Director Joe Wright’s Pan bombed at the box office this
weekend, opening in third place with an estimated $15.5 million. The
fantasy epic Peter Pan origin story starring Hugh Jackman reportedly had
a weighty $150 million price tag. Nothing solid has been reported for
overseas numbers but word is that it only pulled in roughly $20.5
million abroad.
The woes for Pan started last week with harsh reviews and now
it’s being labeled as one of the worst Peter Pan adaptations in history.
The story of Peter Pan comes from J.M. Barrie’s magical tale of the boy
who wouldn’t grow up that has been around for over 100 years. The new
movies attempted to put an original spin on things with a Peter Pan
origin story.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise as there were a number of factors that could have predicted Pan was in trouble. Pan
was initially set for a summer release before getting postponed to
October. The reason for the push was due to a number of reshoots to fix
the movie. There was also anger over the casting of a white Rooney Mara
as Tiger Lily, leading plenty of talk about race-bending. Director
Wright stood by his selection, telling Entertainment Weekly that
though he acknowledged concerns over “whitewashing casting,” During the
casting process, he says he met with actresses from China, India, Japan,
Russia, Africa and Iran, but that Barrie wasn’t specific in the book as
to where the native tribe came from. If you read the book, you know
Tiger Lily is described as an “Indian Princess,” and illustrations in
the 1907 book show a girl wearing fringed clothing, a headband and
feathers in her hair.
What do the critics say?
“‘Pan’ is, for the most part, ugly to look at, shrill to listen to,
and performed by actors who have been encouraged to camp it up madly in
the style usually favored by aging British sitcom stars playing
storybook characters in Christmas panto productions.” — Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
“That’s a lot of lousy ideas crammed into the first 30 minutes. The
whole movie’s like that. You walk out of ‘Pan’ feeling flattened, and
bummed out…Wright has made good films (‘Atonement’) and mixed-up,
crazily theatrical ones (‘Anna Karenina’). With ‘Pan’ he has what I hope
will always mark his career low point — the most joyless revisionism
since Disney’s ‘The Lone Ranger.’” — Michael Phillips, L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune
The film becomes a “seriously extended chase that possesses hefty
CGI-propelled dynamics but absolutely no suspense and a very limited
sense of fun.” — Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter
This is the part where we talk about Hollywood’s obsession with
making movies that aren’t needed to capitalize on a property with a
well-known name and reputation and try to make it appealing by
over-explaining everything in hopes of appearing original and cool. Did
Peter Pan need an origin story? Most likely not. But I can see why the
studio would take the gamble. You have the usually solid Hugh Jackman
playing Blackbeard, a young Captain Hook (who’s a GOOD guy! Who would
have guessed?), and plenty of opportunities to show off some fancy CGI
flying.
Instead, we got a mess of over-acting, cheesy lines, and poor story decisions.
I’ll stick to Hook or 2003’s Peter Pan.
Did you see Pan? What worked (if anything) and what failed?
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