Peter Pan Predicaments: Return to Neverland

    So Disney made a theatrical sequel to Peter Pan. That sentence keeps repeating through my mind, it feels odd knowing that it's actually true. And it gets even more surreal when you discover that this comes from a barrage of sequels, prequels and mid-quels that was consistently coming from Disney for roughly 15 years. Even more surreal is that this wasn't the actual Walt Disney Animation Studio that made these movies, it was a whole separate branch whose specific job was to provide us with mostly straight to video, TOTALLY necessary additions to their source material such as:  "Bambi hangs out with his dad", "The Fox and the Hound join a band", and in the case here, one of two released in theaters by the by, "Wendy's daughter gets taken to Neverland and has to find her childlike nature so she can fly back home". Yes, it's basically the same plot as Hook, that'll come up later.

    The basic set up for the main character Jane, Wendy's daughter who's 8-ish I think, is that she grew up surrounded by war (yeah the movie's set in WW2).  She forced herself to mature and lost her childlike nature very quickly, and also stopped believing in Peter Pan. Fine enough set up it would seem, with Jane having to learn how to be a child again...until the movie screws it up. Badly. Because Jane in the beginning is a completely likable character. She goes out to do chores for her family in the dangerous wartime, she listens to the radio to keep updated on current events of the war, she selflessly got her brother a present...but we're still supposed to feel that isn't good enough because the present was socks. And the movie gives her a completely great personality on top of that: she's confident, cheerful and respectful. Even on top of that, the movie gives her more validation to be the way she is, because a little earlier we see her dad tell her to take care of her mom and brother before he goes off to war. Yet even though the movie forces her in a situation where she has to mature, and she responds appropriately, Return is still absolutely persistent to get us to think she's an extremely flawed character that needs to be fixed.
    This whole character arc ties in interestingly with the well known, well liked morals from Peter Pan.  As we've discussed, people have taken the moral of never growing up from Disney's Peter Pan and the broadway musical. To a larger extent, Disney, one of the singularly most prominent and influential companies in the world, has marketed themselves around that same idea of keeping child like innocence. Return attempts to take the safe route by using a character arc that doesn't challenge the moralistic clout that's already exists with the Peter Pan reputation and the company making the film, but it accidentally reveals the terrible underbelly of the "never grow up" moral. The movie influences kids to side against Jane for no other reason than she acts more grown up than other kids, all to push the moral that kids that they should just stay completely carefree of problems in leu of actually helping or doing something, even if the situation calls for it. It fits in with that "never grow up" moral in the worst way possible.
    It seems like such an easy fix to turn it from terrible to acceptable that it's maddening. All it had to do was make a definite clear flaw that had to be fixed, but it doesn't do it, so the movie is accomplishing nothing and making an awful lesson to push on kids. The only time Jane shows any actual negativity is this one argument she has with her mom and her little brother Danny, who does believe in Peter Pan...an argument she instantly feels sorry for, so that's pretty pointless. Something needs to change about her character, maybe she should be not as proactive in helping her family and the movie should cut out what her dad said, maybe she should be more forceful toward Danny to grow up, something so that the movie isn't quite giving us the terrible moral that it is here.
    So the movie awkwardly suffers through its set up for the character arc, which does pay off at the end in the way we all expect, although we'll get to that later. But after spending a whole 3 paragraphs talking about the compelling terribleness of the first 10 minutes, the movie must get even worse when Peter Pan actually shows up, right? ...Well would you believe me if I said the movie gets better? Or if I said it gets better than the first movie in some respects? Because it does.
    The argument Jane has with her mom and Danny comes at the very end of the exposition, before Captain Hook kidnaps her, believing she's Wendy, as bait for Peter. From there on, the plot becomes Jane needing to find her childlike nature with the help of Peter and the lost boys so she can fly, complicated by Captain Hook manipulating Jane to help him capture Peter and Tinkerbell slowly dying because Jane said she doesn't believe in fairies.
    If you're able to detach the exposition of the arc from the actual arc, then Return becomes much more watchable. Jane settles a tiny bit more into becoming an unhappy stick in the mud once in Neverland, so when she changes into more childlike it feels like there's a point to the arc happening...I guess, I mean the exposition still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And compared to Hook, the arc's a lot better. It does happen very quickly like in Hook, but I can forgive this movie for it because it's a kid instead of what's supposed to be a mature adult and the movie barely scrapes 70 minutes anyway, it has to pace itself quickly. Also, unlike Disney's Peter Pan, it actually completes the full character arc it sets up, instead of doing it half heartedly so it doesn't amount to anything...It's sad I feel the need to give a movie the compliment that it tells a complete story. The arc is still a bad idea for an arc because of how it's set up, but the movie gets better about what the arc should be.
    But what's really interesting about this film is Peter and how he develops throughout. He doesn't have an arc per se, but he still is more humanized than the first movie and learns to an extent throughout the story. For instance, at one point he and the lost boys destroy Jane's journal that meant a lot to her, and she gets upset. Peter genuinely feels bad and later on apologizes. Also, Peter isn't always the hero. At the end, Peter is the one that gets captured, and Jane is the one that comes to the rescue, and Peter is willing to accept a girl saving him. Yes, the humanization makes it as detached from the cold heartless anti-hero Peter of J.M. Barrie's story as it can get. However considering what Disney's Peter Pan is, I'm really glad they made him not the perfect infallible hero that he was in the first movie, that there's an attempt to do something new with a character we all know and make him a little more dimensional, while still keeping the fun cockiness intact.
    On top of attempting something slightly new with Peter, it continues with showing his obtuse confusion with girls and love, and shows it more. Probably the best scene in the first movie is when Peter and Wendy first meet. Wendy has a clear crush on Peter but Peter doesn't realize and doesn't know how to react to how unlike boys these girls are. Peter and Jane also have a certain chemistry, both are strong willed but also have an interest in each other, Peter especially having a perplexed fascination with this girl who acts like a grown up. It results in memorable little scenes like where Peter tries to say how great he is but Jane playfully shuts him down, or when they awkwardly talk over each other so Peter shoves his hands over Jane's mouth and quickly rambles out what he has to say, among others. Honestly they're pretty adorable. It hints at a little budding romance between the two that never fully blossoms, similar to the first, and their whole relationship is fairly entertaining to follow...while of course still a film aimed at very little kids.
    But just because the film gets better and just because it does better than the first in some departments than the first doesn't mean it's a great film, I struggle to even say it's a good film. It has a few interesting character developments and a bubbly relationship sprinkled in it's short run time, but it's very clear how half-heartedly the film was made cause kids are stupid and you don't need to work much to entertain them. There's a complete lack of atmosphere from the first movie, the jokes are mostly lazily done cartoon jokes and Peter makes groan worthy puns, the songs are insanely boring and the pop ballads are absolutely cringe worthy, the movie doesn't trust kids to remember something that happened 10 minutes ago so there are a lot of pointless flashbacks placed in, the crocodile that chases Hook gets replaced by an octopus that pops its eyes in motion which just why, and speaking of Hook, he is nowhere near as enjoyable to watch or as menacing as in the first film, just a really boring retread. Also there's a whole subplot about Tinkerbell dying and Jane needs to believe in fairies to make her live. This is what the movie says is Peter's main motivation to make Jane more childlike, even though by the next scene he just seems to want to do it because he likes Jane and isn't deceiving her for that ulterior motive, so the whole thing seems pretty pointless. There is just a lot in this film that shows passionless, fairly dumb filmmaking.
    So the movie gets to its end and I came to the basic conclusion that it's mostly a cheap, lazy pandering kids movie that tries to be innocent, but naively, ignorantly shows everything wrong with the "never grow up" morality...until this last scene happened.
    I know the review should be over, it's plenty long enough and I've already given all of the pros and cons, but I need to talk about this scene. So I'll link it below, watch it before reading the rest of the review please.

    This scene is absolutely perfect. Admittedly that's probably out of my unnatural obsession with Peter Pan to love this scene, but it's incredibly memorable and new. It seems to spit right in the face of the cold "we all have to grow up and stop being playful children"lesson from J.M. Barrie's story, but also seems to do the same, if to a lesser extent, to the "never grow up" moral that surrounds Disney's Peter Pan, and it's beautiful. The scene essentially features an adult Wendy telling Peter that while she grew up like she eventually had to, she still has some of the innocence from when she was younger. It not only goes against the two original stories primary lesson to an extent, it also does the same lesson from Hook a thousand times better. The basic lesson in Hook, to recall, was also about keeping childlike innocence as you grow up. If you also recall from Hook, they do the lesson really badly because in the end Peter Banning, an adult, becomes this unrealistically hyperactive man-child. Wendy is played well throughout the whole movie as a mature responsible mother that still has a great imagination and joyous spirit, and that's on display very much in the last scene. It's not just the idea that makes this scene stand out, it's executed pretty damn well. It uses simply effective imagery, an understated score,  and Peter and Wendy's conversation really feels true to how the two would really talk years later, and that's hard to capture since nobody thinks about Wendy as a grown up. It's fan indulgence, sure, but not nearly as much as it could've been, and surprisingly, it's emotionally earnest in how true to the original characters it feels. It's a new, well presented lesson that attempts to change the whole game about what morals we associate with Peter Pan, and is yet another sign of humanizing Peter and having him gradually learn to accept reality. It's a great note to end the movie on. The main morality tale might be pretty bad, but I feel this 80 seconds almost cancel that out with it's emotional power.
    So how does it feel, Hook, knowing that this rinky-dink, rushed out little cartoon did the same basic plot as you, and also presented a grown up with childlike nature in the end, and did it better than you? That's definitely a big reason I included this movie in Peter Pan month, but would I suggest it? I guess so, but I'm not sure. Return is definitely a confused film that has left me confused of what I think about it. There's a lot of good and bad that mixes together here. It's more like interesting moments shining through the cracks of a mostly heartless (and sometimes brainless) film. With all of the flaws: the jokes, songs, some of the plot, Captain Hook, the terrible character arc set up, you can almost see the money signs in the producers eyes as they clearly cared more about getting butts in seats than genuinely entertaining the kids attached to those butts. It's a hard movie to like, but there's still bits here and there. Peter's balance between cockiness and humanizing, his relationship with Jane, the beautiful ending scene, I even liked the lost boys, who were all charming to watch throughout and felt true to the spirit of the original. And Jane's character arc, even if it's a terrible idea that might have a bad influence on kids, could've been done worse. At least it ends on this ambiguous note where she doesn't stop working for the good of her family, even if the movie set that up weirdly as a flaw. All in all, there are worse kids movie out there, and this mixed bag of morality is still better than other options *cough cough* Hook *cough cough*. So while you have to suffer through some overly pandering kiddy elements, if you or your kids are into Peter Pan, I'd say give this a try.
    Now if you excuse me, I'm going to rethink the life choices that led me up to giving a sprawling, overly analytical review to a rushed out Disney sequel that nobody remembers...