This is one of the most nostalgic movies of my life. It’s one of the most nostalgic movies of a lot of people’s lives. By the nature of its subject, the never-ending childhood, it is a nostalgic movie. It produces nostalgia.
As a kid, it’s a super fun movie! With pirates and adventure! But as an adult we look back at it and think, “Yeah, childhood was the best, I wish I could be a child again. It was the best and it’ll never be like that again. But it can be close to it for 77 minutes while we watch this.” I remember watching it, my dad would rent VHS tapes from Blockbuster and then use his VCR to copy the movie to a blank 8mm tape. Voila! We have the movie now! Ye olde retro technologie.
Oh, and the concept of Wendy stealing Peter Pan’s shadow is so interesting. It’s so weird. How did she do it? Like to imagine a shadow as its own being and its own movement is such a weird concept. I would never think of it. And then Link [in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link] has to fight his own shadow as well. Plus they dress the same. And Link [in Ocarina of Time] also has a tiny fairy friend.
ANYWAY, Peter and Wendy have an interesting relationship. It’s kind of a quaint, boy meets girl thing and it’s like your first crush. It’s cute. And Wendy wants to give him a kiss and he’s like “what the fuck is that?” It’s not so much like “perfect romance, love at first sight, happily ever after,” thing from the earlier Disney movies.
John is like the kid who’s trying to act all grown up. “I’m John. How do you do?” he says pretentiously. Some kids loved to act like they were mature for some reason. Not sure why they thought that maturity was the coolest quality to have. John’s like that. There’s a couple lines I like where John is being all fake mature like “I’d like to cross swords with some real buccaneers!” and Michael’s like “Yeah! And fight pirates, too!” It’s funny, Michael doesn’t know what the fuck a buccaneer is. And saying “fight pirates” gets the message across. Stop trying to act all smart and mature, John. Not a big fan of John, to be honest.
Tinkerbell’s kind of a bitch. She’s like “Oh, Wendy’s getting some of the attention, better kill her!” Kind of an overreaction, I’d say. She doesn’t kill her, but she flies super fast and tells the lost boys to shoot her down. Kinda fucked.
I love Mr. Smee, he’s so fucking funny. He’s like this jolly, cheerful pirate and they’re all acting like the stereotypical angry, rum-drinking, tough guy pirates. But he shows up and says “Good morning shipmates!” And he gets bullied for being positive! Classic. “Why are you trying to make people happier?! Fuck you!!” That’s what those pirates are saying, essentially.
The way the movie portrays Indigenous people of the Americas is very bad. Very stereotypical, very caricature-ish. I’m not gonna defend it. It’s not good. I’m not a sociologist or whatever, but maybe if you’re gonna show this movie to your kids, you can explain what stereotypes are and how they work and stuff.
But back to the plot. So Captain Hook and Peter Pan are eternally at odds with each other, and Hook seeks to kidnap Tiger Lily and coerce her into telling him where Peter Pan’s hideout is. So he does that, but then she’s saved by Peter and Captain Hook runs away from the crocodile who swallowed a clock. That sounds like something made up by Alex Jones. “The freaking demon masters are feeding clocks to the crocodiles!! They’re mind control clocks, people!!”
Oh yeah, and the mermaids also get jealous of Wendy and try to kill her. Man, Neverland seems to foster jealous and murderous girls. Except Tiger Lily, she’s chill. But then Wendy gets really jealous of her, but at least she doesn’t try to kill her.
Wendy says some nice words about mothers. It’s actually very sweet and she sings a song too. It’s kind of strange, this important theme about mothers in a movie where the actual mother is hardly in it at all. It’s kind of like that thing where parents treat their eldest daughter as the third parent. The Darlings definitely do that with Wendy. They expect Wendy to raise their other kids while the parents go out and do rich people bullshit. They even expect the DOG to be another parent. Shitty parents. The dad kinda reminds me of the dad from Mary Poppins. They’re both rich and neglectful fathers named George who live in Edwardian London. But the key difference is that one has kids named John and Michael, while the other has kids named Jane and Michael. Totally different characters, those George’s.
Anyway, Hook captures Tinkerbell and tricks her into showing him Peter’s secret hideout. The pirates kidnap Wendy and the lost boys and give a time bomb to Peter. Looking pretty grim, I hope Peter doesn’t die in an explosion! Luckily Tinkerbell gets out just in time and saves Peter but almost dies. It’s a pretty sad moment as Peter is searching for her. It shows how strong the bond is between two characters even though they had kind of a falling out earlier. They still love each other. I know I said earlier that she’s a bitch, but she redeemed herself here.
There’s a cool showdown between Peter and Captain Hook. There’s dueling and sword fighting and.. swashbuckling? Was there swashbuckling happening? Was there some swash being buckled?
Peter wins and Hook swims away, pursued by the clock-eating crocodile. A clock-odile, if you will. And they fly back to London and it’s all very magical.
Peter Pan is such a cool character, but more so he’s an awesome concept for a character. An adventurous kid who never grows up. I feel like there could be a whole bunch of Peter Pan-type characters. A never-aging kid having adventures in Manhattan. A never-aging kid exploring jungles and rivers. A never-aging kid stowing away on trains, traveling the world. Maybe there are a bunch of never-aging kids in literature and I just never found out about them.
Peter Pan is a good movie.
Lefty Forrester 