Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Pan 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Up in the Sky—It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's . . . an Expensive Cult Film!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 20, 2015

Director Joe Wright's Pan has already been punished with the film industry's equivalent of the scarlet letter, joining Tomorrowland and Fantastic Four as one of 2015's biggest flops. To date, its worldwide gross is barely half of its estimated $250 production and marketing costs, and the critical reaction has been scathing. The film suffered negative pre-release publicity when it was postponed from the summer to the fall, and it was also attacked for its casting, notably the choice of the caucasian Rooney Mara to play Tiger Lily, a traditionally Native American character. A project which had begun with an original script so promising that it was chosen for the 2013 Black List is now being rushed to home video just two and a half months after its U.S. theatrical release.

Is Pan the disaster that its box office suggests? No, but it's a different movie than what was advertised, and its likely audience is far more specialized than the kind of broad demographic for which studios greenlight nine-figure production budgets. Although Wright may have set out to make a children's film—and repeatedly notes in his Blu-ray commentary that he often toned down the violence so that younger kids would not be frightened—he ended up making a fantasy for grownups. It takes an adult sensibility to appreciate the many references to J.M. Barrie's original Peter Pan stories layered throughout Pan, as well as the collage of images and sounds drawn from sources as diverse as The Lady from Shanghai, the Spanish Baroque painter Velázquez and the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which plays a crucial role in Peter's introduction to Neverland. There's also a distinctively adult perspective in the film's celebration of the imagination as an escape from institutional oppression and small-mindedness.

The script by Jason Fuchs (Ice Age: Continental Drift) combines familiar elements from Peter Pan lore with the classic tale of a hero's journey that has sustained popular mythology from King Arthur to Star Wars. But it was Wright, making his first foray into effects-heavy filmmaking, who developed Pan's distinctive visual vocabulary, which relies as much as possible on the physicality of real sets (huge construction projects, in many cases) and in-camera effects to provide a sense of weight and density that is typically missing from pure CGI. The result, at its best, recalls the loopy, harebrained style of Terry Gilliam in The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. That film, too, was a box office flop and was not for kids—and its reputation has steadily grown over the years.

Wright shot Pan with 3D in mind, and the 3D conversion is excellent. If you're going to experience Pan at its best, 3D is the way to go.

Pan is typically described as an "origin story", which is a disservice to prospective viewers. If you want to have a disappointing experience, that's the way to approach the film. For anyone whose preferred version of Peter Pan comes from Disney's animated feature, Pan can't possibly satisfy as an origin story, because it takes too many liberties with J.M. Barrie's original conception. To borrow a musical analogy, the film is a variation on a theme. It lifts numerous elements from Barrie's creation and uses them to construct a new story which Wright attempts to infuse with the youthful enthusiasm that has made Barrie's tale an enduring classic. As Wright has said repeatedly, the film's entire world may be nothing more than the product of its hero's fertile imagination.

That imagination is a much-needed safeguard against a cruel world, because it belongs to an orphan named Peter who was left by his mother, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), on the doorstep of a London orphanage run by the tyrannical Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke). Twelve years later, at the height of World War II, with London under constant threat from the German Blitz, young Peter (Levi Miller) and his friend Nibs (Lewis MacDougall) discover that Mother Barnabas has been hoarding rations while depriving the children under her care. Peter also discovers—and here is where fantasy and reality become hard to distinguish—a letter that Mary left for him saying what every orphan desperately wants to believe: that he's "special" and they'll be reunited one day.

His mother's letter, and the childhood desire that it represents for a world in which one is cherished and exceptional, serves as a kind of conceptual portal to the magical dimension where Peter finds Neverland. Suddenly the German Blitz becomes an aerial assault by a flying pirate ship commanded by Bishop (Nonso Anozie), who travels the world—and apparently time—snatching up orphans to work as slave labor in vast mines overseen by Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), the most fearsome pirate in history. Screenwriter Fuchs wrote the part of Blackbeard specifically for Hugh Jackman, who plays the grandiose villain with all the theatricality he can muster, which, in Jackman's case, is considerable. When Blackbeard strides out before his throngs of kidnapped subjects (who know to worship and applaud him, or else), they're like a mirror in which he sees his own reflection. What he actually says to them (promising rewards he never intends to provide) is irrelevant.

Blackbeard needs these slaves to mine Neverland for "pixum", or crystalized fairy dust, which is all that remains of the mystical race he vanquished long ago (or so he believes). The substance gives him eternal youth; he may have grown up, but he won't grow old. Blackbeard's only remaining enemies in Neverland are the indigenous tribe led by Princess Tiger Lily (Mara) and her father (Jack Charles), and they are no match for the dread pirate's fleet of flying ships.

But there's a prophecy. (Isn't there always?) The necklace that Peter has worn since infancy—another gift from his mother—indicates that he is destined to vanquish Blackbeard and reshape Neverland. Many adventures await as Peter escapes the mines and makes common cause with Tiger Lily and her people. A companion in these exploits is another escapee from Blackbeard's mines, an American swashbuckler in the great tradition of . . . well, not exactly Indiana Jones, but maybe Rick O'Connell from The Mummy films. He's played by Garrett Hedlund (TRON: Legacy), and his name, when he finally gives it, has been known to cause groans: "It's Hook! The name's James Hook!"

Pan's conception of Peter's future nemesis is probably its most controversial departure from the familiar legend. Certainly it's impossible to discern in Hedlund's cynical but good-hearted oaf the future one-handed pirate captain with an unquenchable thirst for revenge against the young boy who, in this film, he befriends and rescues. It's equally impossible to imagine the chain of events that could transform Hedlund's Jim Hook into a figure even remotely resembling the character of Disney's animation or the version that Dustin Hoffman played for Spielberg in Hook (and thanks to Pan's box office failure, it's unlikely that any sequel will attempt to show Hook's transformation). Hedlund's character works better if his name is treated as just one of the script's many comic riffs on the Peter Pan story, which fits with Hook's function as the obligatory sidekick to the main hero. Both Hedlund and director Wright seem to have grasped from the outset that the script's redefinition of Hook had to be played for laughs, because Hedlund's performance is almost as broad as Jackman's, and the character takes more cartoonish physical abuse than anyone else. The jokes at Hook's expense continue to the very end, with a concluding exchange between Hook and Peter about how they'll always be friends ("What could possibly go wrong?").

Pan has also been criticized for its many incongruities and anachronisms, including the rainbow of indigenous peoples who make up Neverland's inhabitants (Native Americans, Australian aboriginals, African tribes and many more) and several pop songs that play prominent roles, notably "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which Blackbeard uses to rouse his minions to a cheering frenzy. These, too, are consistent with the notion of Neverland as a world invented by an imagination that is restlessly sweeping up whatever raw material happens to be available. (As Wright relates in the commentary, the odd effect of the Nirvana song was discovered by accident during rehearsal; if nothing else, it instantly confirms that this is not the Neverland you thought you knew.)

Today's movie audience has become so instinctively sophisticated when it comes to CGI-enhanced action sequences that no one can predict what they'll like, but I found several of Pan's set pieces inventive and original. Peter's removal to Neverland during a German air raid is an elaborately crafted marvel, with Bishop's ship evading German bombers and RAF fighters over a historical London skyline. Meanwhile, RAF command tries to make sense of the conflicting reports being radioed in. The scenes at Blackbeard's mines, which recall the crowded desolation of Mad Max: Fury Road, offer exceptional scale that is matched by Jackman's florid performance as Blackbeard. (Big performances are fine, if they suit the character, as they certainly do here.) Later sequences, including the elaborate battle in which Blackbeard is finally defeated, are well-crafted though somewhat more familiar. Still, Pan is never dull, and its busy action is always in service of a story. It's just not the story that audiences were led to expect.

Pan 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pan is credited to two cinematographers, Jon Mathieson (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and Seamus McGarvey (The Avengers) and was shot digitally on both the Arri Alexa XT and the Red Epic (according to IMDb). With post-production completed on a digital intermediate, including extensive digital effects, Warner's 1080p, MVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files.

From the moment the camera zooms upward from the image of the infant Peter abandoned on the orphanage steps, it is obvious that director Joe Wright's visual design is intended to exploit depth. Similar moments occur repeatedly throughout the film, both horizontally and vertically. Pan doesn't use 3D to make you jump back from the screen but rather to expand the scope and scale of what are already massive sets and hugely conceived CG animations. Both the night sky over London (during Peter's "departure") and the various regions of Neverland feel more spacious and immense with the additional dimensionality of 3D presentation. The dominion of Blackbeard over his slaves/followers seems greater when the height from which he speaks to them is accentuated by 3D. The threatening scale of the "Never-birds" (a predator species encountered in the forest) is more immediately visible in 3D. The Neverland crocodiles are more impressively massive in 3D. The chaos of the final battle is easier to follow when the action occurs in recognizably separate planes in space.

The characteristics of the Blu-ray image discussed in the 2D review generally apply here, and the 3D image is free from crosstalk or other anomalies.

Pan 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pan is the latest Blu-ray release to arrive with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which will play back on most current systems with its Dolby TrueHD 7.1 core (or 5.1, depending on the system). The sound mix is as lively, complex and involving as one would expect from a big-budget fantasy film, and it doesn't hurt that the sound designers were not constrained by any sense of realism, because so much of what happens in Pan is impossible. A group of boys stampeding through a dining room to get fed is something we've heard or can easily imagine, but what is the sound of a flying pirate ship evading its pursuers by rising into the stratosphere (and beyond)? Pan's sound team found expressive aural accompaniments for this and many other outlandish moments, some of which occur simultaneously. The final battle in particular involves a cacophony of sword play, swinging masts, toppling sails, collisions and near misses, and several other sounds that cannot be described without spoilers.

The surround immersion is impressive. Whatever one may think of the choice to have Blackbeard's miners chant the lyrics from "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the impact of the group roar emanating from the entire speaker array as Blackbeard strides to his elevated podium is memorable, especially as the camera narrows in on Blackbeard while the soundtrack picks out his voice from the crowd. More subtle, but no less thorough, immersion occurs in scenes where Peter is shown the past by Tiger Lily in a magic pool of water or by Blackbeard in a sequence designed to resemble a hall of mirrors.

Dynamic range is broad, and bass extension is deep, especially when the ships are being tossed about on waves of air. The dialogue is always clear, even with Hugh Jackman's ripely theatrical delivery. The score by John Powell (Kung Fu Panda and its sequels) expertly walks the fine line between serious adventure and comical cartoon.

Pan 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All of the extras appear on the included 2D Blu-ray disc. The 3D version contains no extras.

• Commentary with Director Joe Wright: Because Pan was Wright's first major effects film, much of his commentary focuses on noting the integration of CG and live action. But he also provides insight into themes and story points, as well as casting and production design. Many of Wright's remarks offer valuable perspective on the film, especially near the end, when he reflects on the relation between Peter and his mother.



• Never Grow Up: The Legend of Pan (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:50): This featurette examines the evolution of the Peter Pan legend, beginning with J.M. Barrie's original writings. Not surprisingly for an extra accompanying a Warner film, there is no mention of the Disney film or Miramax's Finding Neverland.



• The Boy Who Would Be Pan (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:07): A portrait of actor Levi Miller and the casting process that found him.



• The Scoundrels of Neverland (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:49): A closer look at Blackbeard and his pirates, including Bishop, Steps and Lofty.



• Wondrous Realms (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:01): A whirlwind tour of Neverland, including practical sets, artist renderings and CGI creations.

Pan 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

After so much negative advance word, I was surprised to find that Pan was an enjoyable viewing experience. The visuals are often stunning, the story is classical, and the characters are consistently interesting (and anyone who thinks they're unrealistic or too broadly drawn should take a good long look at reality, which daily offers people every bit as extreme as Blackbeard or Hook). If the film has flaws, they're in the restraint that Wright applied to keep the film family-friendly and in the vestiges of narrative machinery (e.g., the opening voiceover) that dangle the promise of an "origin story". Pan is something else, and if you can take it that way, the Blu-ray is recommended, the 3D Blu-ray highly so.