Peter Pan and Wendy Detailed Review

[Dani1923]

I’m very very sorry I took so long to post this detailed review! I really did I re-watch Peter Pan and Wendy on Saturday morning (US Central Time) and I’ve kept thinking about the movie for the past few days, and my feelings about it haven’t changed much, in fact they’ve probably gotten worse the more I think about how this movie was executed! The two main words I would use to describe this movie are boring and pointless.
I’ll be spoiling this movie throughout the rest of this review, so it if you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read on!
I will say upon re-watch, the beginning of the movie isn’t too terrible, it’s not good, but it’s not the worst either. At its best, the movie is just okay until after the Skull Rock scene, and then it just quickly goes downhill from there! For example, when Tinker Bell tries to help Peter kidnap Wendy, or Peter chases down his shadow in the nursery and then Wendy helps him sow the shadow back on him, those parts are okay, as well as the “kiss” scene, although they change what leads up to it and they only do part of the “kiss” scene until later (and even then it doesn’t matter anymore like I said in the last post), but at least it’s still there.
According to that scene though, Peter is scared when Wendy accidentally stabs him with the needle as she’s sowing his shadow on him, which is out of character for him, and he thinks his heart is in his foot? Why?
Also, Peter says he liked hearing Mrs. Darling tell stories but, like Wendy, we never hear her tell her children a story, she just sings them a lullaby, which is what Wendy sings to the Lost Boys. And even Nana is absolutely pointless in this movie! She’s not the children’s nurse. They never say that she is. She just gets treated like a regular dog! And Mr. Darling puts her outside for literally no reason! Nana is there just because she’s a character that everyone knows is in Peter Pan!
The flying scene is pretty cool except for the music, which I’ll talk about later!
Neverland was so bland! It’s just a grassy island! There’s no different types of weather, no animals except birds that you can only hear, there’s no waterfalls or cool places or imaginative things to see! We see the mermaids very briefly when the children arrive and then we never see them again, they didn’t even go to Mermaid Lagoon! And the mermaids actually looked cool! What a waste!
Neverland at least isn’t dreary looking like in 2015’s Pan, but it’s still so dull! Second worst Neverland! Neverland is supposed to be dreamlike! Not many kids would dream of going to an island that’s just full of grass! For all their flaws, the animated movie, the movie Hook, and the 2003?Peter Pan all made their Neverlands look interesting and look like a place that a child would want to go to!
And speaking of waste, the Native Americans! Tiger Lily does fight do other stuff, but other than that she does nothing really important and she’s boring like everyone else! And there’s literally only a few shots, like around 4 or 5, of the Native American village that happens in one scene! There’s no other scenes in the movie with the other Native Americans! They don’t even have any lines! And the other characters don’t go to the village! Again, what a waste!! But actually, maybe there was a scene where the other characters, at least Wendy and possibly the Lost Boys, visit the village, because in the first official trailer, there’s a shot that isn’t in the final cut of the movie where Tiger Lily is in some of cave and her hand is touching a cave drawing or painting of a Native American person on a white horse like the one Tiger Lily rides, I don’t know if that was supposed to be her or her grandmother who she mentions to Wendy at one point, but if such a scene did exist it doesn’t matter because it was cut and not put in the finished movie, and I’m judging the finished product!
This was just another weak sauce and mediocre attempt by Disney to show representation! No Native American child is going to feel represented by characters that barely do anything!
I’m black, and I don’t feel properly represented by Tinker Bell or any of the other black characters in this movie because they don’t do anything!!
In recent years, Disney’s way of trying to honor representation of race minorities and LGBTQ+ people are as flimsy as cheap toilet paper!

[Dani1923]

Like I said, the scene with John and Michael getting kidnapped by pirates (which happened after the Darling children and Peter got separated when the pirates blasted them with cannons) and meeting Hook and almost drowning in Skull Rock was fine, but I wish they let it happen later in the movie. They could have had Wendy, her brothers, the Lost Boys, and Peter (and the audience) enjoy Neverland together (and put more fun stuff to do in Neverland while they’re at it!) before something dramatic happens like Hook and the pirates getting kidnapped by John and Michael!
While this is going on, Wendy meets Tiger Lily and the Lost Boys and they all see the pirates taking John and Michael to Skull Rock, which one of the Lost Boys says that means they’re going to get executed, so they all go to Skull Rock to save them. And a few minutes later, we see that Peter disguised himself as a pirate to sneak in among them to help rescue the boys. Peter is soon caught however, and Peter and Hook fight, and Hook almost kills Peter, then the crocodile comes in.
I will admit that I also liked the part when the crocodile comes in and attacks the pirates! It was pretty cool! It even eats one of them, but of course there’s no blood which is kind of a bummer! But also, something confusing happens when Wendy interrupts Hook when he tries to kill Peter says that the line I talked about before about how gentleman do not harm children, and then the crocodile shows up and chases them off. Why would she yell at Hook when he could easily try to kill her? If the crocodile hadn’t conveniently showed up, he definitely would have! Also Hook says that Peter is not a child, which isn’t true, he isn’t an ordinary child, but he’s still a child! And Hook says that he himself is not a gentleman! Yes he is! Hook prides himself on being a gentleman! He went to Eton! He prides himself on being an Etonian gentleman! Also even though Hook injured Peter before they went on the rock and Hook tried to kill him, after Peter fell, he doesn’t seem like he’s injured after that. Peter could have been in pain and Hook could have tried to kill him at that moment. You know, like in the original story!
But despite those those confusing and bummer moments, during my first watch of the movie, I was thinking like I said, after this scene, the movie gets SO MUCH WORSE!
After the kids leave Skull Rock and Peter sees that he’s scared off the pirates, he turns to Wendy and says “Well, that was fun!” and then Wendy does a Will Smith and slaps Peter across the face! She did that because…. I have no idea! She gets upset because she just went through this whole ordeal with the pirates and her brothers almost getting killed and she fusses at Peter like it’s supposed to be his fault, which it obviously wasn’t! He tried to save them! And then Wendy even admits that he partially saved the day, so, again, why is she mad at him?? And like I talked about before, Wendy and Tiger Lily for some reason don’t believe Peter can defeat Hook on his own, even though he literally says he always beats him, so why do they not believe him, especially Tiger Lily, who should know how powerful Peter is?? And John and Michael also seem a little upset the experience too, and they should probably want to go home right about now, but then they go to the Lost Boys home, and then I guess they completely forget almost dying! Okay…
And then Tiger Lily (actually, why didn’t she do anything to stop Hook at Skull Rock? Tinker Bell also didn’t really do anything either. So that was dumb!) talks to Wendy about finding her home because Wendy doesn’t think Neverland (where’s she’s only been for about an hour) and her own home in London aren’t her real home, and honestly what Tiger Lily says means nothing and doesn’t become important later.
As I mentioned before, The home of the Lost Boys is not a home under the ground through holes in the trees, but in a ruined building in the middle of the island. How have the pirate not found this place and discovered that’s where Peter and the Lost Boys live? As far I can know, that’s the only building on the island! Are there others? I don’t know! Anyway, Wendy goes into the home that Peter apparently found and the Lost Boys ask Wendy to tell them a story, but she doesn’t and asks Peter to tell them a story, and Peter does not remind her that he brought her there to tell them stories, and she asks Peter to tell them where him and Hook came from and there parents are. Why she is so curious about this all of a sudden, I don’t know! Peter doesn’t answer her questions and then Wendy says that the Lost Boys and Peter have mothers somewhere that love them. Except, no they don’t! Wendy should know that since they’re Lost Boys and they live in Neverland, that probably means their mothers abandoned them. Or died. So why would she say this? One of the Lost Boys suggests that Wendy should be their mother and Wendy says “I’m not quite sure I want to be your mother.”. Since I’ve talked about several times how one of the main themes of the Peter Pan story is motherhood, and how Wendy being Peter and the Lost Boys’ mother is so important to the story, I was VERY unhappy that the filmmakers decided to go this direction! This is also the only mention Wendy possibly being anybody’s mother in this movie. So Peter gets mad about them talking about mothers and flies off to his room. The Lost Boys again ask Wendy for a story, and again she doesn’t and sings them the lullaby her mother sings to her and the Lost Boys fall asleep.
I want to talk about the Lost Boys for a second. Before I watched this movie for the first time, I actually thought that the Lost Boys (or the Lost Boys and Lost Girls as I thought they would call the girls Lost Girls) would be my favorite part of the movie. In the trailers, the Lost Boys seemed very charming and gave me the vibe of the Lost Boys from Hook or even the 2003 PP movie. In those movies, the Lost Boys were charming and fun to watch! But in Peter Pan and Wendy, the Lost Boys barely do anything and also they barely say anything! I think each Lost Boy has about 5-10 lines each, if even that! Very disappointing! And if they weren’t going to do much, why did they add children? There are eight Lost Boys instead of six. Also, why didn’t THEY help Peter during the Skull Rock scene! I’m starting to think that scene isn’t as good as I thought it was…

[Dani1923]

Anyway, Wendy goes to upstairs Peter’s room with Tinker Bell and on the way Tinker Bell tells Wendy that Peter doesn’t listen to her, which the movie contradicts so it still doesn’t make sense, and she also reveals that on the door to Peter’s bedroom it says “Peter and James’ Room”, meaning Hook used to live with Peter and they shared the bedroom together that Peter now stays alone in……Wendy goes into this room and Peter is sulking because he’s disappointed that Wendy isn’t enjoying Neverland and Wendy says that Neverland isn’t what she thought it was going to be like. But what did she think that Neverland was going to be like? The movie never establishes this! Then Wendy tells Peter that she figured out that him and Hook used to be friends and now I’m finally going to begin to talk about the Peter and Hook backstory that the filmmakers came up with for this movie! I’m going to reveal the parts of it in the order that that they’re revealed in the movie. So Peter tells Wendy that Hook and Peter grew up together and they were best friends. They went to Neverland together, but Hook left Neverland at some point and grew up before coming back to Neverland and becoming a pirate and Peter’s enemy. This story is just explained to us in dialogue, it would’ve been nice to have seen flashbacks of those events! Wendy leaves Peter as he sulks some more, but when she goes downstairs she sees that the pirates have broken in and have tied up and gagged the children which they also do to Wendy. Hook heard Wendy singing the lullaby to the Lost Boys and that’s how he found their hideout, and heard it from presumably many miles away! How he never heard any other noises that came from the home from presumably many other times he’s tried to find the place I have no idea! Hook goes upstairs to his old room, and when I first saw this part during my first watch I realized something. How did he not know where the home was when he used to live there??? He even says when he enters the room he remembers the many times that him and Peter played hide-and-seek in the room!!! What?!?!?! And then IT GETS WORSE! So Hook walks into the room and Peter is hiding on top of the door above Hook but Hook still talks to Peter and he says that Peter was always good hiding, but Hook was always good at finding him. Again, if that’s true, then why did it take him so long to find Peter living in the place that HE ALSO USED TO LIVE IN!!! And after Hook says that he turns around and cuts Peter with his sword across his chest, then Peter looks at Hook in the eye and he looks terrified, for some reason, and then he says, “I don’t think I like this game!”, and then he falls down to the floor at the bottom of the house, meanwhile Tinker Bell tries to catch him for some reason even though she wouldn’t be strong enough to catch him, and the children watch and scream in horror as Peter falls to his death. Actually, I’m not sure if he actually dead or not but the movie seems to imply that he did die. What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, I’ve watch this scene twice and I really don’t know what was happening in that scene! Hook and the pirates take the children away, but after that, Peter’s shadow separates itself from Peter and goes to the Native American village and “tells” Tiger Lily that something bad happened to Peter.
Then we see the children are in a jail cell on the Jolly Roger where the next part of Hook’s backstory is revealed. Hook asked Wendy where she heard the lullaby she sang to the Lost Boys from, she says it’s a song her mother sings to her which makes Hook thinks about his mother, and though I don’t think it’s explicitly said, but Hook’s mother must have sang that song to him and that’s why that song made him think of her. He reveals to Wendy that Peter actually made Hook leave Neverland because he missed his mother so Hook went back to London looking for her but he never found her again. Wendy asks why did Hook go back to Neverland even though Peter didn’t want Hook around anymore? Hook says it’s because Peter was his friend! What?!?!?!?! And he almost died trying to get back when he was saved by Smee and raised by the pirates!What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
How did Hook become the captain? Was there a captain before him? Who was he? What happened to him? If Hook was saved by Smee and the pirates, then why does he treat them all like dirt? The movie doesn’t ask or answer any of these questions!!! This is ridiculous!!!!!!! And, again, it would’ve been nice to have seen flashbacks of this stuff happening instead of it just being TOLD to us! Hook says that he can’t have fun in Neverland again and he can’t be like he was before and he became a hateful person because that’s what happens when you grow up. Wendy disagrees and says it’s what happens when you “grow up wrong”. Back in the scene where Wendy met the Lost Boys, they said that she must be growing up wrong because at first she couldn’t see through a magic telescope that they had, but this concept “growing up wrong” is not brought up when it comes to Wendy again, and the concept of “growing up wrong” is not brought up at all again after Wendy mentions it to Hook. So this means nothing!
So Hook sentences all the children to die, and then Wendy tries to convince Hook to only kill her and let the rest of the children become pirates. Why she thought Hook would agree to that, I have no idea!
Okay, here’s another tangent. So at the beginning of the movie, Wendy acts like a little brat to her family for no reason! In the nursery, she plays sword fighting with John and Michael and her and John’s swords smash a mirror, to which Mr. Darling asks who did it and Wendy blames her brothers for it and takes no responsibility! Luckily, Mr. Darling knows she was also responsible! When John asks why she threw them under the bus like that, she calls them pirates and basically says that they deserved it! What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! And when Mrs. Darling comes in to comfort Wendy because she’s scared of growing up because she’s supposed to go to boarding school the next day (after this scene, boarding school and Wendy’s fear of it is never mentioned again, at least not in a dialogue, but I’ll get to that!), and Mrs. Darling says that she went to boarding school and grew up, and Wendy snaps back at her, “What if I don’t want your life?” What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Where did this hostility come from??Now fast-forward to the scene on the Jolly Roger, and Wendy, even though she is trying to keep her brothers and other Lost Boys from dying, tries to force them into piracy! They never asked for that! But anyway, Hook refuses and still sentences them to die. And then Smee says something along the lines of “James, you don’t have to do this!” and then Hook yells at him and says, “Don’t call me that! My name is Captain Hook!” What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! James is your first name! Since when did Hook ever have a problem being called James? In the novel, it states that he also likes to be called Jas Hook! And, again, why is Hook yelling at Smee when he LITERALLY JUST SAID that Smee saved his life as a kid? Right about now, Smee probably regrets doing that!
We then see Tiger Lily at the home of Peter and the Lost Boys (although she actually told Wendy earlier that she wouldn’t go in there because it wasn’t her home, but I guess it’s okay for her to go in now because it’s an emergency? I don’t know!) and she heals Peter and he comes back to life and they go save Wendy and the Lost Boys. So yeah, there’s no “Do You Believe in Fairies?” scene in this movie! I think this is the only movie that’s a direct adaptation to the original story that doesn’t have a variation of this scene! Please correct me if I’m wrong about that! I know the animated version doesn’t technically do this either, but at least Tinker Bell tries to save Peter from getting blown up by a bomb (instead of getting poisoned) and Peter does try to save her in return, we just don’t know how he does it in that version. Needless to say, VERY disappointing that this version scrapped it completely, and it actually makes Tinker Bell even more pointless in this movie than she already was before the scene happened! They could have come up with SOMETHING, ANYTHING to show Tink saving Peter and then Peter showing his love for her which then saves her life! But they didn’t! Tinker Bell is one of the most recognizable characters in this story (the top 3 are probably Peter, Hook, then her), and she became more memorable to the public because of the animated version that DISNEY created, and yet in this version, DISNEY decided to make Tinker Bell COMPLETELY USELESS!!!!!!!
And then, if you can believe it, the movie ACTUALLY GETS WORSE!!!
We then see Wendy on the plank, with the other children watching in fear, as the pirates sing a song.
But now I feel this is a good place to go on a tangent about the music. Now I’m not a professional in music in anyway whatsoever! I don’t even play an instrument! But I’m just giving my opinion on this because music and the use of it in film is very important! The music in this film is decent at best, but a lot of the times it’s, at least to me, very uninspired and dull and sometimes confusing. This just what I think of it. I could be wrong, maybe it sounds good to some who knows much more about music than me! You can listen for yourself and tell me what you think!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLv3qeuV3YDql2Iw2nV5btqIU3WIOMdLs

But I listened to some of the songs on the soundtrack and I was pretty unimpressed for most part. And for comparison, I listened to some of the songs on the 2015 Peter and Wendy film (GOSH Peter Pan) soundtrack, and, to me, it sounds SO MUCH BETTER! Again, you can listen to the soundtrack for yourself and post your opinion!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nJLwgGN1EJTmNow6zA8D9-NxVoFTknp88

The music for the GOSH Peter Pan movie is beautiful, magical, haunting, thrilling, and amazing! It has much more life to it than Peter Pan and Wendy’s! Just listening to the music makes you feels like you’re going on a journey whereas the recent soundtrack doesn’t!
The only song in Peter Pan and Wendy that sounded pretty good to me was the pirate song that’s sung while Wendy is on the plank.

https://youtu.be/mAz1ulQ7ukk

This song is one of the very very very very few good parts of the movie! My only complaint about it is, though the song is great on its own, I personally don’t think it fit the scene. According to the novel, the pirates sing a joyful song and Hook even dances while singing the song because they’re happy about watching these kids die. So having this somber sounding song just doesn’t feel right to me! Again, still a good song by itself though!
And here’s an interesting fact, the 2003 Peter was originally supposed to have a pirate song during their final ship scene, but the director P.J. Hogan cut it after a rehearsal because he thought that the song wasn’t appropriate for the story and that when pirates sing, it’s too adorable??? What?
Here’s a video talking about the deleted song:
https://youtu.be/V9yKC0XK84o

And actually the song that was almost in the 2003 movie seems more fitting to the scene and the type of vibe I would have wanted for Peter Pan and Wendy and I imagine the type of song the pirates sing in the novel.
So Wendy is about to walk the plank while the pirates are singing, and we see that Tinker Bell is trapped in a lantern and Smee is holding it to keep her from escaping (I have no idea how the pirates captured her! In the animated movie, it’s shown that Smee snuck up on her from behind and captured her and she was trapped in a lantern later. In this version, I have no idea what the pirates did to capture her without her easily flying away from them!). But then, during the song, Smee puts the lantern down so he can clap with the others during the song, even though now that’s he’s not holding the lantern anymore, Tink can try to escape! And, of course, that’s exactly what happens!! So because of stupidity, Tink escapes, but during this, we see Wendy walking down the plank and then about to be ready to jump when she starts having flashbacks and even looking into her future of her going to boarding school and growing up and having a family and getting old.
First off, this is what was talking about, boarding school is only ever seen in Wendy’s mind and not actually mentioned again after the nursery scene.
Second, I mentioned in a previous post about an adult Wendy being cast (the actress’ name is Deborah Ramsay) and I was excited because I thought that meant the movie would include the adult Wendy and Jane scene from the ending of the novel (which the 2003 movie also wanted to include originally, but was deleted from the final cut), but nope! Turns out the adult Wendy that was cast was just a part of Wendy’s visions of her future that literally only last a few seconds and she doesn’t even have any lines! Yet another thing that  this movie did that made me FURIOUS!!!
Third, so this this not first time we see what’s in Wendy’s mind. When the Darling children are first learning to fly, Peter of course tells them to think happy thoughts and Wendy’s happy thoughts are moments from her childhood, which we can see, and now we see Wendy thinking happy thoughts again on the plank and she’s again thinking about her childhood but also sees herself growing up and becoming an adult. So, Wendy is the only one that’s allowed to have flashbacks, and no one else? And at the end of the day, these visions in Wendy’s mind are, you guessed it, POINTLESS! Why did the filmmakers waste money and time (and the audience’s time) with these flashbacks and flash-forwards that aren’t important to the story at all, especially with what Wendy sees on the plank, when they could have used that time and money on flashbacks that are important to the story and would have at least been interesting for the audience to see in this visual medium we call film instead of just being told to us! Like, for example, THE PETER AND HOOK BACKSTORY!!!
Fourth, and finally, why is Wendy thinking of her future in this moment when she’s about to die??? She doesn’t see that Tink has escaped from the lantern to rescue her, so as far as she knows, she’s about to die! So…..huh???
Anyway, Tink saves Wendy by using pixie dust while Wendy is conveniently thinking of happy thoughts as she’s about to fall to her death (So yeah, Tinker Bell saves Wendy’s life, but that still doesn’t make Tink’s character not useless! If you had taken Tink’s character out of the movie, Peter could have just saved Wendy and it wouldn’t have made any difference!), and the pirates notice there was no splash, and Wendy flies and then FOR SOME REASON Tink puts pixie dust on the whole ship and makes the whole ship fly! WHY??
Okay, admittedly, I guess the reason why is make it harder for the pirates when they’re fighting the kids, but then we later see it also makes it hard for the kids and even Peter to fight so, HUH??
So all the children, including Wendy, fight the pirates. How does Wendy know how to sword fight a pirate when she’s never done it before? Play sword fighting with your little brothers is not the same as actually fighting a pirate who’s at least a foot taller than you! And one point she fights two pirates at once!! John also fights a pirate for a couple seconds. He shouldn’t know how to fight either!! In the novel, we don’t exactly know how long the Darling children have been in Neverland, but it’s assumed they’ve been there for a long time, maybe even years! At least in Neverland time! So when the final battle scene happens, it can be assumed that John and Michael learned how to fight from the other Lost Boys and possibly even Peter, but in this movie, the Darling children are in Neverland for literally one day!! Oh, and Michael doesn’t sword fight at all, he just hits a pirate in the legs with something, I actually don’t know what he hits the pirate with. But he doesn’t get to kill a pirate. Another bummer!
Then we hear Peter’s crow, and we see that he’s riding with Tiger Lily on her horse.
I forgot to mention that during the scene when Tiger Lily saves Peter, he tries to fly out of the home, but he can’t!!! WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!WHY????This is never explained!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dani1923]

And then when they show up at the Jolly Roger, Peter jumps off Tiger Lily’s horse, and lands perfectly on the ship somehow!
Then Hook asks Peter how he came back to life, and he literally says, “With a little help from my friends!”. Thanks Ringo Starr!
Then Tiger Lily goes onto the ship and helps fight the pirates too. Hook fights Peter man to man and apparently never notices that Peter can’t fly??? Okay……..
Meanwhile the ship is flying in the air and John and Michael notices that it’s about to crash into some rock, and they go to the wheel to turn it, and although they do manage to keep the ship from crashing, they still ask Wendy for help with steering and she can steer the ship by herself? HUH? She can’t be that much stronger than her little brothers combined right?? And she steers the ship upside down and all of the pirates and fall out the ship and into the water, and by some miracle NONE of the children fall out! Okay………
Except Peter actually almost falls out since he can’t fly, and Wendy catches him and the pixie dust that’s on her gets on him and he can fly again. Okay…………
Then Wendy isn’t steering the ship anymore and ship somehow turns right side up again???
And now comes one of the absolute WORST parts of this movie!
So Peter confronts Hook on the crow’s nest of the ship and they Peter is about about kill Hook with his sword, but then Hook confronts Peter about he treated him and blah blah blah and then…….Peter APOLOGIZES to Hook! PETER PAN APOLOGIZES TO CAPTAIN HOOK!!! WHY? FOR BEING A BAD FRIEND!!! Meanwhile, Wendy was leading the Lost Boys to put a cannon ball in a cannon and aim it at Hook. She flies to Hook and says, “Captain Hook! Grow up!”, and then the cannon fires, and then Hook is about to fall off the ship, but Peter catches him by the hook and TRIES TO SAVE HOOK! Also I’m sure Wendy could see that Peter is trying to save Hook, so why doesn’t she do anything to help? But whatever, who cares? Peter tells Hook to think happy thoughts and then Hook says “I don’t have any!”, and then his hook comes loose and he falls into the water, presumably to his death! Peter, Wendy, and the Lost Boys go to the side of the ship and see that Hook doesn’t get back up the water, and Peter is sad and one of the Lost Boys asks, “What’s wrong Peter?” and Peter says, “He was my friend.”, and the children are like, “But we’re your friends too Peter!”, and Peter says he’s glad they’re his friends! And then Wendy asks Peter with a smile, “Don’t you think it’s time to take these boys home?”
There are no proper words to describe my anger for this part of the movie without saying an endless amount of expletives, so I’m just going to move on!
Now I’m about to talk about the last few scenes of the movie! And….wait for it….THE MOVIE ACTUALLY GETS WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is by far one of the worst endings to a movie I’ve ever seen!!! And the fact that it’s an ending to an direct adaptation of my absolute favorite story of all time makes this ending a HUGE slap in the face for me, and I’m sure it will be for a lot of you on the forum once you find out what it is, if you don’t already!
So all the children fly on the ship back to London. Tiger Lily says goodbye to them from the ground on her horse and says she’ll see them again. Which doesn’t make any sense because I’m pretty sure it’s implied that this version of the Darling children, especially Wendy, never want to go back to Neverland! Peter, the Darling children and the Lost Boys go back to the Darling home and we see Mr. and Mrs. Darling wake up since they hear noises. So yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Darling had no idea that their children were gone. And Wendy greets her parents in the hallway and she hugs her mother and apologizes to her for the way she acted earlier, and she’s about to say that’s ready to grow up when she’s interrupted by noises in the nursery and Mrs. Darling asks what’s going on, and Wendy, for some reason, tries to convince her parents that nothing is going on, even though she would have had to tell them about the Lost Boys soon anyway?
So the parents see the Lost Boys and Wendy asks her parents to adopt them.
Then Wendy goes onto the roof the building they live in and finds Peter crying and she asks “Boy, why are you crying?” Why the heck did they put this line at the end of the movie?? (Actually, back when Wendy first met Tiger Lily, Tiger Lily asked Wendy, “Girl! Why are you crying?”. Why they decided to have the “girl” version of that line be said before the “boy” version of the line I have no idea!)  Then Peter reveals the final part of his backstory……..

[Dani1923]

It turns out Peter used to live in the same building that the Darlings now live. He had an argument with his mother and she told him to grow up, so he escaped out his window and ran away to Neverland. How he did that, I have no idea!!! And it’s revealed he has his name etched on a side of a chimney, which is “Peter Pan”. So……Peter Pan was the name he was born with??? Okay……………
Wendy tries to convince Peter that growing up might be the greatest adventure of all, but Peter says he doesn’t think he’s ready yet. Wait…….so Peter is actually considering growing up? He doesn’t say, “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun!”. He wants to grow up? Now I know the quote is “his biggest pretend”, but he’s not supposed to express those feelings out loud! And we all know he’d never actually really want to grow up! As much as he wants a mother or a family, he’ll always want to stay in Neverland! Or maybe I’m wrong! Who am I to pluck out his mystery! But also who is this movie to try and do so? And completely take away Peter’s complexity and his character!!!
IT’S TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So after that, the Jolly Roger starts conveniently flying away on its own and Peter goes after it. The rest of the family hears this and goes to the window and sees the ship and Peter as they leave to go to back to Neverland. Mr. Darling asks who that is, and Mrs. Darling just says with a smile, “It’s Peter Pan!”. It would’ve been a lot better if they had just given her Mr. Darling’s final line from the animated movie, “You know, I have the strangest feeling that I’ve seen that ship before! A long time ago…..when I was very young!”, but whatever!
Wendy calls to Peter not to go, but he still leaves and Tinker Bell flies to Wendy and whispers in her ear, in actual human English, “Thank you for hearing me!” Yeah, I have no idea what she means by that! And this movie broke the rule of Tinker Bell only speaking with the tinkling of bells! Maybe that was a studio note because of those kiddie direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell movies where she mostly speaks English! Whether that was the reason or not, it’s still stupid! John and Michael yell goodbye to Peter. And finally, Wendy goes to the chimney where Peter’s name is written and puts “and Wendy” on it, so now it says “Peter Pan and Wendy”, like the title of the movie! How clever! (That was sarcasm!)
But then, the movie is not over yet! Because we have one more little scene! The final scene! and it is THE BIGGEST SLAP IN THE FACE in the ENTIRE movie!
We see Captain Hook in water in Neverland, and HE’S STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Smee is still alive too, but then they hear a noise! Is it the crocodile? NOPE! It’s Peter coming back on the flying Jolly Roger and Hook looks at him and smiles and Peter looks back at him smiling with Tinker Bell beside him and the movie ends!
So the crocodile is never seen again and she doesn’t eat Captain Hook so Captain Hook lives, and I guess Peter learned the value of friendship and now he’s going to be friends with Captain Hook…..I guess?
WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTT!!!!!!
So wait, is Peter planning to go back to London with Hook? Or is he going to stay in Neverland and him and Hook are going to be friends forever?
Who cares because the movie is over now!

[Dani1923]

So after about two or three years talking about this movie as it was announced and being developed, and seeing the trailers and clips and a featurette, and then finally watching the movie, I’ve finally written my VERY detailed review of Disney+’s Peter Pan and Wendy!
There are still a few things I didn’t mention, because they’re tiny nitpicks that bothered me. Some nitpicks I already just talked about in this review but I’m not going to talk about anymore because this review long enough already!
Needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone! ESPECIALLY to anyone on this forum!
I would actually recommend the 2003 Peter Pan movie over this one! Because if though that version is very frustrating to watch, at least it’s not as dull as tap water!
But actually, instead of watching the 2003 movie or Peter Pan and Wendy, just the the 2015 Peter and Wendy movie instead!
It’s free to watch on YouTube, and I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend that every person on this forum watch it! I wish the whole world could watch it! Is this movie perfect? No! But it’s BY FAR the BEST Peter Pan movie ever made!
I’ve posted the link to the movie already in another post, but here it is again:

https://youtu.be/jex5G4xpam8

However, if you would still like to watch it out of curiosity, or if you have already watched it, please leave your thoughts on the forum! Either on this topic or make your own review topic! PLEASE do NOT take my words as gospel! These are all MY OPINIONS! If you have any different thoughts on this movie, please share them, and I will be VERY happy to read them and respond to you!
But even though the actual review is over, I still want to talk about a few things.
First, I don’t think there’s one person to blame for what this movie became! I know I mostly blamed David Lowery in my much shorter review of this movie, but really the only thing I feel he’s directly to blame for is the bad acting! The only performance I actually kind of enjoyed was Jim Gaffigan as Smee. Nothing he said ever made me laugh out loud, but in my mind I thought some of the things he said were entertaining and a tiny bit funny!
But David Lowery is actually a great director! Admittedly, the only films of his I’ve seen are his Disney live-action remakes, Pete’s Dragon and this film, but I’ve seen the trailers for some his other films and they seem great! And people seem to really like his non-Disney films!
 
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints:
https://youtu.be/L6FhsOYXRAY

A Ghost Story:
https://youtu.be/c_3NMtxeyfk

The Green Knight:
https://youtu.be/sS6ksY8xWCY

But even Pete’s Dragon seemed very well directed! Just look at this scene:

https://youtu.be/FlZ3D7woUjE

That scene is better than the ENTIRETY of Peter Pan and Wendy!
As for the writing, Lowery was the sole writer for those three non-Disney films, so he doesn’t seem to be generally a bad writer at all! Not when he’s given the freedom to follow his vision for a film! As for Peter Pan and Wendy, he actually co-wrote the screenplay with Toby Halbrooks, who also co-wrote Pete’s Dragon with Lowery. I actually reviewed Pete’s Dragon on this forum over two years ago and even though the film has some serious flaws, the film still has some great moments and the movie was just okay overall, which is more than I can say for most of the Disney live-action remakes, including this one! And heck, at least Pete’s Dragon used the original 70’s movie as a blueprint and decided make a new story with a different angle! Again, more than I can say for some of these other remakes, especially most the remakes that made a billion dollars! But those are the only features length films Halbrooks has done screenplays for. The only other screenplay he’s ever written was for a 10-minute short film that he wrote and directed himself. The rest of the feature-length films that he’s been a part of, he’s mostly been a producer, mostly for David Lowery’s films. So is Halbrooks partially to blame for the very very very very bad writing in this movie? Possibly….
But there’s the producer, Jim Whitaker. Whitaker was also the producer for Pete’s Dragon. He also produced some other very bad Disney films like the A Wrinkle in Time movie from 2018 and The Odd Life of Timothy Green. But he also produced another Disney+ film Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, which is surprisingly a very good movie! So is Whitaker partially to blame for this horribleness? Again, possibly….
I wasn’t there when the drafts of the script were being written, I wasn’t there for any of the products meetings, I wasn’t there when this movie was being filmed, I wasn’t there when this film was edited. So I don’t know if any of these people made any horrible decisions that made this film so terrible!
But I think we all know who’s REALLY to blame for how Peter Pan and Wendy turned out! And that’s Disney!

[Dani1923]

Except for Pete’s Dragon and this movie, Lowery, Halbrooks and Whitaker had nothing to do with these other Disney live-action remakes! Especially the other really terrible ones like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, or the upcoming Little Mermaid remake (the film hasn’t come out yet at the time I’m writing this, but it looks AWFUL!!), Disney is responsible for these movies! More specifically, the studio executives and other “people in suits” that just want to check boxes and make billions of dollars!
You may be surprised by what I’m about to say, but even though I’ve been bad mouthing Peter Pan and Wendy almost the entire review, and even though I’ve had mouthed other Disney remakes in past posts, I’m not against the concept of remaking these animated movies. What I’m against is the execution that Disney has decided to take since the beginning when Alice in Wonderland came out in 2010! Stories like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Pinocchio and even Peter Pan have been retold in different ways in different mediums for hundreds, some even thousands of years!
Here are some examples of a few of these stories being retold in an interesting way in film:

Beauty and the Beast:

https://youtu.be/IsXkv1mpRUk

Alice in Wonderland:

https://youtu.be/11831Y1y7eA

Pinocchio:

https://youtu.be/Od2NW1sfRdA

And with Peter Pan there’s, of course, 2015’s Peter and Wendy!
There are thousands of ways you can adapt these classic stories, but Disney, a billion dollar company, decides to adapt these stories in the most safe and boring and ugly looking way possible! I don’t even mind if you make a little bit of changes to the story or the characters in your adaptation, as long as the changes makes sense, and the story and the characters still have the same spirit as the original stories! Obviously, Peter Pan and Wendy does NOT have the same spirit as the story or the characters of Barrie’s Peter Pan!
The only Disney live-action remake based on a classic story I really enjoyed was The Jungle Book! Though doing so less than Pete’s Dragon, that remake still did different things with its story and characters and made interesting changes, even from it’s novel counterpart, and they were changes that MADE SENSE to the characters and to the story that they were telling!
Admittedly, I’ve never read The Jungle Book novel, so I’m not completely sure if the remake still has the same spirit of the book, but I thought it was at least a good movie on it’s own, which, again, is WAY more than I can say for Peter Pan and Wendy and a lot of the other remakes!
And at the end of the day, these “suits” at Disney are the ones who are mostly the ones making these remakes, not the directors, not the writers, maybe not even the producers, but it’s the executives! David Lowery is an example of this! I’m not convinced that Peter Pan and Wendy is the Peter Pan film he wanted to make! Not after he’s made films that look great and people actually really enjoy! It’s all Disney’s fault!!
And despite the fact that I already knew that Disney was responsible for these remakes being bad before I saw Peter Pan and Wendy, I still had hope that this maybe, just maybe, might be good, maybe not excellent, but at least pretty good! And yeah, I was probably very naïve for thinking this, but I just thought, especially since Lowery was at the helm, and he made a decent Disney remake before with Pete’s Dragon, and now he’s making a Peter Pan remake, which just happened to be an adaptation of my favorite story of all time, and since it was going to be a straight-to-Disney+ movie, maybe he’d have more creative freedom than other directors who have done the theatrically released remakes, that this movie might be actually be at least decent! But I’ve seen the final result, and that was obviously NOT the case!
And now Peter Pan and Wendy has broken me! Despite the past horrible remakes, this film has broken me to never look forward to a Disney live-action remake ever again!
Before watching Peter Pan and Wendy, I was excited to see remakes of the animated movies that could actually benefit from a remake, like Sword in the Stone, which was actually announced years ago but has yet to have any more developments, and The Black Cauldron, or even Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire! But not anymore! Like those movies, a live-action remake of the 1953 animated Peter Pan film could have been great, at least a bit better than the animated film, but Peter Pan and Wendy turned out to be MUCH MUCH MUCH WORSE than the animated film! I’m nostalgic for the animated film since it was my first exposure to the Peter Pan story, but since I’ve become a major Pan Fan, I recognize it’s many many flaws! But besides the blatant racism in animated movie, even the flaws in that movie don’t even come CLOSE to the flaws of Peter Pan and Wendy! So an adaptation of those other animated films that haven’t had a remake made of them yet, would be just as dull as lifeless as Peter Pan and Wendy! Unless Disney improves their remakes and I hear that they made one that is actually good, then I don’t plan on ever seeing a new remake that they do ever again!
One more positive thing I do want to say is that at least Peter Pan and Wendy is about the same running time as the animated film, so at least the pain is quick! Some of the other remakes are at least a half hour longer than their animated counterparts! The upcoming Little Mermaid is going to be almost ONE HOUR longer than the animated version!
Okay, I think I’m done now! If you read all of this, you have my wholehearted gratitude! And even if you didn’t read the whole thing, you still have my wholehearted gratitude for even wanting to look at my post, even just out of curiosity!
And I want to state one last time, that if you have a different opinion about this movie, PLEASE don’t hesitate to post it on the forum and I will read it and respond to you!

[andrew]

Many thanks for your take on this, Dani, which seems to reflect the general opinioin of crits on Rotten Toms. I remember watching the 2003 effort with my mum, who was dying in hospital. At a certain [point she said, "I've seen enough. To watch any more will only speed up my demise."  I feel much the same about this latest reboot.  Thanks for the warning!

[Dani1923]

Thank you so much Andrew for reading my review!
Had other people not been around me when I first read your comment, I would have burst out laughing at what your mom said about the 2003 movie! That bit of criticism is more brutal (and more valid!) than what any professional critic could ever write! 😂😂😂😂
I would recommend that you watch the recent film and form your own opinion, but I don’t want to put you in an early grave! So you can definitely skip it! 😂
Much love to you Andrew! ❤️