Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Peter Pan

*Deep Breath* Peter Pan. Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan. What is there to say about Peter Pan? Truth be told, this was one of the ones I was looking forward to. After watching it, I’m honestly not sure if I can remember why. This one was kind of a rough sit. I know it’s considered a Disney Classic, but then again, nostalgia is an extremely powerful and often deceptive force. While there were some enjoyable moments, this movie was severely bogged down by an unlikable main character, a psychotic pixie sidekick and good old-fashioned Disney racism as far as the eye can see. Seriously, I never thought I’d find a film that would make me long for the tasteful subtlety of the Dumbo Crows, but here we are. They should have called this movie “Peter Problematic.” So… what’s the story about? Well, Peter Pan is a story about a magical little creeper by the name of Peter Pan who lives on a magical island in space or something where children never have to grow up. Pan decides to kidnap some children from London, something everyone just kind of seems okay with, and has them join his gang known as the lost boys where they can be hunted by Captain Hook and his crew of Pirates. Oh, and somewhere in there are some Native American caricatures that make the Cleveland Indians logo look tasteful by comparison. This is going to be a rough one people. I think I’m going to break some hearts in the process, but let’s take a look at everything wrong with Disney’s Peter Pan.

Main Character:

We have a first for Deep Dive Disney, a film with two or more characters that are deserving of the title of main character, in this case, Peter Pan himself and Wendy Darling. We’ll start with Wendy, since this is just as much her movie as it is Pan’s. Wendy is the eldest of three children and is sitting right on that fine line between still being a child and setting out on the path to adulthood. Scared of facing what growing up might mean, Wendy naturally accepts Pan’s offer to fly away with her to neverland. However, her time on Neverland shows her that staying a child forever has its downsides as well, and by the end of the film she is ready to grow up. It’s not the strongest arc, but Wendy is still a likable character. Like our previous protagonist, Wendy is voiced by Kathryn Beaumont, which is fitting because that balance between frustration at her situation and the sense of wonder at her surroundings did remind me quite a bit of Alice. She’s the kind of sensible character needed to keep a personality like Pan’s in check.

Speaking of old green jeans, let’s talk about our films title character. I’m just going to come out and say it. Peter Pan is a douchebag. An immature, sexist, contemptable, irritating little prick. I guess that might be kind of the point since the whole basis of his character is that he never grows up, and therefore remains a bratty kid forever, but they didn’t have to make him this unlikable. Literally the first conversation he has with Wendy has him insulting her gender but still expecting her to do stuff for him because of it. Pretty much every moment he’s on screen he’s acting like a selfish jerk. This is our hero? Why? He’s a dick to everyone around him and rarely suffers consequences for it. During the final battle, when he seems to have this personality one eighty and decides to fight Hook with honor, it feels forced and unearned. Maybe Pan is meant to be that never growing up can be unappealing, but you could have done that without making Pan completely unlikeable.

Villain:

As many of you know, the whole reason I started this whole Deep Dive Disney thing was because of a Top 20 Disney Villains Article I wrote. While that was one of the most fun articles I ever wrote, I’m not entirely satisfied with certain aspects of it. Specifically, I felt really bad taking Captain Hook, one of Disney’s most iconic antagonists and relegating him to the honorable mentions. Well, after watching this film, I think it may have been because Pan is so unlikeable that Hook seems like less of a villain by comparison. Hell, for most of the film, I found myself actively rooting for Hook and when all was said and done, Hook was my favorite character in the film by a wide margin. Don’t get it twisted, Hook is undeniably a bad man, but frankly, I don’t blame him one bit for wanting to get rid of Pan. If some little shit chopped off my hand and fed it to a crocodile who’s constantly trying to eat me, I’d be pissed to. And yeah, that’s right, Peter Pan, our hero, dismembered a man. I think that makes him an honorary Star Wars villain. Like The Evil Queen and the Queen of Hearts before him, Hook is another one of Disney’s Franchise Villains, and unlike the Queen of Hearts, I can easily see why. Hook walks balances the line between lovably comedic and threatening perfectly throughout the film, sometimes switching from one to the other in the same scene. I guess someone else must have noticed this too as the character is very popular, having made more appearances outside of his original film than any other Disney film. That alone is pretty impressive. Also, Hook holds the distinction of being the first Disney villain to literally get away with onscreen murder. True, The Evil Queen killed Snow White, but Prince Necrophiliac put the kibosh on that. The Queen of Hearts sentence a ton of people to death by decapitation, but we never saw any of her sentences carried out. Hook, well he just straight up shoots a mother fucker and he’s dead. No ambiguity there. While Hook was certainly an intimidating customer, he also was pretty funny, he’s constant fear of the Crocodile, his slapstick with Mr. Smee and his being forced to say he’s a codfish at the end are always good for a laugh. For being the bad guy, I found him to be one of the truly great things about the movie.

Side Characters:

Not many of the side characters in this film are interesting enough to discuss in detail save for two. The first I’d like to talk about is George Darling, the father to Wendy, John and Michael. The beginning of the film seems to paint him as kind of a jerk or even a straight up bad guy, even going to far as for him to share a voice actor with Captain Hook. Maybe it’s because this is my first time viewing the film as an actual adult, but I found that depiction of this character to be incredibly unfair. Sure, he can come off as a bit too harsh, even by his own admission, but I actually found he was making some good points. He loves his children and wants to see them grow up and knows that they can’t do it if they never leave the nursery. And while he eventually realizes that he’s wrong for trying to make his children grow up faster than their ready, he’s still not wrong for trying to push them in that direction.

Now, let’s talk about Tinkerbell. As bad as Pan might be, Tink is So, Much, Worse. At the very least, Pan never tried to have anyone killed out of pure jealousy and later proudly admit to it. Jesus Christ! Tink is a goddamned Sociopath. Seriously, I found both Tink and Pan so reprehensible that when Hook tries to blow them both up later in the film, I was actually hoping they’d succeed. The film does nothing to build sympathy for either character and it just got under my skin.

Songs:

Once again, only a few songs here are really worth talking about. Some for good reasons and one… let’s just get into it. In keeping with the theme here, the best song in the film goes to Captain Hook and his crew. The song is called, The Elegant Captain Hook and while it’s not as good as some songs we’d get in later films, but it’s nice, catchy and upbeat.

While I don’t normally comment on instrumentals, I actually really enjoyed the theme for the Crocodile, and especially how worked up Hook gets every time it starts playing. Good stuff.

But, now’s as good a time as any to address the big racist elephant in the room. This movie’s depiction of Native Americans is absolutely inexcusable. I genuinely believed that after Dumbo, no Disney racism could phase me. My God was I dead wrong. “The Indian is Cunning but Not Intelligent” is an actual line in the film and the word “Savage” is used constantly to describe them. I’m given to understand that the book is even worse when it comes to the racism, and frankly I’m scared to find out. What I want to know is, how are there even Native Americans on Neverland. Last time I checked, Native American were, y’know, Native, to the Americas. Neverland isn’t even on Earth! But that conundrum pales in comparison to the actual portrayal of the characters themselves, each drawn as horribly offensive caricatures. Hell, the Indian Chief is such an over the top racist caricature that he doesn’t even look human. Truth be told, as a little, little kid, I was scared of that character because I thought he was supposed to be some kind of monster. And all of this comes to a deeply problematic head during the song “What Made the Red Man Red.” Have you ever experienced something so racist that you physically felt unclean and needed a shower? That’s “What Made the Red Man Red.” I am a white American male without a drop of color in his ethnic makeup that he’s aware of, and even I was offended by this shit! I don’t think I’ve ever meant this statement more than I do now: What The Shit Disney!? I never thought I’d find something that made me long for the cultural sensitivity of Disney’s Pocahontas, but as many problems as that movie has, there’s no way it can get worse than this, and I seriously hope I don’t end up regretting that statement.

Memorable Scenes:

I need to cool off and talk about something I actually liked about the film. I actually liked Hook and Peter’s first major fight at Skull Rock. The way Peter Pan messes with Hook and Smee from the shadows, particularly how he impersonates Hook, is pretty funny and the fight choreography is solid. I like the difference in their fighting styles and how Hook is thrown off by how he’s used to one on one duels while Pan tends to rely on childish pranks.

Story:

The story is a little bit confused. Best I can figure the overall message is about finding a balance between moving towards adult and maintaining a childlike sense of wonder. This seems to be enforced by the fact that George Darling, a practical adult by all appearances, is able to recognize Hook’s pirate ship at the end. All this is a really nice sentiment, but it gets a bit muddled in all the unlikable characters and other problems of the film.

The Dark Disney Factor:

There’s plenty of Dark Disney Factor, it’s just a lot less overt than it’s been in prior films. Blatant kidnapping, attempted murder, actual murder, dismemberment, possible drug references, man eating Crocodiles, threats of immolation, Smee playing grab-ass with a seagull, this film has it all. It’s actually kind of creepy when you consider the fact that Peter Pan literally breaks into the Darling house and kidnaps their children while they sleep, and drugs them with Pixie magic. And just look at that face! That’s the first time we see Peter Pan in the film and it’s scary as fuck. This creeper is supposed to be our hero? I say again, What the Shit Disney!?

Final Thoughts: I think a friend of mine said it best: Peter Pan has Peter Problems. Unlikable characters, confused morals and so… much… racism! There’s just enough good stuff here that I understand why people remember this movie fondly, but without the benefit of Nostalgia, this movie doesn’t hold up. Fortunately, there are other iterations of this story that hold up much better. One of my favorites is the depiction of these characters in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, a great show, provided you make peace with the fact that they jump the shark in season 4 and sometime after that take their established continuity out behind woodshed and just start doing whatever they want. In that show, there’s a complete role reversal between the two principal characters of the story. While Captain Hook starts as a villain, it’s purely for his own reasons and he switches sides pretty quick and ultimately becomes the love interest for the main character Emma and my personal favorite character in the show. On the flipside, Pan is treated like the kidnapping creeper that he is, and is portrayed not only as a bad guy, but as one of the most irredeemable villains in the entire show. But as far as this movie is concerned, this is, ironically, another one for the never again pile. Hopefully our next movie will be less horribly racist than this one. Join me next time for… Lady & The Tramp. Shit!