Pan

Neverland’s natives have a prophecy about a flying boy, born of the love between a fairy prince and a human girl, who will overcome Blackbeard’s tyranny. “You must prove yourself to be Mary’s son,” Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) urges Peter. “They think you’re their messiah.” Drawing on this and other Christian themes, Pan tells the backstory of young Peter Pan discovering his supernatural identity and calling.

In the film’s first scene, his mother Mary abandons newborn Peter at London’s Lambeth Home for Boys. The film then jumps forward 12 years to wartime. Waiting in vain for their mothers to return, the orphans cower under Nazi bombs and nuns’ beatings.

When the nuns raise the skull-and-crossbones over the orphanage, Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) arrives in his aeronautical pirate ship. His henchmen snatch Peter (Levi Miller) and other boys out of their cots to work in Blackbeard’s pixum mines. (Blackbeard inhales the fairy dust to prevent aging.) Blackbeard returns with the new slaves to Neverland, where the captive miners greet their taskmaster with a thousand-voice rendition of Nirvana’s hit anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The humorous, inventive anachronisms atone for the film’s clunky and confusing moments. Pan’s CGI-enhanced sets, like the characters, are lavishly outfitted but not cartoonish. The worst of the violence takes place offscreen, foul language is minimal, but twice the film stretches its PG-rating’s sensuality boundaries.

Peter’s not so sure he’s anyone’s messiah—he just wants to find his mum. But with assistance from Tiger Lily and a young James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), Peter rises—soars—to the occasion.