la_belle_laide | Dec. 27th, 2003

Dec. 27th, 2003

Mild Spoilers for Peter Pan (the book, of course, as I haven't seen the movie yet.)

I have decided to venture to the movie theater today to see Peter Pan, and virus be damned. Everyone there's probably sick already as it is, don't you think?

So now I'm just waiting...waiting... Really excited, too, and totally curious as to what they're going to do with some of my favorite ideas and themes and even the characters. Peter Pan? Are they going to go with the original characterization? Peter was not a likeable boy. He was the heartbroken bully, and until you found out his secrets (his nightmares,) it was difficult to like him, even as great as the story was. How he closes the window at the end, then relents and opens it when he sees Mrs. Darling crying! How he starts to turn into Hook himself! Ooooh, I hope, hope, hope the movie deals with that!

I wonder if they're going to go with the creepiness, too. Of all writers, Barrie really captured the creepiness of childhood. It's not flowers and goodness and light and innocence. Sometimes it is nameless terror and unreasonable dread. Sometimes chidren themselves are creepy. Have you ever heard a group of them sing a slow song? Gives you the willies and makes you think of ghosts. I wonder if the movie is going to go with the awkwardness of Peter and Wendy playing Mother and Father to the Lost Boys. Playing Doctor and House and not having but the vaguest clue what they were really doing, and only a mite more of a clue what it felt like. This eeriness, excitement and fear came across beautifully in the book. I hope it does in the movie, too.

I absolutely hope they get into Hook's psyche the way the book does. How he's afraid of his own blood more than anything, how blue and soft his eyes are but for the pinpoint red glow, the fact that he loves music and flowers, and that he carries a vial of poison for himself in case he's ever captured. That he's totally out of his mind, and that his madness manifests itself in obsession with "good form." That Smee can make him cry with pathos (and envy: "No little children to love me!") And how when the clock winds down, it's over for this adult. O man unfathomable! ^_^

Please let the movie address all of this!

Sheez, I'd quite forgotten how much I loved this book ten years ago. In fact, I was so obsessed with it, I referenced it really strongly in my independent study course in creative writing in my senior year. I had been writing this bizarre little comedy piece, The Adventures of Sinclair and Eleanore, which I had originally begun as a gift for my Gran, who was in the hospital at the time and really bored. In it, Sinclair and Eleanore go through all of these stupid adventures, all having to do with pop culture or classical literature, sometimes (retardly) becoming their own perverted versions of the characters. They were Dorothy and the Lion, Snow White and Some Guy, I know that somehow Crow from Mystery Science Theater 3000 was involved and maybe so was Edward the first, (??) and in the very last section, they surprised themselves by becoming Peter and Wendy, with Eleanore thinking this was all very topping, but that it was totally pervy of the pirate to tie her to the mast. It was April of '94, you know, and one of the Lost Boys looked remarkably like Kurt Cobain. God I was a freak, but I got an A on the damned thing. I can hardly remember it now. I'll have to go looking for it later, because now I'm curious.

I'll see if I can do up a movie review if I have some time later. I'm nervous and excited! :D I want to love this movie. If I don't, I'm going to be very sad.

Current Mood: enthralled

Current Mood: enthralled

Spoilers for Peter Pan the movie; I'm not going to cut any of this, so skip it or just cope.

Sad to say that I can spoil the movie without spoiling the book. :/

I'm not sure PJ Hogan and I read the same book. It almost seems as if he flipped through a few pages, said, "I'll take this, this, this and this," and then pulled the rest out of...somewhere else. Clearly, clearly he decided for cliche and Hollywood-poignant string-pulling over the original (sub)text.

I might have enjoyed (most of) this movie if I hadn't read the book. But the cliches! The cliches! The whole "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do!" scene was so overdone as to be silly. Hogan went for the Big Movie Scene instead of doing it the way the book did it. The book had restraint, damnit, it didn't ever rely on beating you over the head with ideas. I'm not dense, PJ Hogan. I don't need to be battered with Teh Pretty!!!111 and Teh OMFG-ROMANCE!!!11

Speaking of beating the audience over the head, hello! He turned Mrs. Darling's Kiss into a big, obvious thing. WRONG. And who the hell was this "Aunt Millicent" person?

The biggest, HUGEST problem I had with this movie was Wendy. They murdered her. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, getting into trouble at school for drawing a naughty picture. Busting in on Mr. Darling while he was at work. Dreading being an adult! Wendy wanted to be an adult, and she didn't have to go to Neverland to learn that. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, consenting to not only tell stories to pirates, but to being one! Red-handed Jill my ass. It was John who told Hook he wouldn't mind being a pirate called Red-handed Jack, and Wendy was appalled. Wendy went about the ship writing "dirty pig" on everything, and she had so much contempt for Hook throughout that it nearly killed him. This is what I mean when I say that it seems the writers and director picked tiny little things out of the book that they liked, and made up the rest. In the movie, Wendy was much too perky. It looks like they went for the Spunky Female cliche instead of letting her be the strange, restrained yet deep girl that she was. (In fact, in the book, it was almost like Wendy was Superego, Hook was Ego and Peter was Id. How often do you get an Id protagonist and an Ego antagonist? But I just pulled that outta my ass, and maybe I'm reading too much into it.)

What else way way off? Tink's alliance with Hook. WTF? Smee breaking the fourth wall and talking to the camera, for godsake. The fact that the Indians were adults. Adults in Neverland indeed! The book never specified their ages, but seeing them portrayed as adults was so jarring that I nearly dropped my M&Ms all over the floor. Adults in Neverland! I can't get past that. The only adults in Neverland were the pirates. And do you know, I've always thought that they were all Peter's inventionin a way. Not only that, but maybe Hook was Peter grown up. I'm not sure if he was Peter or if he just came from him, but he was everything that Peter could/might have been as an adult: bitter, lonely, tormented, worst of all old, which, to Peter, were all one in the same.

Which was why when Hook started frigging flying, I nearly died. See, this is another example of Hollywood going for The Big Scene that they think people want to see, instead of staying true to the story. Did Hook not just finish saying that he had no happy thoughts? Gah, they didn't even mind their own script! Okay, so people wanted to see this huge, airborne battle, but it killed me that Hook could fly. The whole idea of Peter Pan was that children could fly, and an adult would always, always have forgotten how, even those with happy thoughts.

Which brings me to the battle, and Wendy's "thimble" resurrecting Peter's spirit. Oh, please gag me with a cliche right now. He didn't need Wendy's kiss or her love, or (how I loathe saying this) his Emotions Awakened!!1111oenone11!eleven in order to win. Peter had Hook from the beginning; there was no question. The only question then was, would Hook see Peter show bad form? And in the book, he did, and that was how Hook died: the clock had run down (Peter had been ticking in place of the crocodile,) and Hook's time was up. He fell screaming "bad form!" and was devoured. Not because the children told him he was old and he couldn't fly anymore. Grrrr.

PJ Hogan sucked out most of the depth of the story and replaced it with crowd-pleasing visuals and cute preteen romance.

I still didn't hate the movie, because Jeremy Sumpter and of course Jason Isaacs saved it.

I honestly didn't think this Jeremy Sumpter kid was going to be any good, but I swear, it seemed to me that he had gotten more out of the original story than any of the writers or the directer. He was the best Peter Pan I could imagine: he was a cocky, self-centered, selfish little boy and he did it very well.

Jason Isaacs apparently did his homework, as well. I find it so odd that the script and direction touched on the few things about Hook that I mentioned in my last post (his eyes, the harpsicord, the poison, his loneliness,) while still managing to replace so much of what was interesting about the book with Blockbuster Cliche. I'm not just saying it because he's gorgeous, but he was such a good James Hook, and the little boy such a good Peter Pan, that in the times when they were on screen together (and the script was canonical,) I was really happy with it, because it was just like I imagined them acting towards each other: Hook was fascinated, disgusted, envious, furious, and touched in a weird way, and Peter was just totally selfish and obsessed with his own joy and victory. I loved the look on Hook's face when he saw Peter and Wendy dancing (even though that scene was nothing like it was in the book, and when they did dance in the book, Hook was nowhere to be found--in fact their dancing scene was eerie and detached instead of the Hollywood Magic the movie made it out to be.) I mean, he was just so beautiful and believable in his torment. Thank you, Jason Isaacs, for finally making me go "SQUEE!" over a Jas Hook that I've always wanted to see. Dark and sinister man! At least there was that. (I'm not saying that because he's a hottie, but let us face facts: he is. I'd see the movie again just for this entire scene, with him sleeping [weirdly, with his head on the desk--nice touch there, I'd never have imagined that,] strapping on the hook and threatening Smee and all of that.)

You know, I think I might even have liked the movie more if I didn't suspect that next, all the dumb fangirls are going to come along with the "OMFG Teh movie was so MAGIC!!111 the beauty of childhood and FAERIES!!!!!111" without understanding the story. Bah! Please move on to the next cliche and leave this story alone. And I shudder to think of the fanfic. Shudder.

Ya know what, though? Could you just imagine if Miyazki had directed this? He would have totally gotten the idea.