Well, I said I wouldn't set out to post every day during Three Weeks for DW, but then I immediately found something else that I wanted to post about, so here we are two days in a row!
Disney is building up a real head of steam with its unnecessary live-action remakes of classic animated films, and while more people are talking about
The Little Mermaid at the moment (understandably given the very real uncanny valley horror of the realistic sealife), its Peter Pan remake,
Peter Pan & Wendy, has also just dropped. Not in cinemas, mind you, but straight to Disney+, which doesn't say a
lot for Disney's confidence in the whole production. So last night, in retaliation, I decided to rewatch one of my all-time favourite films: the 2003 live-action
Peter Pan, starring Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood.
I've been more than a bit obsessed with
Peter Pan ever since I was little; I have early memories of me and my brother being allowed to stay up late to listen to a radio drama serialisation of the book, and I watched the Disney animated film on endless repeat. I once went to our local church fête dressed up as Peter Pan (the outfit was actually a Robin Hood costume belonging to my brother, with a Peter Pan hat that my mum sewed with a little red feather in it). My greatest wish was to be able to fly, and of course to never grow up. (I'm sad to report that second one did happen, at least in part. Growing up is a state of mind). I even have a dedicated Peter Pan section of my bookshelf with a Peter Pan bookstop :D (It only has a handful of books, but still).
The Peter Pan bookshelf, with background ukulele. I recommend the Jonathan M. Wenzel book, by the way, it's pretty good.So you can imagine my excitement as a 12-year-old (the same age as Wendy in the film, in fact) on holiday in the US with my parents, seeing posters advertising a live-action
Peter Pan film! We usually saw a couple of films each holiday (the
Harry Potter and
Lord of the Rings films were being released at around the same time) and so my mum took me to see it, and I was absolutely in heaven the whole time. I had a cherry ring pop (which was a sweet and a flavour that you don't get over here in the UK) and all was right with the world. My mum even enjoyed it too, I remember her laughing at some of the comedic scenes.
Months later, I was vibrating with impatience for the DVD to be released and watched the few clips that they had made available online over and over again, which means that those parts of the film have a particular resonance for me when I watch them now.
Given the special place that this film holds in my heart, I've been extra wary of other live-action remakes of
Peter Pan; I did not see the 2015
Pan film when it was released, and based on what I've heard, that was a good call. I also didn't have any interest in watching
Peter Pan & Wendy, mostly based on the general quality of Disney's other remakes, but earlier I decided to check out a trailer just to
see whether Disney had decided to do anything novel or interesting with this particular adaptation.
And... nope. Honestly, the film just looks really
boring. The casting is good and actually diverse (which you can't say for the 2003 film, though I will give them credit for casting an Indigenous and Iroquois-speaking actress, Carsen Gray, as Tiger Lily, who in one scene tells Captain Hook that he's old and smells like bear poo - according to the behind the scenes info - but that's about it), but nothing else that I saw in the trailer inspired me at all. Why does Neverland look like a flat, endless field?
The special effects in the 2003
Peter Pan film are a bit dated (there's a sort of kaleidoscope sequence when the kids enter Neverland that looked odd even at the time), but the world of Neverland is visually incredible: lush, dreamlike, colourful and full of life. It's got cotton candy-like pink clouds that the kids can bounce on. It
looks like the kind of thing that would come from a child's imagination. Neverland in
Peter Pan & Wendy, at least the parts shown in the trailer, just looks washed-out and grey.
Really, Wendy? Because it doesn't look that hard to dream up...There's a lot that's silly and a bit campy and over-the-top in the 2003 film, but it is a kids' film, and you can tell the makers understood the directive -
Peter Pan, and Neverland, is supposed to be whimsical. And viewers are capable of suspending disbelief and entering into the spirit of things. Contrast that with
Peter Pan & Wendy, where they apparently
decided not to make Tinkerbell glow because "a viewer would be uncertain of where the light originates". In the trailer, Tinkerbell does look like she's glowing at a few points, but apparently it's the fairy dust that glows, whereas she doesn't. Because we can have fairy dust and flying kids, but a luminescent fairy is just going too far.
It's really just same old, same old with Disney's live-action remakes which take "realism" as the be-all and end-all for reasons no-one can fathom, but it's disappointing considering that this is one story where that's absolutely not the point. (And I mean, films with talking lions and a magic genie and mermaids are also not meant to be realistic). I wanted to just dunk on the film for being bad and unnecessary, but reading how excited Alyssa Wapanatâhk (the actress who plays Tiger Lily in
Peter Pan & Wendy) is
about her character and the care and attention put into making her authentic and respectful gave me pause, and maybe it'll be enough to get me to check it out. But it also makes me wish that she (and the other actors) were getting a better film, one that seemed like it was a genuine passion project and labour of love rather than part of a long list of systematically churned-out remakes.
Anyway, I want to channel some of this grumpy energy into spite-creating fanworks for the 2003 film, but I don't have any specific ideas at the moment (prompts are welcome!). Maybe I'll finally make the time to create one of the fanvids that I've been sitting on ideas for for years...
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