Pan

Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. A title even­tu­al­ly set­tled upon by author JM Bar­rie as he dili­gent­ly tran­scribed those sto­ries which had once so enthralled the Llewe­lyn Davies chil­dren. ​‘Wouldn’t’ being the oper­a­tive word at play. Peter Pan per­son­i­fied the aching desire for an adult­hood reject­ed, for youth and inno­cence eter­nal; for the pro­tect­ed child­hood of Barrie’s broth­er, dead in an ice skat­ing acci­dent at 14.

That long­ing heart is mut­ed now, lost with­in the clam­our for cash mon­ey and forced whim­sy, as Joe Wright’s block­buster pre­quel to Barrie’s clas­sic bel­lows: ​‘But what if Cap­tain Hook was once good? A grownup Tom Sawyer-type with the dash­ing looks of Gar­rett Hed­lund?’ ​‘What if pirate ships had flamethrow­ers that could scorch the wings off an entire flock of fairies in a sin­gle blast?’ ​‘How could we work in an entire crowd of slave-min­ers singing Nirvana’s ​‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?’

Pan may be vibrant – fer­vent­ly cre­ative, even – but at the cost of so wil­ful­ly ignor­ing its own pedi­gree, there’s a heart­less­ness to it. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up is now the proph­e­sised Cho­sen One, the sav­iour of Nev­er­land, Jason Fuchs’ screen­play forc­ing Peter Pan into that arche­typ­al jour­ney of mat­u­ra­tion and teach­ing him what he would loathe the most in this world, respon­si­bil­i­ty. Barrie’s inten­tion was nev­er for Peter to be a hero; he was obsti­nate, self­ish even. He was mere­ly a child rev­el­ling in child­hood. His famous dec­la­ra­tion that ​“to die will be an awful­ly big adven­ture” was spo­ken not out of brav­ery but, as the nar­ra­tor explains, out of an igno­rance of what a full life could be.

Barrie’s text isn’t sacred, nor should it be; Peter Pan’s lega­cy has thrived under the guid­ance of new voic­es and per­spec­tives. It’s gen­uine­ly wel­com­ing to see Neverland’s Native Amer­i­can tribe refig­ured into a cul­tur­al mix of every colour and creed, to deft­ly skirt the original’s impli­ca­tion that Native Amer­i­cans were as fabled as mer­maids and fairies. Good­will, of course, imme­di­ate­ly spoiled by the cast­ing of a white woman (Rooney Mara) as Tiger Lily; dressed up like she’s head­ed to Coachel­la for a week­end spent cul­tur­al­ly appro­pri­at­ing with wild abandon.

It’s one thing to play with detail, but it’s anoth­er to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter the heart of your sto­ry. As enchant­i­ng as it may be to see a fly­ing pirate ship take on a squadron of spit­fires, even drag­ging Barrie’s Edwar­dian time­line into World War Two direct­ly ties Peter to an era which has become a cul­tur­al short­hand for the loss of inno­cence. In that tum­bling, chaot­ic rush to be at its most imag­i­na­tive, its most mag­i­cal, Wright’s Pan has some­how iden­ti­fied itself as com­plete­ly anti­thet­i­cal to what Peter Pan should rep­re­sent. It’s like rewrit­ing Atlas Shrugged as a Com­mu­nist pam­phlet. It just doesn’t feel right.