Film / Pan

Blackbeard: Have you come to kill me, Peter?
Peter: I don't believe in bedtime stories.

Pan is a 2015 fantasy film directed by Joe Wright and written by Jason Fuchs, serving as both an alternative origin story for Peter Pan and Captain Hook and a prequel to J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, one of the earliest Peter Pan stories. It stars Levi Miller as Peter, with Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, and Amanda Seyfried co-starring.

In this story, Peter starts out as a newborn left on the steps of a London orphanage. Years later, living a bleak existence at the orphanage under abusive nuns during World War II, Peter finds himself whisked away to Neverland. There, he makes friends in Captain James Hook (Hedlund) and the warrior Tiger Lily (Mara), and the three must band together to save Neverland from Blackbeard (Jackman).

Trailers: Teaser, Official

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This film has examples of:

• Action Girl: Tiger Lily is a young woman who has martial arts, knife throwing and swordfighting skills which she shows off fighting pirates very ably.
• Action Mom: In the film's opening, we see Peter's mother, Mary, parkour over a locked gate. Later, Tiger Lily reveals that Mary had been the one to train her in combat.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • James Hook is portrayed as a dashing, goodhearted hero who quickly becomes close friends with Peter. The worst that he ever does is repeatedly trying to leave Neverland, to escape Captain Blackbeard. Even then he always tries to convince Peter and Tiger Lily to come with him. And he comes back every single time, ending the film by declaring that he changed his mind.
  • The mermaids of the traditional Peter Pan story are shark-mouthed man-eating clawed women. Here, as in many looser adaptations, they are more pleasant-looking and helpful.
  • And Peter himself of course. In the books he's just a kid having fun with his immortal buddies. Here, he's the full blown Messiah.
• Age Lift:
  • Tiger Lily is traditionally a young girl in the original story and its many adaptations (presumably, she's around Peter's age). Here, she's aged up to be around Hook's age instead.
  • In the other adaptations, Nibs and the other lost boys are presumably younger, to varying degrees, than Peter, although a lot of the age difference is not evident thanks to Neverland's imbued immortality. Here they are the same age as Peter as they were his friends from the orphanage.
  • In universe, the imbued immortality of Neverland is not enough for Blackbeard, who was already quite old when he found it. So, he uses an inhalation device to breathe in small doses of pixum on occasion to regain his youthful body.
• Anachronism Stew: Done deliberately with Neverland, which mixes several time periods thanks to the arrival of people throughout history. The pirates are full 17th century, the mines evoke a Old West feel and there's some Victorian influence as well. Not to mention characters singing songs by Nirvana and The Ramones.
• Agent Peacock: Blackbeard dresses in a very flamboyant manner, since he's quite a fearsome pirate.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The theme song for the Japanese release is "Eien no Motto Mate Made" by Seiko Matsuda.
• Bald of Evil: Blackbeard wears a wig, but otherwise fits this trope underneath.
• Beard of Evil: Blackbeard's well-trimmed goatee.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Hook compliments Tiger Lily's pretty eyes in a bit suave manner which we may consider an invasion of her personal space. Tiger Lily slaps him and runs away, but we see her smiling as she fled.
• Belly-Scraping Flight: One aircraft's belly is seen scraping another craft's belly, when the flying pirate ship Peter and Hook use to escape flips upside-down to avoid a direct collision with another aerial vessel. Then it's played straight when the stolen ship rights itself barely in time to make it over a high wall.
• Big Bad: Blackbeard.
• Bond One-Liner: Blackbeard, before his attempts to kill Peter, tells him to close his eyes and then "Think a happy thought." Peter repeats it back to him, just as the fairies beat him back against the railing of his ship before leaving him to fall with it into the depths of the pixum cavern.
• Boomerang Comeback: Tiger Lily is threatened by a fat pirate. She throws her hatchet nowhere close to him; the pirate sneers that she missed, before the hatchet finishes making a wide circle around a large tree and hits him.
• The Chosen One: Peter.
• Composite Character: In the original book, Blackbeard was mentioned in passing as Hook's former captain. The film makes him a Captain Hook stand-in, being the pirate captain who terrorizes Neverland and has it out for Peter Pan. Hook himself appears, but is reinvented as Blackbeard's enemy and a good guy.
• Cool Ship: Queen Anne's Revenge (Blackbeard's ship) flies in this movie. So do all the ships he gave his men.
• Crucified Hero Shot: A brief one of Peter during the final confrontation, just before directing the fairies to attack Blackbeard's ship.
• Demoted to Extra: Peter's fairy companion Tinker Bell makes a very brief appearance in the pixum cavern.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Many pirates are thrown from the flying pirate ships.
  • In the final battle in the pixum caverns, Captain Blackbeard, as well as his ship and crew, are left to fall to their supposed deaths. None of them are killed before they fall, and all of them are falling in a cavern full of pixie dust!
• Dodgy Toupee: Blackbeard's elaborate toupee is knocked off during the final battle, much to his chagrin.
• Doomed by Canon: Though Peter and Hook's friendship and partnership has been swell, it's plain obvious how it ends.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Sam Smiegel hates being called "Smee".
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Blackbeard is clearly heartbroken due to accidentally killing Peter's mother.
• Evil Is Hammy: Blackbeard.
• Evil Orphanage Lady: Mother Barnabas makes Peter's and every orphan's life a living hell by making them do chores that would endanger their lives, hoard rations of food for herself, delivers cruel punishment, and top it off she sells the orphans as child slave laborers to Blackbeard.
• False Friend: Smiegel helps Hook and Peter escape, but later reveals the secret of the fairy kingdom to Blackbeard.
• Godiva Hair: The mermaids are heavily implied to be topless, with this trope keeping the movie PG.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Peter is revealed to be half-fairy, born out of the love of a human woman, named Mary, and a fairy prince.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Blackbeard vs Bishop vs Smiegel.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Peter's closest friend and ally in Neverland is Hook. And at the movie's climax, Peter finally rediscovered his ability to fly to save Hook from falling. He jumped to save him, before he knew whether it would work or if he would simply kill himself, too.
• Historical Domain Character: Blackbeard.
• Incoming Ham: The trailers introduce Blackbeard with his "WELCOME! TO NEVERLAAAAAAAAND!" shout. His first appearance onscreen is bellowing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" along with his vast crew, before leaping atop the safety railings of his ship.
• In Name Only: James Hook has really nothing to do with Barrie's Old Etonian gentleman pirate...yet.
• Large Ham: Hugh Jackman's Blackbeard is very over-the-top.
  Blackbeard: WELCOME! TO NEVERLAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!
• Made a Slave: Peter, and the other children in his orphanage.
• Mythology Gag
  • Captain Blackbeard, before trying kill Peter, asks him to "Think a happy thought."
  • Smee is usually Captain Hook's first-mate, when Hook is the Neverland Pirate-King. Here, where Hook is a heroic escaped slave, and Captain Blackbeard is the Neverland Pirate-King, Smiegel flip-flops between helping Hook escape and helping Blackbeard hunt him down.
  • At the very end, Hook and Peter acknowledge their usual relationship:
    Pan: We'll always be friends, Hook. Won't we?
    Hook: Always! What could possibly go wrong?
  • When Peter was asking about the missing orphans, he mentioned "The Twins".
  • Bishop referred to Peter as a "Lost Boy" for he, at that time, was a boy lost in the woods.
  • The gate that Mary parkoured over at the beginning had the words "Kensington Gardens".
  • Hook is stirring the water with his hand when Tiger Lily mentions that crocodiles live in the lake. Hook promptly removes his hand.
  • Blackbeard tells Peter that it's "bad form" to beg.
  • One of the orphans asks if Hook is a pirate too. Peter answers "No. Not yet."
  • "Second to the right, and straight on 'till morning."
• Not His Sled: Hook never has a Face–Heel Turn, and stays with Peter to the end.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: A bizarre version done with, of all things, a crowd of pirates chanting "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
• Origins Episode: It's an alternative to Peter Pan's usual origin story.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Peter's pan-pipe amulet key.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Tiger Lily, portrayed here as an adult, is Hook's eventual love-interest, once he changes his mind about leaving Neverland.
• Race Lift: Sort of. Tiger Lily and her tribe of stereotypical "Injuns" are changed into a fantasy tribe of mystics who lived in Neverland even before Blackbeard arrived. Tiger Lily herself is played by Rooney Mara.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Blackbeard is significantly more skilled than the rest of his men and gives Tiger Lily quite a difficult battle.
• Really 700 Years Old: Most people in Neverland, who already live with it's imbued immortality. Blackbeard is the most prominent example, having regularly rejuvenated himself using fairy dust for goodness how long. Upon finding the hidden fairy kingdom, with its vast stores of fairy dust, he gasps, "Eternity beckons. I will live forever."
• Reunion Vow: Peter's mother leaves him a letter before leaving him on the steps of an orphanage in which she vows that she will see him again "in this world or another". However, she is revealed to have been killed before a possible reunion, and the failure of the film further extinguishes any possibility.
• Shout-Out: Bishop dubs Blackbeard as "The Pirate all pirates fear", a moniker that is also ascribed to Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
• Sky Pirates: Blackbeard and his pirates, who use flying sailing ships
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The film has been noted as having a similar feel to Hook. Such similarities include the rewritten canon, the surname-as-title, and the highly colourful appearance of the native tribe. However, whether these assumptions are accurate or not remains to be seen.
  • Neverland is a TV movie with a broadly similar premise.
• Technicolor Death: When people from Neverland are killed they explode into pixum.
• Third-Person Person: Smiegel (Smee) does this. Blackbeard finally tells him that he'll be an "unperson" if he doesn't knock it off.
• Villain Song: Blackbeard and his crew sing "Smells Like a Teen Spirit" in the manner of one.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Tiger Lily gives one to Hook when he betrays the map to the fairy kingdom
  Hook: I couldn't watch you die!
  Tiger Lily: Then you should have closed your eyes!
• Would Harm a Child: Blackbeard.