Life in My Years

The last time I remember feeling excited about a movie aimed for kids was when Aladdin finally came out on VHS. Kid’s movies like goldfish crackers to me: mildly pleasant, but ultimately forgettable (apart from the disgusting goldfish-cracker afterbreath) and I almost never feel like eating them when there are other snacks in the cupboard.

So when a good friend of mine strongly recommended to me the 2003 live-action Peter Pan, I was a little skeptical. Skeptical not only because it was a movie aimed for kids, but also because I’d already seen three versions of Peter Pan on film: the 1950’s Disney Peter Pan, the 1960’s Peter Pan musical, and Steven Spielberg’s Hook (if you count that). Was my life really missing yet one more retelling of the boy who would not grow up?

Apparently, it was. This Peter Pan flies in a different sky from its more light-hearted predecessors. For one thing, the 2003 Peter Pan is more faithful to the darker mood and uncomfortable themes of J.M Barrie’s play, Peter Pan, and novel, Peter and Wendy. As a result, it is an unusually daring children’s film, presenting viewers with characters and story ideas that are refreshingly complex. Hook isn’t a simple-minded buffoon or a thoroughly evil monster, and Peter isn’t a good-natured goofball or a perfect hero; conflicts don’t resolve neatly and predictably on the protagonist’s most favorable terms. There exists ambiguity and regret; there is sadness that isn’t cured, emptiness that isn’t filled.

The real Peter Pan is an unsettling creation: he is little boy who has fled from the world so that he could not grow up. In succeeding, he has become frozen in time, unable to progress or change. He will forever be a child, and children are — as Barrie writes in the final line of his book — “gay and innocent and heartless.” This particular Peter, played by Jeremy Sumpter, isn’t quite heartless, but he comes closer to that idea than all the previous Peters. When Wendy’s brothers, John and Michael, are taken by pirates, Peter’s reaction is indifferent, and it seems perfectly plausible that he would have forgotten them completely had Wendy not anxiously reminded Peter to rescue them. In another scene, Peter is about to punish Tootles, a Lost Boy, for shooting Wendy down from the sky, and what if he hadn’t been interrupted and Tootles were killed by Peter’s sword — would Peter have felt aching regret for his actions? Would he have mourned the death of his friend? To feel those emotions, Peter would need to have an understanding of consequence and finality; but to understand the weight of those two concepts would be to rob Peter of his innocence, his nature. And so to keep living as he always has, Peter Pan would not feel remorse or grief. He will forget, because to linger on unhappy thoughts would corrupt his very existence.

The primary focus of this movie, however, is not on Peter’s inability to grow up, but rather on an idea that is muted even in the books — the possibility of love. We have our main players: Hook and Pan — two characters who ostensibly have nothing in common except for their country code: one is a grown-up, the other a child; one is bitter and malicious, the other blithe and playful; one is stranded on solid ground, the other has the ability to fly. The differences between the protagonist and antagonist are so obvious, in fact, that it’s been a film tradition to take the easy route. Hook, for the most part, has become a caricature of a villain whose mad, obsessive desire to defeat Peter Pan has always seemed – to be honest – a little unfounded in its intensity and therefore, rather silly. This movie finally breaks that tiresome relationship. Hook and Pan are no longer polar opposites, but rather the same character borne of the same condition — only pushed to different logical extremes. Had fate been different, had Hook been the immortal boy of Neverland and Peter Pan the adult, the role of villain and hero would simply be reversed: they both lack a basic level of empathy; both are immature, petulant whenever things don’t go their way; and both are trapped in Neverland, unable to grow, or change, beyond what they are, and always have been. They are both characters for whom love is ultimately doomed. The only difference is that one character knows it and the other doesn’t –- and more importantly to the movie’s conflict, the one who knows it will always know it, and the one who does not will forever remain ignorant. It is for this carefree ignorance that Hook envies and hates Peter Pan, because, as we see in the movie, ignorance is freedom. It presents possibility. It allows Peter to skirt along the edges of Love when the opportunity arises, and experience moments that almost, but not quite, feel like the real thing.

The development of Peter and Wendy’s romance and its eventual failure is, therefore, another major source of the movie’s emotional conflict. It also demonstrates how this children’s movie is unafraid to present a love story that an audience will want, and some will expect, to succeed, but that is inherently impossible: to have romantic love is to be a part of that grown-up world that Peter has renounced, and the lovely Wendy, played by Rachel Hurd-Wood, represents a part of that grown-up world that Peter will never fully experience. As much as they bat their eyes and flirt with each other — and they do lots of both — Wendy is unable to cross that emotional boundary Peter has constructed all around himself.

But she comes close. There is a sweet scene where Wendy and Peter dance together in the night sky, framed in a large, milky-white moon suspended above a sea glinting in its shine. They twirl, dance, and float, higher and higher into the night as gold-dusted fairies fly all around them, and Wendy smiles at Peter, her face bathed in the dewy moonlight, radiant with dreaminess and love. There is the hope of possibility in her eyes, and Peter soaks in its glow for that moment.  Hook stands alone in the evening forest below, watching the two of them together up in the sky, his face filled not with anger or hatred, but of sadness. “He has found himself a Wendy,” he says, and then sits down and watches them dancing above him.

But Peter can’t keep Wendy, and their waltz into the realm of romance is brief. As the scene continues, Peter’s smile disappears, and he pulls away from her warm gaze, a startled look on his face as he looks around himself and realizes how high in the sky he is. He turns back to Wendy with a slight frown and a look of mild alarm, and says, “It’s only make-believe, isn’t it?” Wendy’s smile falters then, and her face dims as she responds, “Oh. Yes” and slowly floats down to earth. Wendy then realizes that while Peter understands jealousy and anger, love is an alien concept. “I have never heard of it,” he says with a blank look on his face. When Wendy insists that he must’ve felt it at some point in his life, he says, “Never. Even the sound of it offends me.” He then quickly flies away, as if he senses a danger in this girl standing there in her white nightgown.

It’s a sweet and sad love story, and it’s this relationship, as well as the adversarial one between Hook and Pan, that make this movie a good movie. Unfortunately, I actually ended up feeling a little disappointed at the end of it, because it could have been such a great movie. There was so much potential. Rachel Hurd-Wood’s Wendy and Jason Isaac’s Hook, two of the main emotional ingredients in the movie, are so wonderful that their performances elevate their characters from simply being interesting theoretical ideas, to real people we fall a little in love with. Rachel Hurd-Wood especially, is completely charming.

Her bright blue eyes shine with such conviction, spark, and wisdom, and her face is fresh, expressive with wonder, excitement, and sadness. All her movements, affectations, and lines are so free and natural that you feel like you’re really watching the real Wendy Darling, and she’s more lovely, intelligent, and spirited than you’d ever imagined. The supporting cast was also good, and I remain convinced that there’s not a movie in which Olivia Williams cannot manage to be the model of quiet intelligence and beauty of the best kind. The movie images were creative and what I’d expect Neverland to look like, along with a few surprises. There was an especially vivid, and very eerie, scene with the mermaids in the lagoon I feel I have to mention, since I felt genuinely creeped out by it. Peter and Wendy were kneeling at the edge of a dark pool of water, and in the distance, these female heads with vaguely aquatic and scaley features slowly rise from the black water and they silently glide toward Peter and Wendy. Watching those strange mermaids swim toward me on screen was the first time I realized that actually seeing a real mermaid in the ocean would probably frighten me out of my mind and then haunt my insane dreams until the day I died.

But then there are the movie’s problems. First, there’s the garish, neon-colored Tinkerbell whose fast, high-pitched cat-screechings and manically-exaggerated movements and facial expressions annoyed me so that I felt barely a sliver of sadness when she finally drank some poison and died. She didn’t seem like a magical fairy from Neverland, she seemed like a valley-girl whose mood alternately jumped from either hyperactive excitement to tantrum-throwing infuriation –- she also had an unfortunate coloring made her look like a bright orange-yellow cartoon character. Second, parts of the movie without Wendy or Hook dragged a little, and the battle scenes between the pirates and the lost children were not very good — they just weren’t very exciting to watch. But those aren’t huge issues; in fact, they’re almost negligible compared to the real problem.

The real problem is Peter Pan – or more specifically, Jeremy Sumpter.

This is not negligible.  He is, at the very least, one third of the movie’s emotional substance: the story is about Peter Pan, the main character is Peter Pan, the movie is called Peter Pan, — and yet, the movie might as well been called Wendy Darling, because Jeremy Sumpter’s Peter Pan has absolutely no charisma, mystery, or presence. He may have been cast for his boyish good features the director probably envisioned Peter Pan to have, but as soon as Sumpter talks, there’s absolutely zero believability that Sumpter could be Pan, as sunkissed and curled as his blond hair may be. There ought to be something special, timeless, and unearthly about Peter Pan, a boy that embodies the qualities of Youth, freedom and adventure — Peter Pan should not look and act like a would-be frat boy from High School Musical, the Junior High Years. When Sumpter speaks as Pan, it’s clumsy, awkward, and almost uncomfortable to watch. “Oh! The cleverness of me!” he says at one point in the movie, and it just sounds so wrong and disconnected. There’s this great part in the book, Peter and Wendy, where Hook asks Peter during a sword fight, “Pan! Who and what are thou?” and Peter answers, “I am youth! I am joy!” and I cannot for the life of me imagine Jeremy Sumpter delivering a line like that without me cringing.

And that smile. That terrible smug smile Sumpter kept flashing at everyone throughout the entire movie was one of the most annoying parts of his performance. Whether he intended the smile to look flirty, playful, daring, or happy, they all ended up looked the same: insincere and obnoxious. The smile just never ended up reaching his eyes – and sometimes not even his face. It was like someone had pulled invisible strings to turn up his lips while the rest of his face remained in apathy-land.

So for me, Jeremy Sumpter effectively turned what could have been a great movie into merely a good one. Which is a shame, because this Peter Pan role was such a well-written part. Sometimes, all you need for a memorable movie, even if the movie itself isn’t very good, is just one great character. Case in point: Pirates of the Caribbean. There is no way that movie would have had two sequels if there was only Will Who? and no Captain Jack Sparrow.  This Peter Pan was that kind of a movie-changing role, and it was fumbled.

I suppose that’s kind of a downer way to close the post, but that’s sort of how I felt after watching it. But to end on a more positive note, it was a good movie, and the most substantive Peter Pan movie I’ve seen — although, Hook was probably more fun to watch.