Disclaimer: There will be spoilers!
When I heard there was going to be a Peter Pan origin movie, "Pan," I was too excited for it. I was looking forward to another backstory of a classic tale, with great actors, great effects, and an all around great movie. I was expecting to be wowed by this film, but that was not the case.
The first thing that bothered me was that all of the characters had British accents. The classic Disney film was way more diverse with their characters, so I was a bit disappointed to find out that Tiger Lily was not accurate. Even in her character description for the animated Peter Pan, she is described as the Indian princess.
Secondly, when the villain is being introduced, his workers are chanting Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and later they chant Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop.” This did not make any sense to me at all. I know kids would not even recognize those songs, for you had to really listen to the chanting to understand it - it was a minute or two of “are they chanting what I think they’re chanting?” Maybe it was to give some personality to the antagonist, still I found it very unnecessary.
I knew I was watching a PG-rated film, however, I felt like it could have been a bit more graphic. During a battle scene, the people from the tribe were fighting the pirates, and when the people from the tribe died, clouds of colored powder would come up. At first, this was a bit confusing. One could not tell if the people were throwing these colored powders then disappearing, or if it was the gun powder from the pirates’ guns. If it weren’t for the closeup where you can see that it was the people who were actually exploding into these colored powders, one could’ve stayed confused. I thought it was just me, but after I discussed the movie with the four other people I went to see it with, they were just as confused as I was. I thought that was a bit too childish, I mean "Maleficent," which was also PG-rated, was graphic when necessary and that was a great movie.
The graphics throughout the movie were definitely not what I expected. At this point, as far as the film industry has come with digital effects, it has been a while since I have seen a movie where I found myself saying, “wow, that’s some really obvious CGI work,” but I found myself thinking that a lot throughout this movie.
All in all, this was an extremely kid friendly movie, as in I’m pretty sure only kids will actually enjoy this movie. I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 4.5/10, but give it a watch and judge it for yourself! I'm just hoping if Disney does in fact decide to make their own version of this film, it will be much better.
