It’s the word destiny that stands out for me. I believe in destiny. Do you? And I believe in the power of creation. This movie is about creating an amazing world where there is no reality to hold onto. It’s about a visceral and emotional experience where space constantly shifts, and it’s very much about connecting to the kid within you.
If you are reading this and you decide to go see Pan, I propose it’s destiny. I suggest you open your mind and open your heart, take yourself on a voyage of discovery, and let the power of the imagination whisk you into Neverland for a couple of enthralling hours.
Jason Fuchs, who wrote the original screenplay, was taken by the character at an early age - an enthrallment that never left him. “When I was nine years old, I was on a Peter Pan ride with my dad and we got stuck in a flying pirate ship over a miniature London,” he recalls. “It was literally the best 25 minutes of my life, up there with LED stars twinkling above us and Peter and Wendy flying five feet away.” Those moments engendered the youngster with questions he would spend years hoping to answer. “At the time, I kept asking my dad, ‘How did Peter get to Neverland?’ ‘Why can he fly?’ ‘How did he and Hook meet for the first time and why do they hate each other so much?’ I read the original book in search of answers, but found only hints, and I always thought it would be great to make a movie that told the full story, that answered at least some of the questions I had that day. Every generation deserves its own Peter Pan story; it was exciting to me to reexamine what we think we know about Peter and Hook and Tiger Lily, and to twist and turn those notions around in Pan.”
Pan is the story of an orphan who is spirited away to the magical Neverland. There, he finds both fun and dangers, and ultimately discovers his destiny - to become the hero who will forever be known as Peter Pan.Director Joe Wright said. “This particular screenplay had a heart to it that I hadn’t really found in other movies of this scale. And I have a son, so I really wanted to make this movie for him.”
The story Jason Fuchs devised is the untold tale of how a young orphan named Peter would become the hero known forevermore as Peter Pan. A young woman, Mary - played by Amanda Seyfried - deposits her infant son on the steps of an orphanage called the Lambeth Home for Boys, leaving him with a note, a kiss, and a pan flute charm on a string about his neck. The story picks up with Peter, now aged 12, still dreaming of his mother’s return. Shades of the rascally Pan readers all know are evident in the rebellious young lad who, along with his best friend Nibs, revels in outsmarting the officious orphanage director, Mother Barnabas.
But what the boys soon learn is that her greed doesn’t stop with the Home’s war rations. With her blessing, and in the midst of the Blitz, Peter, along with several other boys, is plucked from his bed by a band of pirates and whisked away to an extraordinary place… Neverland. However, it’s not the Neverland we’ve all come to know. Under Blackbeard’s rule, Peter and his fellow orphans - along with thousands more - are thrown into a massive dirt pit, and forced to dig ceaselessly for the rarest of gems: pixum, from which pixie dust is extracted. But when Peter comes face to face with Blackbeard, he proves himself to have an extraordinary gift, and it becomes clear that the malevolent ruler may have even more to fear from Peter, and that his fate, and the very fate of Neverland, may rest in this young boy’s hands.
Starring as the larger-than-life villainous Blackbeard in Pan, Hugh Jackman states, “Director Joe Wright is a true visionary, an adult who’s able to tap into a child’s mind and run wild, so audiences are going to see Neverland like they never have before and it’s been created in 3D. This was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had making a movie. “ “I really just wanted to make an exciting, entertaining film, and have as good a time as possible doing it,“ Joe Wright conveys. “It’s a pleasure making a film for kids because you can free yourself of too much seriousness. It’s a mad world we’ve created, full of color and texture and strange, wonderful images that hopefully feel like they’ve come from a child’s imagination.”
With author J.M. Barrie’s classic tale as the primary inspiration behind the story, Wright says he embraced the author’s “sense of strangeness. It’s a very odd book. It doesn’t underestimate children’s intelligence; there are no ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies,’ everyone is flawed, even Peter. I loved the duplicity of all the characters.”
Taking on the iconic role of Peter Pan is newcomer Levi Miller, who says, “The script was magical, and to play Peter in a story telling the origin of Peter Pan was amazing, and really, really cool.”
As the air is getting cooler and our hearts are warming to the holidays, seek out the magic of Peter Pan once again. Enjoy the experience, better yet, enjoy the journey, for it’s here that destiny truly begins.