Hugh Jackman intends to charm his admirers by making them all forget that he once was Wolverine and he makes his entrance as a staggering Blackbeard in Pan’s trailer, released this very week. Only a glimpse at the character will make you shiver with both fear and excitement and will make you reconsider the leading position for the most dazzling pirate in the cinematographic industry (and it might even erase from your memory the image of the almighty Captain Jack Sparrow).
Joe Wright is the imaginative director behind the characters and the day dreamy frantically fantastic world of Neverland becomes him entirely. After female centered productions such as Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007) or Anna Karenina (2012), Pan might be his milestone for a directing career of fantasy. Writers J.M. Barrie and Jason Fuchs are the ones who shape the jolly characters and the colorful adventures of the plot.
Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard in Pan (2015)
Stand close! Although he is the revelation of this newly released trailer, Hugh Jackman is not the only actor you’ve been waiting to see in a fantasy world like the one of Pan for so long. As any Pan needs a Peter, the trailer introduces to the large audience a young, innocent and blue-eyed Levi Miller who plays the abandoned child in search for his identity. Any Les Misérables fans reading? Amanda Seyfried aka Cosette is the mysterious and apparently heartless Mary, red-lipped mother of young Pan. Although she vanishes into a thick mist, she leaves behind a hand-written letter in which she explains to her ‘’dearest Peter’’ that she is anxious of meeting him again in any way possible. The ambiguous ‘’in this world or another’’, uttered in mysterious yet certain words by Mary, is the portal to an imaginary land.
Furthermore, action unravels and Peter Pan is taken away from the orphanage into the magical, flying ship in a Cirque du Soleil manner. ‘’Welcome… to Neverland!’’ does Blackbeard shout and scream and awe. At a first glance, Hugh Jackman’s array exceeds Jack Sparrow’s costume in elegance and style and his theatrical mimic renders a strong feeling of fright and menace, while his body posture betrays his status as the ruler of the universe, with his pointing to intimidate and limbs wide open. The young boy is saved from the mines by no other than ‘’Hook, James Hook’’ (Garrett Hedlund), a human-like character with both arms untouched by any metallic hook-shaped evil-posing device. They both enter a fantasy world within the fantasy land, which shows Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in an utmost colorful ambient; it eventually turns into a fearful land as Hugh Jackman aka Blackbeard appears with an entire gang of dreaded pirates. Neverland eventually forces Peter to admit in front of the terrible Blackbeard: ‘’I don’t believe in bed-time stories’’. As a bonus, we get the stunning Cara Delevingne as a breathtakingly beautiful siren.
As Daily Mail asserts, ‘’director Joe Wright (…) helmed this origin story of Peter Pan, which puts a new spin on J. M. Barrie’s 1911 novel’’ and we free-heartedly look forward to seeing how much of a spin Pan really is at its release on 7 July 2015.