Hooked?

Somewhat unexpectedly my "Christmas film" for 2025 ended up being Hook. And it's actually significantly better than you thought it was* - except that you have to realise that Peter Banning is actually a really good dad (hard-working, conscientious, witty, good-humoured, amiable, kind, gentle, affectionate, etc.) and his wife is a spiteful, manipulative bitch.

But then this was a Steven Spielberg film, replete with his trademark flourishes. Wives and moms tended not to get the best wrap from the great man in his heyday. "Does anyone miss the Tyrannosaurus Rex?" is an oddly prophetic line, two years before Jurassic Park! And of course Spielberg had wanted to get our own dear Lord Attenborough to play Tootles. He would of course go on to play John Hammond in the dinosaur picture, and Joseph Mazzello, who had auditioned to play Jack in Hook, would go on to play his grandson - before being directed by him in Shadowlands. In the meantime though, he got the late great Dame Maggie (long before Hogwarts!) to play the Obi Wan Kenobi part of an aged Wendy.

Of course, part of the problem with Hook is that writing a sequel to Peter Pan isn't just unnecessary (except as a shameless cash-grab by GOSH - who unsurprisingly came out with their own slightly plodding "official sequel" in 2006). In truth, it's all but intrinsically impossible, and that's for the simple reason that the betwixt-and-between himself is a timeless being. The book, the play and most importantly the game it was all originally based on are themselves all more than susceptible of an infinite number of adaptions. Indeed, there is room within the format for any number of adventures, and to set adventures outside of that format in such a way as to warp and distort it is both a perverse contradiction of the franchise's basic premise and a pointless betrayal of its essential appeal. After all, what's the point? Superman without his superhuman strength is not super. A wardrobe without a magical world at the back is just a wardrobe.

Having said that, when you get over the original non-event of Peter Pan having grown-up - and at that being played somewhat disappointingly by Robin Williams acting "straight" - there is much to enjoy. Neverland is well realised. Julia Roberts is spectacularly poorly cast as Tinkerbell, but Bob Hoskins is perfect as Smee, and Dustin Hoffman as the eponymous villain is virtually a career best.

It is of course true that compared with more "modern" sequels, prequels, spin-offs, re-makes and "re-imaginings" of Peter Pan, Hook holds up worryingly well. (Hook is not a misunderstood antihero. Wendy's not a girl boss. Peter isn't black.) And maybe Spielberg deserves more blame than praise for having helped to open the floodgates after the franchise passed into the public domain (outside the UK, that is!) in 1987 (i.e. fifty years after the death of the author). But in truth it was something that was going to happen anyway. (One wouldn't wish it on any beloved children's fantasy, but just look at what the money men are currently doing to the Hundred Acre Wood.) And we should be grateful that Hook could have been much, much worse.

*Back in the good old bad old days it was still fairly normal for audiences to like things more than the critics did.