Peter Pan Night

This evening is all about tracing the origins of the story of Peter Pan and the everlasting clashes between him and pirate Captain James Hook. The story arc will begin with the creation of the play and the family that inspired it, followed by the actual adventure itself, and the epic conclusion of the battle between good and evil. It also answers one of the most important questions of the marathon: Did Peter Pan really return to Neverland? We have on our menu for this evening.

                         Finding Neverland 2003, Peter Pan 2003, and Hook 1991

Whereas last week was about watching the battle between good vs evil in the quest to destroy the one ring in Lord of the Rings, tonight is all about watching the makings of a classic childrens play at the hands of Johnny Depp's character in Finding Neverland. The true heart of this film is within the family of Kate Winslet's character and the unfolding of the story of Peter Pan through his very eyes. Instead of going the route of the animated cartoon, Finding Neverland is proceeded by the live action adaptation of the story made in 2003 titled Peter Pan. In this film, Hook is played by the brilliant but underrated Jason Isaacs who rocked it in The Patriot as the sinister and brutal Colonel Tavington. We also see a young Peter Pan form a relationship with a young Wendy and the setup of the background taking place in Neverland. With these two movies, it's only logical that this marathon concludes with Steven Spielberg's massively underrated Hook. Spielberg has stated numerous times that he considers Hook to be one of the greatest movie disappointments of his career, yet it is a movie that possesses just as much magic or more than his earlier films leading up to it's 1991 release. Hook gets a lot of unfair bashing because expectations were so high for it coming off of Spielberg's other grand epics such as Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Temple of Doom, Empire of the Sun, The Last Crusade, and Always. With a resume like this one, Hook was bound to be looked at as inferior on some level as The Fog was considered one of Carpenters worst when he did Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, Escape from New York, and The Thing. It is still a great movie about an older and grumpier Peter Pan who finally grows up and becomes a workaholic, losing track of everything that made him the great man he started off as being when he was young. Through the story of Hook, he regains his past back and learns about how to be a better father and husband. It was a personal movie that was masked under such an iconic film, and one that speaks to all of us about what we value most in our lives which are memories and those we love. It also asks us to use our imagination and become a kid again, how many films ask us to do that?

P.S. I think it's pretty cool that Dustin Hoffman is in both Finding Neverland and Hook. What a terrific way to tie the both movies together and celebrate the origins of the story, the actual action packed adventure, and the aftermath of it. There will never be a better hook than Dustin Hoffman nor a better Peter Pan than Robin Williams. That will forever remain one of the most clever casting choices in movie history.