“Pan” is getting slammed as one of the worst Peter Pan adaptations in history with one critic putting it in the same category as Disney’s “Lone Ranger,” a film that was similarly billed as a major blockbuster only to leave the studio with a staggering loss.

J.M. Barrie’s magical tale of the boy who wouldn’t grow up has been around for over 100 years, but “Pan” delves into uncharted territory: the Neverland origin story. However, a fairy-tale ending wasn’t in the cards for studio Warner Bros: The film, starring Hugh Jackman, Rooney Mara and Garrett Hedlund, cost $150 million to produce, but flopped at the box office, grossing just $15.5 million.

When stacked up against other fairy-tale movies, Disney’s “Cinderella” earned roughly $68 million opening weekend in March, and Universal’s “Snow White and the Huntsmen” brought in over $56 million when it made its debut in June 2012.

Signs of trouble have been trickling in over the past year: Reshoots forced the Time Warner Inc. US:TWX studio to push back “Pan” from July to October, and fury over the casting of a white Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily resurfaced talk of Hollywood race-bending.

2013’s high-budget “The Lone Ranger” was also slated to be a big summer draw, produced by the same team behind the “Pirates of the Caribbean” juggernaut. But the film bombed spectacularly, costing $215 million to make, but earning just $89 million domestically. Worldwide, the film went on to gross over $260 million, but Disney DIS, +1.43% has said it lost millions on marketing and promotion costs.

Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily Everett Collection Inc.

The Tiger Lily problem

Before filming even began, the casting of Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily was blasted by critics who felt the role should have been played by an actress of Native American descent.

The Huffington Post has a detailed account of Hollywood’s history of offensive casting, where white actors are hired to play people of other racial origin, including Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Jake Gyllenhaal as a Persian prince, Johnny Depp as Tonto and Emma Stone as an Asian-American.

“Pan” director Joe Wright stood by his selection, telling Entertainment Weekly that though he acknowledged concerns over “whitewashing casting,” Rooney best fit his description of a warrior princess. During the casting process, he says he met with actresses from China, India, Japan, Russia, Africa and Iran, but that Barrie wasn’t specific in the book as to where the native tribe came from.

In the Barrie novel, Tiger Lily is described as an “Indian Princess,” and illustrations in the 1907 book show a girl wearing fringed clothing, a headband and feathers in her hair. Disney’s 1953 animated film pushes further into offensive stereotyping with most of Tiger Lily’s family in red face. In 1991, Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” responds to the problematic character by omitting her from the story entirely.

Mara told People magazine at the New York premiere of “Pan” that she felt bad about the casting decision: “I totally sympathize with why people were upset.”

Rooney Mara and the multicultural Neverland tribe. Everett Collection Inc.

‘A pandemic of poor choices’

Reviews for “Pan” on Rotten Tomatoes are fairly awful with critics giving it a 22% approval rating. Among the problems cited: the overall “joyless” undercurrent, campy overacting, a plot that feels hurried and messy, visually chaotic CGI-fueled action sequences, and concepts that appear recycled from filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann, Terry Gilliam and George Lucas.

In the film, the cast sings Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” but it’s not a musical, and there’s no explanation of what purpose those songs serve in a picture that opens in the World War II era. Reviewers are also calling out a scene that they say blatantly rips off “Star Wars.”

The consensus is “Pan” falls flat on almost every level, unable to capture the spirit or magic of Barrie’s powerful story.

“‘Pan’ is, for the most part, ugly to look at, shrill to listen to, and performed by actors who have been encouraged to camp it up madly in the style usually favored by aging British sitcom stars playing storybook characters in Christmas panto productions.” — Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

“That’s a lot of lousy ideas crammed into the first 30 minutes. The whole movie’s like that. You walk out of ‘Pan’ feeling flattened, and bummed out...Wright has made good films (‘Atonement’) and mixed-up, crazily theatrical ones (‘Anna Karenina’). With ‘Pan’ he has what I hope will always mark his career low point — the most joyless revisionism since Disney’s ‘The Lone Ranger.’” — Michael Phillips, L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune

“‘Pan’ evokes no longing for childhood and innocence, has no feeling of magic or transcendence, no beauty, laughter or pain — in short, nothing that you might reasonably expect from a ‘Peter Pan‘ spinoff... a complete washout, a joyless, pointless and fundamentally idiotic enterprise.” — Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The film becomes a “seriously extended chase that possesses hefty CGI-propelled dynamics but absolutely no suspense and a very limited sense of fun.” — Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Hugh Jackman as villain Blackbeard Everett Collection Inc.

A mass shooting

“Pan” is PG, but a few critics are warning of violent, intense moments in the film involving shootings, explosions and sword-fighting.

In a scene where the evil pirate Blackbeard tracks down Peter while he’s hiding out with Tiger Lily, a battle erupts, and young victims are shot and slaughtered. But instead of blood and gore, the killings play out in a more family-friendly way: Fatalities morph into a puff of rainbow dust.

The Washington Post writes of the on-screen massacres: “considering the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S., the choice to make murders look extravagantly whimsical is tone deaf at best.”

Another critic flags the scene in which Peter discovers he can fly as especially grim for children, as the boy “plummets to his presumptive death after being kicked, viciously, off a plank hundreds of feet above a rock quarry.”

Common Sense Media recommends the film for children age 8 and above, citing some frightening scenes at an orphanage, and violence. Some parent-review sites are suggesting age 10 as more suitable.

Levi Miller as Peter Pan and Garrett Hedlund as Hook. Everett Collection Inc.

‘Indiana Jones wannabe’

Aside from Hugh Jackman, many of the actors’ performances are getting panned, but most consistently, Garrett Hedlund’s stab at a young Captain Hook.

Unflattering comparisons to Indiana Jones are piling up, with most film reviewers turned off by Hedlund’s goofy overacting, describing his version of Hook as one-note, lacking charisma and highly unlikeable. Some are also tired of the whole “bad guy as good guy” cliché, with Hook befriending Peter, but also dropping hints about who he will become, laying down the foundation for a sequel.

“Garrett Hedlund might be easy on the eyes but he is awful on the ears with a grating cowboy drawl as James Hook, who is presumably the future Capt. Hook.” — Susan Wloszczyna, Rogerebert.com

“Hedlund channels John Wayne, but with less subtlety, as he swaggers and flirts, belaboring every syllable as he drops his pitch by an octave,” and “a roguish Indiana Jones wannabe with two good hands and no ostentatious facial hair. In the movie, he isn’t evil so much as a tad antisocial.” — Stephanie Merry, Washington Post

Hedlund “definitely looks to be doing an Indy audition here, right down to the almost identical wardrobe, and he brings both an appealing rambunctiousness and a divertingly theatrical vocal approach to his adventurer character. Unfortunately, the part is written in one-note, can-do, nothing-can-stop-me mode, so his antics become wearisome, albeit no more so than everything else in the film.” — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter