On the eve before she is to leave for boarding school, Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson) has one last sword fight with her imaginative younger brothers, John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe).  Wishing to stay at home and enjoy her childhood a little while longer, she is relieved – and a bit scared – when Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) arrives at her windowsill that evening with the promise of a faraway land where she can stay a child forever: Neverland.  When she and her brothers arrive, however, the magic place is under siege by Captain Hook (Jude Law) who will stop at nothing to settle a personal vendetta against the one and only Peter Pan. 

The latest output from director David Lowery in his apparent joint custody agreement with independent distributor A24 and media conglomerate Disney finds him donning the Mouse Ears once again for a live-action adaptation of Peter Pan (1951) with the direct-to-streaming Peter Pan & Wendy.  Working from a jointly written script with frequent collaborator Toby Halbrooks, the 116-minute film seeks to subtlety modernize some of the choices made in the animated classic while staying true to the spirit of J. M. Barrie’s source material.  It is not that the film went “woke” as some pundits will decry that makes it feel a little devoid of magic, but rather that Lowery – or more likely, the executives funding this venture – plays it way too safe for a property that has been adapted and reimagined multiple times across every medium imaginable. It is also a story that has been filtered through the various lenses of its many characters so that the cultural landscape for the property has been so saturated there is no room left for what amounts to a rather paint-by-numbers approach.  

Lowery is a storyteller fascinated by time; be its infinite nature as explored in A Ghost Story (2017) or its constant inertia which turns days into weeks and months into years as studied in The Green Knight (2020), so it makes sense that a story where time can cease to exist all together would capture his attention.  To a certain degree, he does plumb into these concepts by expanding on Pan and Hook’s backstory – two friends, one opting to stay in Neverland while the other was banished for wanting to return home to his parents.  To dig much deeper could have potentially set the film on a much darker path, but Disney also set their first sequel, Return to Neverland (2002), during the blitzkrieg, so they are not afraid to address the darker stories; though to be fair, they kept Return to Neverland animated instead of live action so they may have been more comfortable exploring those themes in that format given the inherent element of fantasy and fiction which animation can provide.   

As presented here, however, it becomes just another half-measure in the storytelling that hurts the film overall.  There is so much possibility that is left on the table, especially surrounding the reasons why Peter wants to stay in Neverland.  The initial reaction to his disdain towards parental figures could be that he finds reprieve in Neverland as he may have been orphaned in the real world, or perhaps seeks shelter from abuse, but on a lighter note he could opt to stay in Neverland simply because he is only held back by the limits of his imagination as he embarks on his wild adventures.  To take Hook and Pan’s relationship at face value, though, still does not offer many clues.  Peter is hurt at the loss of his friend, and as such he allows Hook to be maimed by the crocodile and eventually throws the pirate off the crow’s nest of his own ship, plunging into the sea below.  The loss of a friendship is nothing to scoff at, but the way the story handles it – reacting with a litany of violence resulting in the death of one of the parties – is not the healthiest example to show on screen and the metaphor of letting someone go certainly does not translate here, especially for the younger audience who may not have the lived-in experience yet to apply this more cathartic reading to the action on screen. 

The stumblings on the page also translate to stumblings in the craft, as well.  Like with the script, it is not that any individual element is necessarily bad – there is actually quite a lot good going on here – it is just that it is mishandled and underutilized.  Take for instance, the cinematography by Bojan Bazelli.  When the film is allowed to shoot on location, it is beautiful, but when it switches to green screen and sound stages, it really suffers. The frames are dark, and the colors take on very muddy hues of brown and an unbecoming green, not to mention it forces the young cast to act against nothing; a tall order for even experienced actors.  Daniel Hart’s score helps to fill in the blanks, but there is seldom a moment of silence in the entire film that even his notes begin to irritate instead of elevate. The score takes on music box timbre which is nice, and it gives the entire film a sense that it is all part of a bedtime story which fits well within the structure and ideas of the narrative, but in its overuse, it begs for some restraint.  

As for the cast, this is Lowery’s largest ensemble of younger actors to date, and he creates a fun and relaxed environment for them to thrive. Molony brings an interesting energy to the character of Peter and almost feels as if the actor is striving for something more on the page so that he can build a stronger character. There are glimmers of brilliance in the film when Molony can lean more into the dramatic scenes and backstory, but in an effort to keep things moving the narrative never sits and wallows. It is an attempt to cater to the younger demographic, but there is no trust on behalf of the writing team in their audience to follow along and understand deeper story beats. They are definitely more concerned with capturing the wonder of Neverland, and Molony is having the time of his life as he flies around saving his new friends and causing swashbuckling antics aboard Hook’s ship. 

Opposite him is Anderson’s Wendy. She has a rough task as the levelheaded one in the wild world of the film, but it is very engaging to see as she begins to learn the rules of this world and unlocks her imagination again. As a title character, though, she feels underutilized and, like Molony, shows skills above what she is allowed to do on the page. Much of her arc also centers around being able to hear what Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi), Peter’s fairy, is trying to say to her. We understand that being able to hear Tinkerbell is the symbol that her imagination is not all lost, but it just is not developed at all as the fairy is given no real sense of importance in the overall flow of the plot. We see Wendy use her imagination plenty of times throughout the film, and furthermore, Tinkerbell is absent for much of the narrative, mostly resigned to flitting around in the background of scenes and saddling Shahidi in a totally thankless role where she is limited to little more than making wild facial expressions. As far as Wendy and Tinkerbell’s relationship, we are missing a lot of the puzzle; pieces that were lost in the race to reach a palpable runtime. 

The thing that is most frustrating about Peter Pan & Wendy is that it feels unrealized, or rather that it was rushed like it was on an unmovable production timetable without and not given the budget to support what Lowery may have initially envisioned. Law chews the scenery as the villain, which is nice, and has great chemistry with the young cast and his first mate, Smee (Jim Gaffigan), but the Lost Boys are largely just there to populate the frame and Tiger Lilly (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) is just begging to have a larger influence over the narrative. Despite these shortcomings, however, Peter Pan & Wendy still helps to tickle the imagination of its audiences. Its moral is messy, and its script has been gutted, but what was allowed to be filmed – and further, what made it to screen – is still filled with such heart and joy, even if it is disembodied from a more nuanced tale that we only see the remnants of. In a way, it is like seeing the ruins of something that may once have been a great and mighty fortress, and set on a magic island where anything is possible, it is up to us to connect the dots and imagine that which we do not see.