in the Neverland mines. Within these mines are deposits of Pixum, concatenations of fairy dust which confer the power of flight upon Blackbeard's ship and some degree of youth upon the captain. The script never elaborates upon the exact relationship between the race of fairies and these mineral deposits.

While Peter and his fellow orphans work the mnies, Peter meets Indiana Jones. Okay, it's James Hook, but actor Garrett Hedlund plays him exactly like the Harrison Ford character. Hook seems to be the only adult in the mines, but he never says how he came to be in Neverland. Peter and Hook manage to escape with the help of Smee.

All three are captured by a tribe of "savages" who are perpetually at war with the pirates. (The producers made this tribe loosely multi-racial and elided all representations of their being Barrie's Native Americans, clearly seeking to avoid any negative blowback-- which they got anyway.) Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) requires Hook to fight the tribe's best warrior before all three will be put to death. However, though Hook acquits himself well the trio are saved by a token suggests that Peter may be a predicted savior called "The Pan."

Peter's true origins here are even more wildly revisionist than his relationship with James Hook (which had seen a better revision in 2011's NEVERLAND).It turns out that that his beloved mother was a mortal brought to Neverland by her lover Blackbeard. (The nature of their relationship remains as murky as any accounting for the pirate captain's gaining access to the Never-verse.) However, the mother, name of Mary, fell in love with a male fairy, and the two of them conceived Peter. The fairy perished as the result of his having assumed a human form (curiously, neither Peter nor the script is the least bit curious about Peter's pater). Mary took shelter with the savages, and at some point managed to return to the Earth-realm, where she left infant Peter on the orphanage's doorstep. Then she was accidentally slain by Blackbeard, though the aggrieved Peter later manages to see his mother again, after a fashion.

All of these revelations are a set-up for an admittedly rousing conclusion, in which Blackbeard and his horrible hearties invade the fairy kingdom to gain more Pixum. Peter and Tiger Lily seek to warn the fairies while Hook deserts them, trying to find a way to his own universe. Peter and Tiger Lily fall afoul of Blackbeard, but they're given respite by Han Solo. Okay, it's Hook reprising the Millennium Falcon rescue from STAR WARS, but with a second flying pirate ship to match that of Blackbeard. This long climactic sequence-- during which Peter finally master his nascent ability to fly, here an inheritance from his fairy father-- is easily the best part of the movie, and does a lot to redeem the script's many plot holes. Some critics complained of too much CGI, but really, how else but through computer animation could anyone bring to life the sight of two flying frigates having a dogfight? Alas, while I found PAN to be good popcorn entertainment as long as one ignored the plot holes and the non-traditional characterization of Peter Pan, the film tanked.

I ventured my considered opinion that probably the main reason the filmmakers elided Native Americans from this PAN adaptation was to avoid controversy. Given all the belated condemnations of Disney's PETER PAN for its use of "redmen," there's nearly no chance that PAN could have dodged recriminations no matter how "respectfully" they chose to depict the tribe. So the PAN tribe becomes an unspecified polyglot, with White actress Mara assuming the role of Tiger Lily-- and this got the film accused of "whitewashing." There are real incidents of whitewashing worth citing, but here the casting had nothing to do with denying some Native American actress the role, but with trying to rework the whole tribe to stem the tide of controversy. As it happens, Tiger Lily is a strong enough role that any Native American performer ought to have considered it honorable to play the character (and indeed, few Tiger Lilies in film-history have been real Native Americans). But I can well understand the producers not wanting to take the chance. In any case, Mara's shipboard duels with Jackman's Blackbeard are one of the highlights of the movie. It's also of passing interest that both Hedlund and Mara, whose characters have a maybe-romantic interaction, were both about thirty years old in 2015, so there's no sense that this Tiger Lily will ever become Wendy's potential rival for an older Peter. Also, it's interesting that the Princess claims to have been trained in fighting by the deceased Mary, which gives Tiger Lily a slightly maternal resonance re: Peter.