While I’ve begrudgingly kept up with the never-ending slate of live-action Disney remakes in theatres (because I need to know exactly how bad things are with the state of the industry and because I need to punish myself occasionally), I haven’t bothered with the remakes that even Disney thinks so little of as to drop on Disney+ with no warning. So I haven’t seen their Lady and the Tramp or Pinocchio, both of which I’m reliably informed are expectedly terrible. But the one that has forced itself on my acknowledgement and curiosity is Peter Pan & Wendy, remaking of course the 1953 film that is one of my nostalgic favourites of classic Disney but also one of the most overly-remade stories in film history. And the one reason I have any interest in this version at all is the name David Lowery.
Lowery, a very well-regarded filmmaker, is not a first-timer to the Disney remake club; in fact his sophomore feature film was the 2016 Pete’s Dragon -a box office bomb but considered one of the better entries of this canon. Between then and now he’s made more serious adult movies, culminating in the extraordinary 2021 fantasy epic The Green Knight, but I remember even on the promotional circuit of that film, he was talking up his Peter Pan movie for Disney as an extremely personal one -being a major fan of the story and it’s themes. And he’s continued to do so in an insistent way that seems designed to convince audiences this film is a genuinely artist-driven passion project and not another standard nostalgic cash-grab from the most powerful entertainment studio in the world.
The thing is though, Peter Pan & Wendy as it came to be titled, is in several respects both. Disney would never let Lowery get away with not making the film aesthetically familiar or referential to the original, and so there are a number of those awkward markers: John and Michael spending the film entirely in the cosplay of their cartoon counterparts, visual gags that directly call back to Nana the dog floating on pixie dust or Captain Hook narrowly avoiding being swallowed by the crocodile. But at the same time it’s clear Lowery was allowed to exercise a significant degree of creative control not only over the film’s technical artistry (it’s got easily some of the most versatile direction of any of these live-action remakes), but it’s thematic tenets too -which are a fair bit darker and more challenging than the original ever entertained. Though the movie follows the outline of the traditional plot as writ, it is not beholden to it -something else that is naturally quite refreshing. And barring a single musical motif of “You Can Fly”, nothing of the original score is utilized here; though a few new songs are present in cohesive ways. In fact the film is just distinct enough creatively to warrant it’s own existence -something that hasn’t been the case for a Disney remake since maybe 2016’s The Jungle Book.
However this doesn’t wholly make up for it’s crisis of pacing -especially in the early goings where it feels like Lowery is so eager to get to his own take he fast-tracks through the establishment of characters and context. And while we don’t necessarily need to be reminded of who Wendy and the Darlings are, Peter Pan as storied character in their world, and Tinker Bell, the film could do to spend a little bit more time defining them before whisking them off to Neverland. There’s a harried sense to much of the movie’s plot, that betrays Lowery’s interest in style and theme, and only a passing curiosity at covering the familiar ground of the Peter Pan premise. And it’s clear the only characters who really matter in this version are Wendy, Peter, and Hook -the rest of the cast, even Tink, consigned to roles that merely supplement theirs -give each of the leads a face to talk to when not with each other.
They are all united by this overarching anxiety about growing up, ever the signature theme of Peter Pan and no stranger to discussions of Peter and Wendy -the latter of whom, played very well by Ever Anderson, is made a curious counterpart to Peter in terms of straddling that edge of maturity and having some genuine anticipation of it -beyond just being Peter’s rational foil and the”mother” to his gang. But Hook is the curious new element. Played here by Jude Law, Hook is given a new backstory by Lowery and co-writer Toby Halbrooks that casts him as a former lost boy and close friend of Peter’s, who left Neverland in search of his mother only to grow up among pirates and come back to Peter who labeled him an enemy -eventually cutting off his hand. It’s a bit trite an origin, one that has been somewhat entertained before by bad Peter Pan re-imaginings like Pan and Benh Zeitlin’s forgotten Wendy -the last time an auteur filmmaker attempted their own subversive take on the classic story. But the interesting points are where this reflects on Peter, and how Lowery reconciles that with the implicit hero of his story.
It’s messy given how the movie attempts to balance both a light and dark interpretation of the boy who never grows up, unable to commit to either vision wholeheartedly. But the image of this kid, angry and adamant, and with a touch of violence that amounts to him essentially creating Captain Hook as we know him, is striking -made all the more so by Alexander Molony’s brooding, stubbornness that routinely betrays the character’s wilful ignorance. This in concert with Law giving a genuinely committed performance that conveys a tragic depth believably for the first time to this character accounts for a lot of what periodically makes the movie engaging. There are new ideas here that Lowery wishes to explore, he just doesn’t have the luxury to do so in a way that is fully satisfying.
One of the movie’s clearest struggles as it goes along is in tone. Even where it’s not attempting to blatantly evoke the older movie, it still is infused with a lot of comic Disney sensibility and that classical light sense of magic. I’ve referenced a couple examples already, but it extends to the general character of the lost boys (or lost kids, as they’re gender-diverse now) and the pirates, including an absent-minded Mr. Smee played by an out-of-place Jim Gaffigan. There are very whimsical, silly moments to this movie, especially in the first scene with the pirates and in the climax; but then they are separated by these aforementioned dark elements, one or two moments of violence (and that’s not counting the array of pirates eaten by the crocodile that seems to have escaped Lake Placid). I understand the intent behind these choices and having them in relation to the fluff -Lowery was a kid of the 80s where routinely family films were characterized by dangerous and dark elements to create a more palpable sense of stakes. But especially working under Disney’s watchful eye, he is not capable of being a Jim Henson or a Don Bluth who can weave those tonal discrepancies together into something all-encompassing. The strength of script isn’t there, the context is underdeveloped, the independent vision is lacking.
And while the movie can be unusually visually dynamic for a studio product in it’s shot composition, editing, and robust visual effects (like the kids bursting through the clock tower to Neverland or a fight between Peter and Hook on a floating sideways pirate ship), the colour grade is so often bland. This is a movie with some rich textures and production value –it’s not incompetent by any means- and yet several scenes that don’t rely on natural lighting are lit drearily and drab, even within the apparently buoyantly magical realm of Neverland. Given the high-contrast colouring and vibrant lushness even to dim scenes on The Green Knight, it’s painfully palpable the importance of Lowery’s artistic collaborators, most of whom from that film did not work on this one.
Peter Pan & Wendy is a valiant attempt to try something new with the Peter Pan story and expand on it from within Disney’s contours. But it still finds itself creatively and aesthetically limited, much as the filmmaking is improved. Disney’s clear minimal interest in the film both helps and hinders it, allowing it to be more intrepid than other remakes, but shuttering it away to the obscurity of their streaming service. And as much as I respect several aspects of Peter Pan & Wendy, performances and narrative ideas, I can’t say it doesn’t really belong there.
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