Neverland...
Dec. 6th, 2011 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seawaspKathleen and I watched the new SyFy presentation Neverland last night and the night before. Like Tin Man and Alice, this is a reimagining of one of the iconic crossworlds children's stories: Peter Pan, AKA Peter and Wendy.
Neverland is a prequel to the original Peter Pan, explaining exactly where Peter and the Lost Boys came from, why they stayed in Neverland, the origin of Captain Hook, and so on. As such, it's both breaking new ground and, unlike Tin Man and Alice, hewing much closer to the original source material. It is an attempt to give us an origin which would lead up to the original Peter Pan.
I won't spoil the story, because it's worth saving. Suffice it to say that it gives us a Captain Hook who is both achingly sympathetic and a raging villain worthy of the role, a Peter Pan who has a very good reason to never grow up and an excellent reason to have a fine group of young lads with him, an excellent connection to the "real world" that explains how we end up with pirates and stereotypical Indians and the other elements of the original story, and even an amusing attempt to connect science and magic (the latter not terribly convincing but few such attempts are).
I don't think Neverland quite reaches the powerful epic proportions of Tin Man, but it's superior to Alice -- which is not to insult Alice; it, too, did not do a disservice to its source material, it just wasn't quite as good. An excellent effort, and the more glaringly so because of the other usual output of the SyFy/SciFi channel.
I have to wonder what that particular team has left to DO. The theme they've been playing is a fairly strong, yet limited one -- public-domain children's stories with a world-crossover feature and strong elements of the fantastic/bizarre. Are there any such left to do?
In any case, this was an excellent show and we'll be getting a copy of it once it comes out.
Neverland is a prequel to the original Peter Pan, explaining exactly where Peter and the Lost Boys came from, why they stayed in Neverland, the origin of Captain Hook, and so on. As such, it's both breaking new ground and, unlike Tin Man and Alice, hewing much closer to the original source material. It is an attempt to give us an origin which would lead up to the original Peter Pan.
I won't spoil the story, because it's worth saving. Suffice it to say that it gives us a Captain Hook who is both achingly sympathetic and a raging villain worthy of the role, a Peter Pan who has a very good reason to never grow up and an excellent reason to have a fine group of young lads with him, an excellent connection to the "real world" that explains how we end up with pirates and stereotypical Indians and the other elements of the original story, and even an amusing attempt to connect science and magic (the latter not terribly convincing but few such attempts are).
I don't think Neverland quite reaches the powerful epic proportions of Tin Man, but it's superior to Alice -- which is not to insult Alice; it, too, did not do a disservice to its source material, it just wasn't quite as good. An excellent effort, and the more glaringly so because of the other usual output of the SyFy/SciFi channel.
I have to wonder what that particular team has left to DO. The theme they've been playing is a fairly strong, yet limited one -- public-domain children's stories with a world-crossover feature and strong elements of the fantastic/bizarre. Are there any such left to do?
In any case, this was an excellent show and we'll be getting a copy of it once it comes out.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 02:22 am (UTC)Really? Would you care to expand on that?
no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 02:50 am (UTC)Spoil
Spoil
Spoil
Spoil ahoy!
In this version, Mr. James Hook is a gentleman who has fallen on hard times and been effectively run out of society. He runs a fencing academy and, behind the scenes, plays a fairly affectionate if proper Fagin to a group of child thieves -- Peter and those who eventually become the Lost Boys. He is clearly concerned for their welfare, and especially proud of and concerned for Peter.
Even when threatened he will not allow "his boys" to be taken away from him and is willing to risk death to protect them at one point. All he REALLY wants is to get back what he lost -- the position he was born to, the position he was fallen from, and to be able to be looked at with RESPECT again.
It is that motivation which is played upon, and being essentially selfish becomes his downfall -- that, plus the dark secret he has been hiding effectively his whole life, that Peter's father won the love of the woman Hook intended to marry, and that Hook killed him in a duel. This of course was what lost him his place in society, but also led to Peter's mother having no support and dying in the workhouse before Hook could find her. He took Peter in out of love for his mother... but he has raised Peter too well, and Peter won't let him cross certain lines, so he soon starts to see Peter's FATHER in him. It's a heartwrenching sequence of events in the show, even if you can guess some of it fairly early. Even at the end, even when he's FIGHTING Peter, there's still clear evidence that he doesn't really want this -- he just sees no more choice left to him, now that Peter knows the truth and hates him for it. And he's crossed too many Moral Event Horizons to go back anyway; the foundation is laid for the Captain Hook we know and love. And, too, this lays the foundation for Peter's refusal to grow up; he's told multiple times for different reasons that he can't do something, or won't understand something, until he's grown up -- and by the end he doesn't WANT to understand.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 08:12 am (UTC)You shouldn't make the mistake of comparing their mini-series with their Saturday filler b-movies. Apples vs road turtles, and all that.