Pan

I was halfway through a bag of slightly stale pretzel sticks when Hugh Jackman’s Blackbeard descended from the heavens, and suddenly, thousands of dirty-faced orphans started chanting the lyrics to Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit." At that exact moment, I knew Pan wasn't just another cynical studio cash-grab. It was something much more fascinating: a $150 million fever dream that somehow escaped the asylum.

Released in 2015, Pan arrived at the absolute peak of "Origin Story Fever." This was an era where every studio executive looked at a beloved character and asked, "But what were they doing three years before the interesting stuff happened?" Directed by Joe Wright—the man behind the lush, rhythmic cinematography of Atonement and Anna Karenina—this film is less of a standard adventure and more of a theatrical explosion. It’s a movie that feels like it was designed by a very talented child who had just been given an unlimited credit card and a heavy dose of sugar.

A Riot of Color and Chaos

The action in Pan is, if nothing else, distinct. While most contemporary blockbusters rely on the "gray sludge" aesthetic of CGI battles, Joe Wright brings his signature stage-play sensibilities to the screen. The opening sequence, featuring a flying pirate ship engaging in a dogfight with Spitfires over a blitz-torn London, is genuinely thrilling. It’s chaotic, yes, but it’s choreographed with a sense of verticality that most action directors ignore.

I loved the way the film handles "death" in Neverland. Instead of gore, characters explode into puffs of vibrant, multi-colored pigment. It’s a brilliant creative choice that makes the skirmishes feel like a high-stakes Holi festival. However, the pacing is breathless to a fault. The film moves with such a frantic energy that the emotional beats—Peter’s search for his mother, his blossoming friendship with Hook—often get trampled under the boots of the next giant set piece. My neighbor chose that exact moment to start power-washing his driveway, and the rhythmic drone outside weirdly synced up with the tribal drumming on screen, making the whole experience feel even more like a sensory assault.

The Hook, the Pirate, and the Controversy

Let’s talk about Garrett Hedlund. Playing a young, pre-hand-loss James Hook, Hedlund makes a choice. A very specific, very loud choice. He plays the character as a weird hybrid of Han Solo and a 1930s radio announcer, delivering every line with a gravelly twang that suggests Hook sounds like he’s auditioning for a community theater production of Tombstone. It’s bizarre, it’s distracting, and honestly? I kind of admired the swing.

Then there’s Hugh Jackman. As Blackbeard, he is clearly having the time of his life, chewing the scenery with enough force to leave teeth marks on the CGI. He wears a wig that looks like a dying crow and a costume that is three parts "Gothic King" and one part "Flamenco Dancer." He is the campy heart of the film.

Of course, we have to address the Tiger Lily in the room. The casting of Rooney Mara—an immensely talented but decidedly white actress—in a role traditionally depicted as Indigenous, sparked a massive social media backlash that the film never quite recovered from. In our current era of heightened awareness regarding representation, this remains the primary lens through which Pan is discussed. While the film tries to pivot by making the "tribal" inhabitants of Neverland a multi-ethnic, internationalist collective, the decision remains a jarring artifact of a specific Hollywood blind spot.

The Making of a Beautiful Disaster

Pan was a notorious box office bomb, failing to recoup its massive budget and killing any hope for a "Pan-verse." But in the years since, it has started to grow a small, dedicated cult of defenders. Why? Because it’s a "beautiful failure." In a world of focus-grouped, safe franchise films, Pan is a $150 million school play directed by a madman.

The production was massive. The crew built three-story-tall pirate ship sets that actually floated in giant water tanks at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. Levi Miller, who plays Peter, was chosen from thousands of kids because he had a specific, wide-eyed earnestness that didn't feel "Hollywood." There’s a sincerity here that is hard to hate, even when the movie is falling apart around you.

The soundtrack by John Powell (who did the incredible How to Train Your Dragon score) is a genuine masterpiece, blending traditional orchestral sweeps with those weirdly catchy punk-rock covers. Apparently, the Nirvana and Ramones songs were Joe Wright’s idea to make the pirates feel like "rock stars" to the orphans, which is the kind of "theatre kid" logic that I can’t help but find charming.

Ultimately, Pan is a movie that I would recommend not because it is "good" in a traditional sense, but because it is interesting. It represents a specific moment in the mid-2010s when studios were still willing to give visionary directors an obscene amount of money to get weird with established IP. It’s messy, overstuffed, and culturally clumsy, but it’s never boring. If you’re looking for a film that feels like a kaleidoscope being shaken by a pirate, this is the one for you. Just bring your own pretzel sticks.