Peter Pan
Disney Hero: Peter Pan is an interesting hero for Disney. He is a development of Pinocchio, in a way. Pinocchio was not really a hero. He was selfish, fallible, dishonest and impressionable. Peter Pan has many of the traits of Pinocchio but presented in a more heroic frame. Peter Pan is selfish. He's egocentric. He's cruel. But he's also heroic, protective and caring. The nastier side of Pan is drawn out in the Once Upon a Time version of Peter where he is the villain for a season - and has a surprising link to the series overall villain, Rumplestiltskin. It's an extrapolation of the less appealing aspects of the character which are clearly present in the Disney version and even puts a sinister spin on his eternal youth.
Peter is iconic. His green attire, pointy ears and jaunty hat are a staple of the Disney parks and it's a silhouette that many would recognise outside of context. Obviously, as a character, Pan has a life outside of Disney too in the original play and novel; the sequels Peter and Wendy and Peter Pan in Scarlet; the non-Disney film versions, including Hook with Robin Williams as a grown up Peter and the Hugh Jackman-starring Pan; and as the lead in a wide variety of stage versions (including of course, the one in which Bonnie Langford was starring when her casting as Mel in Doctor Who was announced to the British press). He is the epitome of the trickster and the eternal youth. The concept of childhood and never wanting to grow up is always linked back to Peter.
Disney Heroine: Wendy follows in the footsteps of Alice in that she is a Disney heroine who isn't a princess. She's an ordinary girl who finds herself flung into a fantastical adventure. The difference between her and Alice is that Wendy is clearly seeking adventure. She is intrigued by Peter and his apparent night time visits. There are intriguing overtones of adolescence and the changes girls go through at Wendy's age. She is threatened with being moved out of the nursery and into her own room; she becomes involved with Peter quite intimately from their first meeting, sewing his shadow back on and immediately makes Tinkerbell jealous - as well as being poorly received by the mermaids; she mothers John and Michael and then the Lost Boys. A Disney heroine who elicits such negative emotions in other women is, of course, not unusual as we've already seen it with Snow White and the Evil Queen and with Cinderella and Lady Tremaine, Anastasia and Drizella - and to some extent between Alice and the Queen of Hearts. But, somehow, with Wendy it feels different. I think it is because the women who don't like Wendy aren't the main antagonists - in fact, they are on the protagonist's side (although Tinkerbell is a complicated character). In fact Wendy has almost nothing to do with Captain Hook, aside from becoming kidnap fodder late in the film, and to some extent feels a little removed from the main action and often merely acts an observer rather than an active participant. That said, she does also have a couple of moments of solid defiance: once in reaction to the Red Indian squaws telling her that girls do not dance; and then when she walks the plank with her head held high.
Disney Villain: Peter Pan, of course, introduces us to another legendary Disney villain - Captain Hook. His bright red outfit, flamboyant hat, twirly moustache and black curly wig, along with - naturally - his eponymous hook are, like Peter's green outfit, easily recognised.
Hook is an interesting villain in that, almost from the outset, he is portrayed as a figure of ridicule. He is completely at the mercy of Pan's tricks. Little that he does bears fruit and he is outwitted at every turn. His fear of the crocodile leads him to be a quivering wreck on more than one occasion. This is not a style of villain we've seen before - the cool, calm, sinister figures of the Evil Queen and Lady Tremaine are a world apart from Hook, and even the volatile, although more cartoonish (and therefore ever so slightly closer in tone to Hook) Queen of Hearts leave Hook set apart in the films up to this point.
Hook, away from the Disney film, is usually far more of a threat - and Once Upon a Time diverts even further from the traditional image with a swaggering, handsome rogue who flits between villain and hero, at least to begin with.
But the Captain Hook of Disney's Peter Pan is a real departure from what Disney, up to this point, had done with its villains and it makes for quite an unusual dynamic within the film. There were points, in fact, when I almost felt sorry for Hook - his fear of the crocodile is palpable and really there is no reason within the film to wish him dead at the hands of a croc's teeth.
Disney Sidekicks: Captain Hook's ineptitude is exacerbated by his sidekick, Smee. Smee is the first in a familiar tradition of villain sidekicks (none of the villains up to now have really had a character that could be described as a sidekick). Smee is the ineffectual, clumsy aide who upsets the villain's plans more than assists. He is a constant frustration for Hook and occasionally even seems like he could switch sides as he isn't inherently evil. He is the ancestor of characters such as Iago and Pain and Panic. Oddly Smee, and for that matter, Captain Hook, sit apart from the rest of the crew who actually seem like quite vicious pirates. Smee is clearly ridiculed by the other pirates as much as Hook is by Pan. It often seems like the other pirates could mutiny against Hook at any given moment.
Smee is basically a butler for Hook: serving him food, shaving him and being at his beck and call at all hours. His dithering, constantly on edge persona is actually quite endearing and he is almost as iconic a Disney character as Hook and Pan.
Peter Pan also has a selection of sidekicks in the Lost Boys. The story of how the lost boys came to be in Neverland is that they are children who have fallen from prams or wandered away from their nannies and, somehow, ended up in Neverland. They are ordinary boys but they seem to have no desire to return home. Quite why they are dressed as various animals is never quite explained but they form a ragtag bag of enthusiastic friends for Wendy, John and Michael and a loyal crew for Peter.
John and Michael, Wendy's two brothers, are fun characters who, for my money, are more appealing than Wendy herself. John, in his top hat and night shirt seems to revel in the adventure and Michael, the youngest, dragging his teddy bear behind him wherever he goes is the little boy who wants to do everything the big boys do with little concept of fear or danger. The only problem I have with them is that I can never remember which one is called John and which one is called Michael!
Disney Creatures: There are a lot of animals in Neverland. First and foremost is the crocodile - Hook's nemesis. Again, the details of why the crocodile is after Hook - and for that matter why it ticks - are rather lost in this version - but, nevertheless, his wide lascivious toothy grin liven up a few of the sequences. The crocodile though, does make Peter Pan a far more 'cartoony' feature than some of the previous Disney films. His chasing of Hook has echoes of Tom and Jerry style chases where everything is exaggerated and the danger is muted somewhat by the fact that normal animal behaviour and real world physics are ignored for the sake of comedy. It could be that the crocodile resides in Neverland and is therefore a more fantastical version of the reptile but it stands out for being unlike animal characters from previous films all of which (with a few notable exceptions such as Dumbo) were portrayed far more like their real world counterparts.
The other animals are actually more akin to what we've seen before - hippos, rhinos, birds. Most are only seen briefly during the Following the Leader song, but give the impression of quite a diverse ecosystem in Neverland - although one which is, oddly, quite African in the species seen.
Disney Magic: Neverland is clearly a world of magic but this is centred around two particular races - the fairies and the mermaids. Actually, at this point there is only one fairy - the (yet again) iconic Tinker Bell. It is she who gives the children the power to fly. What isn't explained is whether her fairy dust is the reason Peter can fly although because of his magical relationship with his shadow - which can act independently of Peter, the implication is that he is magical himself.
Peter's shadow is a very interesting concept and one which probably deserved a bit more development - why is it independent of him; how come it can be sewn back on; does it have it's own sentience?
The mermaids are another of the many groups on the island. They clearly adore Peter and, similarly to Tinker Bell, get jealous when Wendy appears. They do little more than laze around their lagoon all day long and don't appear much aside from their one main scene.
Disney Land: Peter Pan occurs over two main locations - London and Neverland. London is only depicted at night and the images focus on rooftops and the nursery of the Darlings, along with a little of the outside of their house seen when Nana is put out by Mr Darling and when the parents leave for their evening. The famous landmark of Elizabeth Tower - informally known as Big Ben (Big Ben is the bell inside the tower, not the tower itself) - also features prominently when the flying children and Peter briefly pause there on their trip to Never Land. It's a building which recurs throughout Disney's depiction of London, most signficantly in the climax to Basil, the Great Mouse Detective.
Neverland itself is a strange place. It seems to consist solely of one island which doesn't seem particularly large. As mentioned above it seems to be home to a distinctly Africa ecosystem but is home to European pirates, Native Americans, a fairy, mermaids and lost human children.
It can be presumed that the pirates have somehow ended up in Neverland in a similar way to the Lost Boys assuming they travelled there on their ship. The 'Red Indians' however, are harder to explain.
They are another example of something that simply wouldn't appear in Disney films - or any films - nowadays. The 'Red Indian' trope is outdated and, clearly, racist. It is the 'cowboys and indians' portrayal of Native Americans popular in children's fiction and Westerns. This is emphasised by the way the boys - John and Michael in particular - enjoy role-playing as 'Indians'. To be fair to the film, the Red Indians are presented fairly favourably. Tiger Lily, in particular, is a strong, independent girl who, despite being captured by Hook to trap Pan, is stoic and brave in the face of her possible fate. The other tribespeople are more caricatured but are shown to be honourable if a little sexist in their opinions on the roles of men and women.
Disney Songs: The Red Indians also get a song - What Made the Red Man Red. Unfortunately racist in some of its ideas, it is, all the same, quite catchy. The other songs in the film are familiar in the Disney canon - You Can Fly and Following the Leader are fun and the latter in particular is hummable and has an annoying habit of lingering as a bit of an earworm. Less well known is the song Your Mother and Mine, a lovely lullaby sung by Wendy. It's not a song I've heard much outside of the film despite it's similarity to songs such as Baby Mine.
Two other songs centre around the pirates - The Elegant Captain Hook is, ostensibly, a villain song but as with earlier films in the canon, we still seem a way off from the iconic villain songs of later films. It doesn't, as a song, really go anywhere and fails to be memorable. A Pirate's Life is a short and sweet ditty sung by the pirates with the air of a sailor shanty.
Another memorable earworm is Never Smile at a Crocodile. Strangely though the song doesn't actually appear in the film aside from as an instrumental version. I had thought it appeared as a sung version but this was an erroneous memory based on the fact that a full version does appear on a Disney Sing Along Songs video themed around Under the Sea - and this was a video I owned and watched a lot in my younger years.
The opening song - The Second Star to the Right - is another example of a song from the film which hasn't really stuck around in my mind. I find that some of the opening songs in a lot of these early films fail to make an impression on me. Often it's the fact they are sung chorally in a very old-fashioned style which, musically, isn't a style I particularly like.
Disney Finale: Peter Pan is a slightly odd film. The plot is very thin. The children fly to Neverland and have a few minor adventures whilst the already existing battle between Hook and Pan plays out to a conclusion. The three children are little more than passive bystanders to most of the events. There are more questions than answers - is Tinker Bell the only fairy? Where did Hook and the pirates come from and why does Hook hate Pan so much? Why is the crocodile so intent on eating Hook? What is Peter - how come there is no one else like him on the island?
But despite that, it's very entertaining and definitely a worthy entry into the canon. Peter Pan as a story continues to inspire storytellers with various films, plays, pantomimes, musicals and sequel novels written over the years. The tale of an eternally youthful boy in constant combat with a flamboyant villain is irresistible it seems and the many disparate elements allow for all manner of imaginative flights of fancy.
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