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So Disney continue to undermine the medium that they are most famous for by gradually remaking all of their classic animated films in live action. In my opinion there have only been a few successes in this, artistic successes rather than financial at least – they’ve nearly all been commercial hits, hence there being no sign of this trend slowing down. It seems to me that the ones that work best are those that don’t rely heavily on CGI creatures but even if this film fits in with that, do we really need another film of Peter Pan?

To be fair though, there aren’t as many movie versions of this story as you’d think. There a number made for TV, but in terms of cinema there was the 2003 one with Jason Issacs as Captain Hook, the Hugh Jackman prequel Pan from 2015, and of course the 50s Disney cartoon and Spielberg’s Hook, the latter of which in many respects cleaves closer to the former than this new one. There was also Come Away in 2020, which mixed the narrative up with Alice in Wonderland, and Wendy, from Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin, that made the her the main focus of the story. Only two of this list are at all close to being straight adaptations.

You might think from the title of this film that they are also aiming give Wendy more attention that she has otherwise had here, but it isn’t common knowledge that Peter and Wendy is actually the name of the original book that came out seven years after the 1904 play which was just known as Peter Pan. As it is though this movie does give Wendy more to do and she certainly has bags more agency and a real feminist energy, saving Peter on more than one occasion.

I’m the end the question with all of these Disney live action up dates is whether they do enough that is different to justify their existence. This is where things like the new versions of The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Dumbo and Pinocchio all fall short as far as I am concerned and certainly none of them are good as their respective predecessors. As it is though, there are actually a number of good reasons for this new film to have been made. They do some interesting things with Captain Hook’s character and motivations which kind of works but more than that it is what they do with Peter who is a considerably more flawed person than we have seen before. He is presented here as misguided and dangerously arrogant and the tragedy of his choices and situation is a factor in his narrative. The performance isn’t as impactful as it could be but the writing around him is intriguing. He is definitely not the heroic free spirit we have come to know.

The best reason to watch this over the 1953 animation though is the hugely improved diversity. The famous cartoon is actually really problematic in its depiction of the Neverland Indians, to the point of being racist. Thankfully Tiger Lily here is a much more authentic representation of Native American culture, even if she is a little marginalised by the plot (she also gets to save Peter though). Then there are the Lost Boys who in this film are the most refreshingly mixed group of kids that includes a nice range of nationalities and genders, and most significantly a variety of abilities. There is one Lost Boy here who in our world would definitely be considered disabled but in this one wonderfully isn’t. Peter and Tinkerbell are also both black which brilliantly decolonises the story and none of it feels at all like tokenism.

I watched Peter Pan & Wendy because of my love of the (literary) source material but with my strong reservations around Disney’s relentless remakes I did not have high expectations. Ultimately I really enjoyed it though and crucially if I had the choice of sitting down with this one or the old cartoon (or more significantly which I rather show to children) then the 1953 classic stays on the shelf.

That’s a metaphorical shelf of course, both films are on Disney+.

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