Levi Miller and Garrett Hedlund are shown in a scene from “Pan.” (Photo credit: Laurie Sparham/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)

By Colin Covert
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

A century ago, author J.M. Barrie used a combative crocodile, a missing hand and a curved metal fastener for the back story of “Peter Pan’s” flamboyant antihero. For the dazzling prequel “Pan,” however, Hook is redesigned.

In this new version of the classic character, Garrett Hedlund plays Hook as a swaggering young scoundrel who isn’t yet Peter’s foe. Instead, his young Neverland friend (played by Levi Miller) considers Hook his right-hand (and left-hand) man as they fight Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), the baddest pirate of all.

Two hands? So why’s he called Hook? Because that’s his name.

Hedlund’s interpretation of the role is nearer a cocky Wild West gunslinger than an evil pirate skipper. Hedlund doesn’t slash a cutlass, but fires pistols and spends many takes trading kicks with a South Korean taekwondo expert.

And while villainy is still far in James Hook’s future, he has a shifty, scheming charm that Hedlund enjoyed playing. In a phone conversation recently, the actor explained that he didn’t feel as if he was pushing a beloved character in a new direction.

“I never watched the original ‘Peter Pan’ as a kid. Growing up on a farm 30 miles outside of Roseau (in northern Minnesota), we didn’t go to the theater much,” Hedlund said. “Any farmer in their right mind would think it’s absurd to drive 60 miles round trip to go watch an ol’ moving picture. When ‘The Mighty Ducks’ or something like that was out, we’d go. We were all inevitably huge hockey fans up there.”

In fact, when those films were shooting in the Twin Cities, Hedlund said, he was reading teen magazines to pick up any information he could about local casting calls.

After being complimented for a performance in a school play supporting a Red Cross food drive, the idea of acting “just stuck with me,” he said. “Mostly I would stretch out on the carpet, watch ‘Home Improvement’ and hope I could be on that screen one way or another.”

In his new film, Hedlund praised screenwriter Jason Fuchs for “having written something wonderfully imaginative. Part of what attracted me to it was Joe Wright directing it, who did things like ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ ‘Atonement’ and ‘Anna Karenina.’ He’s always managed to take something cherished and beloved and make them incredibly inventive and wise and grand.

“I would have played Tinkerbell in order to be in a Wright film.”

Luckily, he said, Wright told him to take on one of the film’s leading roles and “imagine Hook like someone from an old John Ford film.”

Hedlund was well-prepared for the updated Hook’s swashbuckling cowboy vibe, having taken up deer hunting by age 11. Leaving his Minnesota farm (aka “10 miles south of Canada”) at 14, he moved to Phoenix with his mother and caught the attention of a talent agency. Even before high school ended, he was pursuing acting jobs in Los Angeles.

By 18 he was drinking in London pubs with older actors in the Greek spectacle “Troy,” landing his first role as Patroclus, the young Greek war hero cherished by Brad Pitt’s Achilles. It was the launchpad for a busy career.

Now 31, he has starred in Disney’s “Tron Legacy” and appeared in two Coen brothers projects. He played a World War II prisoner in a Japanese slave labor camp in “Unbroken,” which the duo scripted for director Angelina Jolie, and a taciturn young driver for a blowhard jazz artist in the early ‘60s folk music saga “Inside Llewyn Davis” (which the Coens wrote and directed).

Assignments for the Coens didn’t link him to his family’s favorite filmmakers, he said. “I remember when ‘Fargo’ came out when I was on the farm. My aunt came over and she said, ‘Oh, geez, you see that new movie making us look like a bunch of hillbillies, donchaknow?’ I’ll never forget it. Acting for them was an honor.”

Hedlund said working for Wright was just as refreshing. In London, his “Pan” director got the whole cast together for improv activities.

“He encouraged us to be as ridiculous as we want because that’s what this is about. Youth and childlike views of the world,” Hedlund said. “He wanted Hook to be silly and clumsy and childish and manipulative and selfish. That was such a fun place to start with Hook. It gave me an experience like nothing I’ve ever had before.”