FADE IN:

EXT. LONDON

AMANDA SEYFRIED deposits BABY LEVI MILLER on the steps of an ORPHANAGE.

AMANDA SEYFRIED

I know it sucks being abandoned, kid. But don’t worry, of all the places to dump you, I’m sure I’ve made a wise choice in-

(reads sign)

“St. Sadismo’s Home for Helpless Victims Oops We Mean Young Boys”. Sounds delightful!

(walks off)

Welp, that’s it for actual footage of me. Now off I go to get mo-capped into a variety of cheesy effects.

INT. ORPHANARIUM, TEN YEARS LATER

LEVI MILLER is being simultaneously WORKED, STARVED and BEATEN half to death in your typical Dickensian CHILD MISERY FACTORY, in the middle of the LONDON BLITZ.

LEVI MILLER

So this prequel to a story set in 1904, is itself set during WWII? That’s not how time works, guys.

KATHY BURKE

But look on the bright side, wartime rationing has given us evil child-torturing nuns another way of squeezing every last atom of joy out of your pathetic little lives! For the duration of the war, all your meals will consist of dust bunnies and wallpaper paste.

LEVI MILLER

Hmmm, despite this so-called rationing I can’t help but notice that this horrible nun continues to resemble a walrus getting a piggyback off of a hippo. Methinks she’s secretly hoarding food.

KATHY crams the entirety of a GIANT PASTRY into her face in full view of EVERYBODY.

LEVI MILLER

Okay, scratch the “secretly”. Come, fellow downtrodden orphan Lewis MacDougall, let’s search for contraband during the next air raid!

The next time everybody flees to the BASEMENT while the CITY GETS BLOWN UP, LEVI and LEWIS instead sneak into KATHY’S OFFICE.

LEVI MILLER

Okay, I guess we’re looking for a locked drawer with tinned goods in it, or maybe a concealed cupboard or-

LEWIS MACDOUGALL

Hey look, this mysterious statue has a hidden switch which opens a trap door to a secret cellar full of candy, meats and - pirate gold? Huh, I guess Kathy’s been selling orphans to magic pirate slavers from another world on the sly.

LEVI MILLER

The FUCK? Well that was an abrupt fucking leap from general nastiness to cartoonish supervillainy.

LEWIS MACDOUGALL

Hey, we’re doing this during a bombing, you KNOW thousands of internet fora are going to leap right into the “Levi got blown up and the rest of the movie was a dying dream” theory. Might as well keep 'em happy by choosing this exact moment for the movie to go completely bonkers.

In aid of this, that night LEVI and all the other ORPHANS are GRABBED from their BEDS by BUNGEE-JUMPING CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS, then taken aboard a FLYING PIRATE SHIP which proceeds to sail off into SPACE.

KATHY BURKE

BWAH HA HA, I’ve successfully sold all those miserable little brats! Good riddance to bad rubbish!

SOME KIND OF AUTHORITY FIGURE

Excuse me, but we were wondering how come every single orphan seems to have disappeared from your orphanage, leaving the place completely deserted?

KATHY BURKE

Uhhh...

SOME KIND OF AUTHORITY FIGURE

You're fired and/or under arrest.

KATHY BURKE

AW DANG

EXT. SPACE

Meanwhile back on the PIRATE SPACESHIP:

PIRATE CAPTAIN

YARRR, set a course for the second star on the right!

PIRATE HELMSMAN

I cannae do it, cap’n! That instruction has never made sense, there’s no way to depict it in a live action movie that’d be coherent!

PIRATE CAPTAIN

Oh, you want visual incoherence? I’ll give you visual incoherence! Drop straight down onto an ocean which has appeared beneath us, then sink all the way into the ocean, which is actually a sky, which itself contains small spherical hovering oceans!

PIRATE HELMSMAN

One bewildering acid trip, coming up!

They DO ALL THAT NONSENSICAL SHIT, then keep flying to a FLOATING ISLAND which is NEVERLAND I GUESS. They disembark in a MINING TOWN full of PIRATES.

PIRATES

WITH THE LIGHTS OUT

IT’S LESS DANGEROUS

HERE WE ARE NOW

ENTERTAIN US

YES THIS HAPPENS

IT’S BANANAS

BUNCH OF PIRATES

SING NIRVANA

WHAT THE FUCK MAN

WHAT THE FUCK MAN

WHAT THE FUCK MAN

WHAT THE FUCK MAN

WHAT THE FUUUUCK MAAAAN

Just as the AUDIENCE is trying to figure out if this movie is in fact OUT OF ITS GODDAMN MIND, we get an answer in the form of PIRATE LEADER HUGH JACKMAN, dressed in some kind of BATTLE BALLGOWN.

HUGH JACKMAN

I’m Blackbeard, and this is my gang of juggalo acrobats who never board ships or rob anybody or even travel by sea, but we’re calling them pirates anyway so there!

LEVI MILLER

Wait, stop, stop, I can’t take any of this seriously with you dressed like that. I mean, Blackbeard was pretty theatrical sure, but you look like Charles Manson playing Vlad the Impaler in a rock opera by My Chemical Romance.

HUGH JACKMAN

SILENCE! You are now our slaves, here to work in the mines, digging for fairy dust.

LEVI MILLER

Huh? I thought fairy dust was a biological byproduct of fairies. All this time it was a mineral? I guess that Tinkerbell is just always really really filthy, then.

HUGH JACKMAN

Yeah I know, usually fairy dust comes from fairies and you get sprinkled with it so you can fly, but this time it comes from the ground and I snort it to keep me from dying of old age. In Neverland. Where nobody ever ages.

LEVI MILLER

So, you’re basically changing the rules to whatever the hell they need to be for the plot to function.

HUGH JACKMAN

You catch on fast! Now get to mining, and mind you don’t dig too deep or you’ll presumably just fall right out the bottom of the island.

LEVI is shoved into the MINES, where he meets fellow slave, ROGUISH HAN SOLO TYPE GARRETT HEDLUND.

GARRETT HEDLUND

Pleased to meet you, kid. I’m Jed Bartlet, the fictional President of the United States from the acclaimed NBC drama The West Wing.

LEVI MILLER

Huh? No you’re not.

GARRETT HEDLUND

Well actually I’m supposed to be Captain Hook, but honestly the resemblance is every bit as minimal. Seriously, I’ll give you a million bucks if you can point out even five points of correlation between me and him. Go on. Take your time.

LEVI MILLER

Well uh, you’re a white male... you... speak English... um...

(shrugs)

GARRETT HEDLUND

Exactly.

Suddenly LEVI hits upon some FAIRY DUST.

LEVI MILLER

Hey look I found some! Me, me, I did it!

OTHER MINER

(grabs rock)

Nuh uh I found it! Look everyone, look what I did!

LEVI MILLER

HEY GIVE THAT BACK I’M THE ONE WHO FOUND IT YOU ASSHOLE!

OTHER MINER

YOU’RE THE ASSHOLE YOU LIAR!

FOREMAN

THAT’S IT LEVI, YOU’RE ARRESTED AND SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR STEALING CREDIT FROM THAT GUY!

LEVI MILLER

(being hauled away)

Say, did we give any hint as to why the miners would give such a shit about who found what rock? Cause that all seemed like a whole bunch of overreacting to me.

LEVI is dragged out onto the deck of a FLYING SHIP and forced to WALK THE PLANK.

LEVI MILLER

(falling)

AW FUUUCK, I SERIOUSLY WISH I HAD SOME FAIRY DUST AND A HAPPY THOUGHT RIGHT NOW oh right, we’ve thrown out all the rules so I don’t need any of that shit.

(flies)

Convenient!

(falls)

(knocked out)

INT. HUGH’S CABIN

LEVI wakes up being tended to by HUGH.

HUGH JACKMAN

So the fact that you can fly means you must be the one destined to kill me. See there’s a prophecy-

LEVI MILLER

Oh God no.

HUGH JACKMAN

-that states that one day a flying boy would appear, and that boy would be the Chosen One who-

LEVI MILLER

SHUUUT UUUUUP! For FUCK’S SAKE Hollywood, first Alice in Wonderland, then Snow White, then The Wizard of Oz, now Peter Pan, are you seriously not gonna stop until everything is prophecies and chosen ones?! Even after The Lego Movie deconstructed that trope to hell and back?! There are other stories out there you know I mean COME ON IT’S SO FUCKING PLAYED OUT ARGH GRAAAAHRHAAAAHH

(starts smashing the set)

(sedated)

(wakes up an hour later)

Okay, I’m better now. Let’s just get on with this fucking thing.

HUGH JACKMAN

So yeah you’re supposed to murder me and end my reign of terror.

LEVI MILLER

In which case, why the hell am I still alive? I mean you were literally in the process of murdering me when you found out that I’m this super-dangerous prophecy kid. What possible reason is there for you to not shove a cutlass through my brain this very-

HUGH JACKMAN

TO THE DUNGEON WITH YOU!

LEVI is tossed in a CELL. Later on, GARRETT is thrown into the ADJOINING CELL.

GARRETT HEDLUND

Psst, kid, I need your flying skills to help me escape the mining camp! So I found out exactly where you were being held, rigged the outside of your cell with a timed explosive, then orchestrated my own arrest so that I could be thrown into the exact right cell at the exact right time so that we can both escape through the wall when it blows.

(pause)

Which kind of paints me as so insanely skilled an escape artist that I can’t imagine what the fuck I need you for.

The wall EXPLODES and LEVI and GARRETT manage to get out and commandeer a flying ship! Also SMEE is with them for the rest of the movie but he basically does NOTHING so we’re just gonna FORGET ABOUT HIM.

GARRETT HEDLUND

All right, I’ve never flown one of these ships before, but fortunately it’s pretty self-explanatory. You turn the steering wheel left and right to control the pitch, you turn the steering wheel left and right to control the yaw, and you turn the steering wheel left and right to control the roll, which makes no fucking

The AUTHOR of the ABRIDGED SCRIPT suddenly realizes he’s picking apart the logic of a MAGIC FLYING PIRATE SHIP and just decides to skip ahead to the JUNGLE SCENE.

EXT. JUNGLE

Having CRASHED THEIR SHIP, LEVI and GARRETT are traveling through the JUNGLE when they are captured by INDI-

LEVI MILLER

NATIVES! Yes, we enlightened and culturally sensitive individuals seem to have been taken hostage by a group of generic, vaguely multi-ethnic NATIVES thank you very much.

They are brought before NATIVE PRINCESS ROONEY MARA, who is wearing a BOOK OF CARPET SAMPLES on her head.

ROONEY MARA

So you claim you’re escaped miners? Well since you were fleeing for your lives through deadly jungle, away from the mines, whilst wearing normal human clothes, clearly you’re ACTUALLY part of Hugh’s gang of tweaker mimes!

LEVI MILLER

Even the scrawny twelve-year-old?

ROONEY MARA

ESPECIALLY the scrawny twelve-year-old!

(pause)

Okay maybe we’ll let you try and prove yourselves in a test of worth. Garrett, if you can defeat our most skilled fighter in unarmed combat, that’ll prove you’re a helpless downtrodden laborer like you say, and not a bloodthirsty pirate warrior.

GARRETT HEDLUND

That’s the OPPOSITE of what that would prove!

But then ROONEY notices that LEVI is wearing a PAN PIPE NECKLACE.

ROONEY MARA

Oh shit, you wear the Pan? You’re the kid from that lame generic prophecy! CANCEL THE MURDERS!

LEVI MILLER

Phew! Good thing that neither the evil nun nor the pirate slavers thought to pinch my jewelry.

ROONEY MARA

So you must be Amanda Seyfried’s kid. She was imprisoned for months by Hugh because he had a huge crush on her - and this is a family movie so please please PLEASE don’t think about all the implied rape - until a fairy took human form and rescued her! But shapechanging is fatal to fairies, so he only had time to conceive you before he croaked.

LEVI MILLER

Are we sure that wasn’t just a line out of Barney Stinson’s playbook? Cause I gotta say, not sure how happy I am to be the result of my mom’s bestial fling with a firefly.

ROONEY MARA

Anyway, to prove you are who you say you are, tomorrow we’ll shove you off a cliff and see if you can fly.

GARRETT HEDLUND

What the shit, lady?! If you need to see if the kid can fly, couldn’t you just get him to float up to the ceiling in the living room?

ROONEY MARA

Hey, he’ll be fine as long as he believes in himself!

GARRETT HEDLUND

Isn’t that just another way of saying that if he’s even a little bit nervous he’s gonna go splat and die?

ROONEY MARA

Shut up all right, or I won’t arbitrarily hook up with you!

GARRETT HEDLUND

You - what? A Captain Hook/Tiger Lily romantic subplot? You’re shitting me, right?

ROONEY MARA

Check your script.

GARRETT HEDLUND

(checks)

OH GROSS.

ROONEY MARA

I know, right? Basically the audience is going to spend the rest of the movie trying valiantly to not picture our cartoon counterparts getting their mack on.

Suddenly the KILLING LEVI PLAN gets belayed when HUGH and the PIRATES show up and start MURDERING THE ENTIRE VILLAGE!

HUGH JACKMAN

Don’t worry though, even though we’re showing dozens of innocent people getting shot dead, we can keep our PG rating cause they’re magic guns that just instantly reduce you to a cloud of ash. It's not real violence if the person is being horribly disintegrated!

LEVI MILLER

Ah yes, the War of the Worlds approach.

HUGH JACKMAN

Levi! When Rooney told you about your mother, what she didn’t mention was that I later killed her!

LEVI MILLER

Gasp, Rooney lied about my mother still being alive? That’s weird considering she was happy to tell me about my dad dropping dead.

HUGH JACKMAN

Clearly she was able to correctly tell that your yearning for a family extended only to your mom, while your dad could have drowned in pig shit as far as you care.

LEVI, GARRETT and ROONEY escape the VILLAGE.

ROONEY MARA

Shit, Hugh got the map to the secret hideout of the fairies, and now he’s off to kill them all and take their fairy dust! Let’s beat him there, by hopping in a canoe and drifting languidly down the river.

EXT. RIVER

Our heroes are drifting along, seriously not even rowing, when LEVI is snatched by a giant CROCODILE and dragged down into the WATER by the SEAT OF HIS PANTS!

LEVI MILLER

Oh no, I’m screwed! I knew I should have sprung for a pair of those fancy Removable Pants™!

But then a pair of CREEPY TWO-DIMENSIONAL-LOOKING MERMAIDS show up!

CREEPY MERMAID

(dead-eyed stare)

Don’t worry Levi, we happen to be passing by on our way from the Uncanny Valley to the audience’s nightmares, we can take a moment to rescue you!

(mannequin-like smile)

LEVI MILLER

Uhhh, I’ll stick with the crocodile if it’s all the same.

But the MERMAIDS save him and then the movie just CONTINUES.

LEVI MILLER

So what was the fucking point of that whole bit?

GARRETT HEDLUND

Hey, we’re already racing Blackbeard to a secret cave full of youth-restoring MacGuffin, might as well throw in some scary mermaids and make the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ripoff complete.

ROONEY MARA

So Levi, sorry about lying about your Mom’s death. For some reason I thought that knowing Hugh murdered your mother would make you less likely to want to stop him. If it helps, I can show you a magic recording of her violent death.

She does something to the WATER that turns it into a PENSIEVE.

SWIRLY BLACK BLOB

So Amanda, you come against me in battle? Then I stab you!

INCOMPREHENSIBLE WHITE SQUIGGLE

Good thing our dialogue is making it clear what the fuck is going on here, Hugh, cause the visuals sure aren’t helping!

(dies, I think)

LEVI MILLER

So mom was a warrior? Well then, I’ll live up to her example!

(grimly)

I've come to the conclusion that I’m not your Chosen One, Rooney. Even though I match him in every detail, including the extremely specific parentage and the fact that I'm the only person who's ever demonstrated the ability to fly. Nope, clearly I'm just some kid. But despite that, I’ll be brave like my mother and fight!

ROONEY MARA

Awesome! Apparently I won’t hesitate at all to bring a malnourished prepubescent kid along to fight a bunch of sword-wielding pirates, as long as he feels REALLY STRONGLY about it.

INT. MACGUFFIN CAVE

LEVI, GARRETT and ROONEY arrive at the entrance to the FAIRIES’ CAVE.

ROONEY MARA

All right, Levi, use your prophecyness to open the door.

LEVI MILLER

But... Hugh’s right there. His entire pirate gang is just crouching behind some rocks, like ten feet away.

ROONEY MARA

Well we don’t see that, apparently. Even though they’re just there with their heads leaning out, giggling at us, looking fucking ridiculous.

LEVI MILLER

Damnit, this movie has descended to the level of a pantomime. All we need is the audience to start calling out “LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!”

(sighs)

All right, according to this sign, only the Chosen One can open this cave, using his key. Key? What key?!? I don’t have a key! What on earth do they expect me to put into this pan-pipe-jewelry-shaped keyhole?!?!?

HUGH JACKMAN

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

HUGH and his men burst out and CAPTURE EVERYONE, then they use LEVI’S NECKLACE to OPEN THE CAVE. They then sail their PIRATE SHIPS through the INEXPLICABLY PIRATE SHIP-SIZED DOOR and start ATTACKING THE FAIRIES INSIDE with FLAMETHROWERS.

ROONEY MARA

Shit, we have to break free and stop them! I’ll fight Hugh! Garrett, you take - uh - have any of the other pirates had any lines?

NONSO ANOZIE

There’s me. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one.

ROONEY MARA

Oh. Well Levi and Garrett will just have to share you then.

ROONEY fights HUGH while LEVI and GARRETT fight THE OTHER ONE. But then upon killing HIS GUY, GARRETT falls from his pirate ship!

LEVI MILLER

Shit! Garrett! Well even though I only managed to fly briefly that one time, now I’ll just have to dig deep, have faith and-

ROONEY MARA

You do realize that realistically Garrett is smashed on the rocks by now? Hurry up and jump already!

LEVI leaps after GARRETT, then successfully FLIES him to SAFETY, leaving him PERCHED USELESSLY on some ROCK just in case he got any funny ideas about CONTRIBUTING FURTHER to the CLIMACTIC BATTLE.

LEVI MILLER

I did it! I flew! I did the thing I was already shown doing like half an hour into the movie! How dramatic!

(entering Badass Mode)

NOW! To unleash my special CHOSEN ONE FINISHING MOVE and win this battle once and for all!!

(points at pirates)

Hey fairies, kill those guys.

FAIRIES

Gasp! Fight back against the assholes who keep setting us on fire? We would NEVER have thought of that without you expressly telling us to do so! Levi, you’re our hero!

The FAIRIES attack the PIRATES and EFFORTLESSLY DEFEAT THEM ALL and KILL HUGH, with literally NO ASSISTANCE WHATSOEVER.

AMANDA SEYFRIED

Good job, Levi! Yeah, I’m a force ghost right now or something. Bye!

(dematerializes)

LEVI MILLER

Okay, and now I can rescue the other orphans, and with me having attained my Lost Boys, fairy friends, native allies and ability to fly, I think this origin story has just about covered everything. Goodnight, everybody!

GARRETT HEDLUND

Um, HELLO?!

LEVI MILLER

Oh right, you’re still a non-evil guy with two hands. I guess we’ll just have to figure that out in the sequel.

GARRETT HEDLUND

The sequel? Shit, we’re going for a franchise with this?

LEVI MILLER

What’s wrong with that? I personally look forward to appearing in a number of films over the coming years, as the magical boy who never grows... ohhh. Guys, we might have a problem.

END.