LOS ANGELES -- Pan has created a new genre in film: A movie so bad, so resoundingly rotten in every way, that you should absolutely leave the house this weekend and pay good money to see it.
We're not talking about "so bad it's good" here -- this isn't Showgirls or The Room. There is no joy in the earnest schlock of it all, no giddy tickle of mockery and camp. No, no, nothing like that. Pan is instead its own thing: a visually disgusting, audibly loud and obnoxious, narratively incoherent attempt at a Hollywood adventure blockbuster.
And it is glorious.
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Behold! Before you unfolds a symphony of horrible creative choices, from the grating "Chosen One" hero's journey script to the all-wrong casting to the vomit colors to the clueless music cues. There you sit in utter astonishment that every, single thing about this movie is awful, including how wretchedly these elements fit together. Which is some kind of achievement.
All credit is due to director Joe Wright, whose 2007 film Atonement was nominated for seven Academy Awards, following four Oscar nominations for Pride & Prejudice in 2005. Wright showed he had more than just the period genre on lockdown in 2011 with Hanna, the grueling, critically admired assassin thriller starring Saoirse Ronan.
To borrow a phrase from Bloodline, Wright isn't a bad director. He just did a bad thing.
Pan, which is supposed to be an "origin story" (read: Warner Bros. was gunning for sequels here), begins in World War II London, where infant Peter's mother (Amanda Seyfried) drops him at an orphanage so dismal and corrupt, with nuns so cartoonishly severe, that you'll need to check your giggles. These are kids without parents. In a war. Who are routinely abused and fed cold gruel. No laughing.
One night, during a bombing raid, Peter is inexplicably hoisted away by a band of Mad Max: Fury Road-looking pirates who have a flying pirate ship that the Spitfire pilots of the Royal Air Force decide to engage in a dogfight. It's not really clear why that goes on for so long, as the ship can just shoot up into space, sail through some kind of alternate dimension and alight safely in Neverland. But anyway.
Here we are at Neverland, which isn't yet a good place to not grow up -- but rather an otherworldly, huge and nightmarish open mining pit.
Great.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/blackbeard.thm_.png" caption="Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard in "Pan."" credit="Warner Bros." alt="blackbeard.thm"]
As the ship full of fresh labor descends, the inhabitants of Neverland, greasy, grimy men and boys with pick-axes and broken teeth, are chanting "Smells Like Teen Spirit." As in, the Nirvana song. Even though it's World War II back on Earth, and this is Neverland. (There is one other modern song used in Pan, The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," also chanted by the pit miners. Both instances are inexplicably random and just ... pointless and bad.)
This open-cast mining operation is run by Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who is digging for fairy dust (they call it "Pixite" here) that he uses to keep himself youthful. It's too bad it doesn't do anything for his baldness, ghastly complexion, ghoulish teeth and tendency to yell a lot. Jackman's Blackbeard is neither delicious nor particularly menacing -- more like ridiculous and irritating -- which makes him an all-new kind of villain. The guy you hate to hate to hate.
The gist of the story finally comes when Blackbeard makes Peter walk the plank, but somewhere on the way down, he flies. Or ... hovers? For a second? But in any case, the near-death incident spares Peter's life, yet also tips off Blackbeard that he is the Child in the Prophecy who will Lead the Uprising.
You know the one. The chosen one.
Though Neverland's labor force is made up of boys, Peter is befriended by its sole grownup, a fella named James Hook (Garrett Hedlund). Hook is supposed to be an "action-adventure hero" archetype -- which is another way of saying Han Solo/Indiana Jones ripoff. Hedlund plays Hook like a bunch of toddlers standing on one another's shoulders inside a suit of clothes, and the one who's doing the talking is from another planet.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/hedlund.hook_.png" caption="Garrett Hedlund as James Hook in "Pan."" credit="Warner Bros." alt="hedlund.hook"]
Hedlund's Hook is so wildly goofy and erratic that you begin to wonder if something is seriously wrong with him, but, hey, he has a leather Fedora and flirts with everything that moves and is only in it for himself -- the hell with this pitiful rebellion. So when his big moment in Pan comes, WHICH IS DIRECTLY STOLEN from Star Wars, it feels more like a satisfying touchpoint than a copyright crime.
Hook and Peter manage to escape the mine pit, but are at cross purposes: Peter has got it in his head that his mother is here, while Hook just wants to get "home." And if everything you've read so far seems like a barrel of hot nonsense, well, buckle up, because you're about to meet Tiger Lily.
Rooney Mara's casting as the Native American princess got its share of blowback when it was announced. Politically it wasn't a great move, but creatively it was worse. Mara's icy detachment worked for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but here she just seems weird and slightly mean, the leader of a tribe of mostly people of color who wear ghastly bright rainbow streaks and warpaint and do a lot of coordinated dance-fighting.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/rooney.png" caption="Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in "Pan."" credit="Warner Bros." alt="rooney"]
Somewhere along the way there is a terrible giant-crocodile scene, a terrible mermaid scene with multiple Cara Delevingnes, a terrible scene where Blackbeard raids the natives' camp, and it all culminates in a terrible finale with multiple flying ships in a race through the giant crystals and glittering colors of the "fairy hive." (The fairies, by the way, are tiny points of light -- too small to make out their forms or faces, though we get a brief glimpse of Tinkerbell -- and the only thing that's interesting about them is that Blackbeard's flame throwers can singe them to death, tens of thousands at a time. You can almost smell it!)
Though much was made of Pan's enormous practical sets, what comes through onscreen is some of the ropiest CG sludge we've seen since Robert Zemeckis' motion-capture phase, complete with a story that makes no sense despite being the oldest, most worn-out narrative in human history and performances that are so bad they're bad.
Look, this movie is resolutely awful to the core, to the point of being groundbreaking -- to miss it would be to miss one of the great cinematic debacles of our time. Pan deserves a sequel, and only your rubbernecking dollars can make that happen.
Disclaimer: My kids loved it. Bring the kids, and don't ruin it for them.