Right now the entertainment world is awash with fantasy stories and fairy tales. Disney is seemingly on a hard mission to turn all of its past animated features into live-action pictures like Maleficent, Cinderella and the soon to be Beauty and the Beast. So it’s no wonder that the boy who never grew up is next. Warner Bros. is currently working on a live-action Peter Pan origin story with Pride and Prejudice director Joe Wright. And we asked Wright why he thinks the world is so thirsty for fairy tales. Why do we need Neverland?
At the San Diego Comic-Con, between photos, we cornered the Pan director to see why the audience is finding so much joy in fanciful and familiar stories from our past.
Before Pan you were connected to another fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, so clearly the interest in fairy tales is there. Why?
I think, probably, my interest in fairy tales stems from my parents’ puppet theatre. I was brought up in a puppet theatre, and the shows that they did were generally fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, which was a favourite of my dad’s shows, Oliver Goldsmith stories and Oscar Wilde fairy tales. I’ve always had this kind of love of myth and, I guess, sort of mystical storytelling, really. It kind of, I think, comes from there.
This is definitely the most fantasy-style film that you’ve done. Were you comfortable in this role? Were you nervous?
I really liked it. It was really fun. I wanted to make a film for my son. I’ve just become a dad, and I read the script that was about this boy looking for his mum. My wife and my son have this intense, intense love affair that I just find beautiful and magnificent and powerful, and so I wanted to make a film about that love between a son and his mum, really.
And then you found Levi Miller.
And then we found Levi. Which is really lucky.
I just met Levi ... it’s absurd how much he looks like Peter Pan.
Yeah, it was like finding Saoirse [Ronan] when we were doing Atonement. It was that moment of we’d met thousands and thousands of kids, and we had casting representatives in literally every English-speaking country in the world, and a tape came in of Levi, and he was light and exuberant and mischievous, and he has this lack of any irony or cynicism.
I walked in and he ripped the heart out of my chest. That doesn’t happen very often. Good casting. He really is beautiful.
He’s got a beautiful soul. He’s really very good.
A lot of your films, even the lighter ones, have edges of darkness around them, or a lot, a lot more darkness in them. Are we going to see a lot of darkness in Pan?
I think the book, J.M. Barrie’s book, is quite dark and it refuses to put the characters in either a totally good silhouette, or a totally bad silhouette. They’re complicated and they’re good and bad, including Peter — who, from one perspective, he’s terrible, he’s heartless. He steals people’s ideas, and he thinks he’s above reading and writing, although I think that’s a cover for just not being able to read. And yet, he’s also magical and he has this incredible imagination. His imagination is so powerful that it can make his friends believe that they’re eating when actually their bowls are empty. I think there is a kind of darkness to all the characters, or the kind of perception of the view of character.
Also, I was aware of the fact that my son was having terrible night terrors at the time. They would really scare him. I felt that it was important to represent those fears, and then through the course of the narrative, show how it’s possible to overcome those fears with imagination and bravery and cunning and guile. I felt that that was something I wanted to give my son.
There’s Pan, Jungle Book, Once Upon a Time, Maleficent — there’s a whole movement toward fairy tales. They’re really popular. What do you think it is about society today that we need this? That we need Neverland. That we want this fantasy?
I think that in insecure times, people are drawn to that which reminds them of more innocent times, and times where they felt safe. Possibly, that’s why these childhood stories are becoming so popular again, is because of that. I think that’s also why, maybe, the superhero stuff is so popular at the moment as well. It makes us feel safe. And I think that’s a good thing.
I’ve noticed watching a lot of your films, you like to shoot under the covers. Why? Will we see that in Pan?
No, there isn’t any under the covers in this film. I don’t know. I just think it looks nice. I think it’s ... I think also, one’s trying to create, rather like sculpture, one’s trying to create a difference in space, and play with space. So I love huge, great, wide shots, with a horizon leading into infinity. But also, I think to create very intimate spaces is also kind of fun.
I was watching Pride and Prejudice and I noticed that moment, “Oh, there it is again.”
Yeah, there was a nice scene with Keira [Knightley] and Rosamund [Pike] under the covers in that scene, in the film. That was one of my favourite under the covers scenes.
