Peter Pan-no matter how I view him-is a depressing character. But what is that message, exactly? What does Peter Pan mean? And how has that meaning changed over the decades and through the many iterations? Why, in other words, do we keep making new versions of the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up? Rather, I want to know what it is about Peter Pan that has so attracted filmmakers including Lowery, Joe Wright, Steven Spielberg, and Benh Zeitlin, particularly because beneath the childlike veneer of the story lie much darker truths, ones that contradict the ostensible message of the character. The film’s individual badness, though, isn’t what I’m interested in. This is particularly unfortunate when it comes to Neverland, which ought to be an enchanting place. Though Lowery maintains the compositional skill he’s shown in previous films like The Green Knight and The Old Man & the Gun, and though some of the visuals are striking, the film has no firm hold in a tangible space, as the scenes are either CGI or green-screened. Why do we keep going back to this well?Īlthough this latest adaptation is mostly a retread that adds little to the pantheon of Pans, it does offer-inadvertently perhaps-a crucial insight into something that’s always puzzled me about the character. Barrie’s children’s tale in those years has been a critical and commercial disaster. Hell, how about just the past 30 or so years? Every cinematic adaptation of J.M.
As I suffered through David Lowery’s Peter Pan & Wendy on Disney+, I kept wondering what it is about this character that has kept him alive for more than a century.
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