The increasingly rotten trend of turning classic Disney animations into wretched live-action, or photorealistic, remakes looks set to reach its nadir with next month’s release of The Little Mermaid, already a viral nightmare for its horrifying confirmation that adding lips to both a crab and a fish is indeed a crime against humanity. Its looming ugliness does at least help to make this month’s far more hushed release of the inoffensively fine Peter Pan & Wendy seem dreamy in comparison.
It almost seems foolish at this stage to question the necessity of such a thing, given the crushing commercial inevitability of it, but it’s impossible to watch yet another take on JM Barrie’s impish hero without wondering why we’re here once again. Unlike so many of Disney’s other remakes, the story of Peter Pan has also been told elsewhere on an apparent loop since the studio’s 1953 animated adventure. Within the last 20 years alone, PJ Hogan had a go with 2003’s Peter Pan (a major, almost $100m-losing flop), Joe Wright tried again in 2015 with the more radical Pan (another massive failure, this time rumoured to have cost the studio almost $150m), Benh Zeitlin went even more radical with the underwhelming Wendy in 2020 and, with far less fanfare, we’ve also seen 2011’s Syfy series Neverland, a much-ridiculed 2014 live retelling on NBC, 2020’s semi-homage Come Away with Angelina Jolie and 2022’s little-seen The Lost Girls. It’s been a bombardment especially given how so many of them have been, ahem, panned.
The lack of broader public appetite might also explain why Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy is flying onto Disney+ rather than risking a theatrical release, a smart decision for it also vastly lowers expectations, in line with their other downgraded remake of Lady and the Tramp. It’s a slightly more impressive beast, visually grander and with a tad more thought behind it thanks to David Lowery, the arthouse auteur better known for more challenging films like A Ghost Story and The Green Knight. He also made 2016’s sublime revision of Pete’s Dragon, the rare Disney redo that breathed from its own oxygen supply, soulful and substantive, and of course, a commercial misfire. He’s one of many indie staples moonlighting in the realm of kids movies, alongside Alex Ross Perry, who wrote Christopher Robin; Noah Baumbach, who wrote Madagascar 3, and Mike White, who wrote 2017’s The Emoji Movie.
While Peter Pan & Wendy isn’t as carefully crafted nor as emotionally transcendent as Pete’s Dragon, it still represents a solid “one for them” paycheque gig. Lowery, along with co-writer, long-time collaborator and ex-Polyphonic Spree member Toby Halbrooks, tells the story in mostly familiar strokes with just a few tweaks, of Wendy Darling (Milla Jovovich’s impressive daughter Ever Anderson) travelling to Neverland with her two brothers and her infamous tour guide Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), a story book legend brought to life. While there they tussle with Captain Hook (Jude Law) and meet the other children who refuse the restrictions of age.
Juvenile far-right lunatics have already whined about the film’s diversity (Tinkerbell is played by biracial actor Yara Shahidi, on charming form, and the lost boys are now lost boys and girls of different ethnicities), a talking point only for people who can barely string a coherent sentence together. For the rest of us, talking points are scarce, the film a mid-level retread that never quite finds enough to distinguish itself from an overstuffed pack. Law is Lowery’s ace, giving a full-throated performance as an embittered Hook, the actor further edging into his 50s with scuzzier roles that subvert the pretty-boy arrogance of his on-screen youth (he was last this effective as a deceptive husband in 2020’s knotty marriage drama The Nest and a thief in 2014’s lean submarine thriller Black Sea, another seafaring yarn). There’s some, if not quite enough, texture to his relationship with Peter, the latter played as a selfish and impetuous egotist, almost fascinatingly veering into villain status.
But Lowery’s film mostly plays it safe, only slightly remixing the beats we know a little too well, wrapping them up in a pretty enough package that will get tossed aside and forgotten about once opened. It’s by no means the rockiest trip we’ve taken to Neverland but let’s all pray it’s the last.
Peter Pan & Wendy is now available on Disney+
