If director Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina) has proven anything, it’s that he knows a thing or two about evocative imagery. Thus, letting him loose on Neverland is a trailer junkie’s dream come true. In the new preview for the Peter Pan prequel Pan, Wright’s camera whisks viewers across magnificent horizons and embeds them in lush forests and a seemingly endless mining quarry. Thankfully, the film seems to rely as much on elaborate set design as it does on CGI, giving the dream world a welcome tactile quality.
As for the story, relative unknown Levi Miller plays Peter, a WWII-era orphan who’s kidnapped by terrifying clown-pirates and taken to Neverland. There, he meets the villainous Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman, sounding a bit like his Prestige character’s drunken doppelganger); the for-some-reason extremely handsome Hook (Garrett Hedlund, sounding a bit like Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood); and the enchanting Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara, sounding just like Rooney Mara).
It seems as though Peter and Hook begin their adventures as allies, which might invite unwelcome comparisons to Anakin and Obi-Wan in Star Wars: Episode I, but at least Peter Pan has always been an annoying kid. The trailer also won’t erase skepticism toward Wright’s assertion that the film will challenge “preconceived notions” by being “multiracial,” since it basically just shows a bunch of white people playing dress-up. (Okay, there’s a great shot of a black orphan at the 30-second mark. Consider us challenged). Pan is due in theaters on June 26, 2015.