April 28, Disney will take kids of all ages to Neverland once again when “Peter Pan & Wendy” debuts on Disney+. So, naturally, there was no better place to hold the movie’s premiere than on an ACTUAL pirate ship.
Some of Disney’s biggest fans on Instagram and TikTok gathered at the South Street Seaport Museum in their Neverland finest for a pre-screening party, and stepped on board the Wavertree to socialize among pirates, fairies, and lost boys.
Most people today probably know the original Disney animated film Peter Pan (1953) as that one ride at Disneyland that always has a ridiculously long line no matter what time of the day it is, but it’s also one of the biggest and earliest animated hits for the Walt Disney Company. Retelling the story of the timeless classic by J.M. Barrie, you probably already know about the boy from a magical island who could fly and never age. You also probably know that he meets a young woman and her two brothers, and they all journey to Neverland and face off against the dreaded Captain Hook.
The Peter Pan story is no stranger to live-action adaptations. There’s the Steven Spielberg-directed sequel following Robin Williams as a grown-up and amnesiac version of Peter in Hook (1991), the more classical take on the character with Universal’s Peter Pan (2003), and the most recent attempt that tried to explain Peter’s origins in the simply titled Pan (2015). It was only a matter of time until Disney decided to remake their animated version of Peter Pan, given they’ve been pumping out live-action remakes like there’s no tomorrow. Most would probably expect the new film to stick closely to the original film’s story, but when the cast and director David Lowery took the stage at the most recent D23 Expo to discuss their roles and debut a new trailer, it became very clear that this new version of the classic story will take these characters in completely new directions.
Surely most adults can relate. Lowery has the tricky task of satisfying them while trying to give younger audiences a formative viewing experience. And so we get certain paradoxes, as when the familiar flight plan — “second star to the right and straight on ’til morning” — takes an unexpected detour through a magic portal in Big Ben tower. On the other side, Neverland is represented by the Faroe Islands: brilliant emerald turf shining atop sharp, dark rocks, so far removed from any continent that this could be a dream, or another dimension altogether.
