Why "Pan" Didn't Fly

I am continuously baffled by Hollywood's insistence upon turning children's stories into "action" films that repel their target audiences. The recently released "Pan" is no exemption.

"Peter Pan" is a classic children's character. His dedicated audience tends to run under 10 years old. Maybe 11 at best. The movie was advertised before summer Disney flicks and animated features aimed at the grade school set. Yet Sony thought it sane to deliver a dark, semi-violent film that was anything but the happy fairy tale "Peter Pan" has long been to readers and film audiences both young and old.

Aside from being yet another incomprehensibly non-kid-friendly origination tale, the story itself inexplicably twisted the mythology and character relationships until it was almost unrecognizable. Sure, the Lost Boys being orphans kidnapped by pirates almost makes sense, but pretty much nothing else did after that. Here's the short list of questionable choices the "Pan" team tossed into this visually stunning train-wreck of a kid film that isn't okay for kids:

1. Blackbeard mining pixie dust to maintain his youth. This doesn't jive with Barrie's story at all. If Jason Fuchs needed to give the pirates a reason for their bad behavior, he should've taken note of the midi-chlorian debacle in the second round of "Star Wars" films. Pixie dust is magical enough without making pirates instantly young while sniffing it like hard-core cocaine addicts. MYTHOLOGY FAIL
2. Tiger Lily: They blew it on every level with how Tiger Lily was treated. In the original tale, she is roughly Peter's age and a member of the native American tribe that inhabits Neverland. I'm still completely confused about how Tiger Lily is suddenly a full-grown adult white woman with green eyes and a crush on Captain Hook. Does she age backwards after this origination story? Was her dad also dabbling in dating the Londoners who seem to visit on occasion? INEXPLICABLE CHARACTER CHANGE
3. Cowboy Captain Hook - a good guy? Really? Why? He speaks with the worst Southern accent I've heard in years and shows no signs of becoming Peter's mortal enemy. If there was a sequel being set-up to explain the turn in their relationship, there's no inkling of it in this film. Sure, TV's "Once Upon a Time" has done an excellent job of taking Hook and turning him into an almost good bad-boy, but it doesn't fit this version of Peter Pan's tale whatsoever. Again: INEXPLICABLE CHARACTER CHANGE
4. The tribe of natives looks more like the U.N. than a tribe. The chief seems to be the only discernible "native" in the group. The current "Pan Warrior" is clearly from Asia (and Cirque du Soleil), while the rest are a hodgepodge of every race and color on the planet. Yeah, that makes perfect sense on an isolated island where the only imports are orphaned boys stolen by pirates to work mines until they die of injury or old age. ILLOGICAL CASTING
5. Peter's ability to fly is due to his being half fairy. Okay, so let's completely toss the pixie dust mythology created by J.M. Barrie out the window. So how do the new kids learn to fly, then, if it isn't pixie dust and happy thoughts? MYTHOLOGY FAIL
6. Why do we end up with a small family of Lost Boys rather than the hundreds Peter inevitably freed from the mines after defeating Blackbeard? What happens to all those boys in the mines? MYTHOLOGY FAIL
7. Smee: Again, nothing works here. The new Smee is a British-accented man clearly of Middle Eastern descent. (Sure, Adeel Akhtar is a funny, talented actor, but Smee? Why?) Oh, wait, he's not "Smee" but now Smiegel. Yes, pronounced just like the Hobbit better known as Gollum in "Lord of the Rings." Intentional? Accidental? Hard to tell since this Smiegel also seems to change loyalties every time the wind blows. He betrays Hook in this version of the Peter Pan story, so it's again difficult to understand how he later becomes Hook's first mate. You guessed it, we're tagging this one another INEXPLICABLE CHARACTER CHANGE
8. Mermaid triplets. Yes, ALL of the mermaids are played by the gorgeous Cara Delevingne. I'm not even going to try to guess at the logic behind this INEXPLICABLE CHARACTER CHANGE

The list could go on but none of us really have all day. The lesson here is, when creating an origins story about one of the world's most beloved fairy tale characters, it helps to know the original story and the characters. If you plan to take creative license, you either need to stay within a logical distance of what is familiar or jump completely off the cliff. "Pan" failed because the filmmakers couldn't decide if they were making a fairy tale origin story for kids or a completely-off-the-cliff action movie for adults, leaving little for either audience. Lesson #2: if you plan to market a film to kids, it should neither be dark no violent, and "Pan" is both. Sure, it's not Tarantino-violent, but it's still too violent for kids under 12, and too fairytale for kids over 13. The film itself is beautiful with gorgeous effects, but that's just not enough to hold the attention of even very young audiences today.