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not-wholly-unheroic · 8 months

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Thoughts on Off to Neverland: 70 Years of Disney’s Peter Pan by Jim Korkis

Now that I have finished reading Off to Neverland, I’d like to share some thoughts on it—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with the negatives and get that out of the way, shall we?

As mentioned in a previous post, the book starts out sounding rather clunky and more like a list of facts than an actual book. However, once we move past the original history of Peter Pan as imagined by J.M. Barrie and start getting into the history of Disney Peter Pan material specifically, it starts to improve. Korkis was, after all, considered a Disney historian, so I guess it’s no real surprise that he writes more excitedly about that side of things. That said, there are still some things that bugged me and made me feel like the book was slapped together in a hurry. I noticed several spelling errors, missing words, and/or weird punctuation throughout the book and while that doesn’t take away from the info itself, it’s rather distracting and unprofessional for a published book. It’s also troubling that Korkis has neither a bibliography nor footnotes in his book to indicate exactly where he got his information from. Some of it was, undoubtedly, from interviews he conducted himself, but even then, there is a way that you are supposed to write up interviews as source material for professional writing…and Korkis just…doesn’t for some reason. So if I want to look up more info on, say, a specific fact…I can’t really do that because I have no proof of an original source. Lastly, some of the “facts” he includes—and I’m being nitpicky here but the guy is supposed to be a Disney historian so I think I’m allowed to be—are straight-up WRONG. For example, in the Disney film, Hook is said to have a harpsichord in his cabin (it’s not; it’s a piano—listen to a harpsichord…it doesn’t sound like that) and a cutlass as his weapon of choice (cutlasses are curved on one side; his blade is definitely more akin to a rapier or a fencing sword). Smee is also said to be the first mate in the original film, and while it’s true that in some later Disney media like Jake and the Neverland Pirates has portrayed Smee as a first mate, the original film does not. Heck, the man has a bosun’s whistle that he uses to pipe up the crew and specifically mentions the first mate as one of the people spreading rumors about Pan having banished Tink during the scene where he’s pouring hot water on Hook’s feet. So clearly he isn’t the first mate, and you don’t have to be a Disney expert to know that. You just have to actually watch the film. The author also says that Cubby is referred to as Curly in the sequel, Return to Neverland…which, again, just listen to the film for yourself and you’ll quickly learn that isn’t true. Oh, and did I mention that he essentially defends the racist portrayal of the “Indians” in the original film? Yeah, so…there’s that.

On a more positive note, I did learn some interesting new things about Peter Pan in the Disneyverse (though, of course, since there is no bibliography, I can’t prove any of them…). So, here are a few fun facts for you fellow Peter Pan nerds, as promised.

(1) There were a LOT of changes made to the original script and storyline between its initial inception and the final version of the film we have today. A few things that were considered but ultimately not used include the following:

Wendy was originally going to be the one who wanted to go to Skull Rock while Peter warned it was too dangerous to go there, only giving in when she finally dared him to take them there.

In one version, Nana came with the kids to Neverland while John stayed home, being “too grown up” for Neverland.

There were several different suggested starting points for the film. One would have had an adult Wendy as narrator reading the story to her daughter, Jane. Another started with Peter’s backstory similar to his origins in The Little White Bird. In either this or another version with a backstory for Pan, we would have seen Tink as the queen of the fairies who, on being presented with the foundling baby Peter, decided that he should be raised by the fairies to protect them against the pirates and other threats and, in exchange, gave him the power of flight.

One version of the story that would have followed much more closely to Barrie’s storyline had Hook creeping down part of the way into Hangman’s Tree to poison Peter but getting stuck and weeping frustrated tears that land in Peter’s “medicine.” These tears, of course, turned out to be poison from the red of his eye as in the 2003 film. This version also would have featured Hook voluntarily jumping ship and being nabbed by a silent crocodile whose clock had run down.

Disney debated for a long time whether to make Peter Pan a live-action film, an animated film, or a hybrid of the two. In the case of the latter, Wendy and her brothers would have been live-action characters with Hook, Peter, and the other residents of Neverland as animated characters who sprung to life from Wendy’s storybook.

There was gonna be a fairy ball. And a scene with the fairies feeding the kids at a kind of banquet. Also a fairy jazz band. Yes, you read that right. Fairy. jazz. band.

(2) The very first Tink to fly over one of the Disney parks to head off the fireworks was a 70 year-old Hungarian woman of Jewish descent and former burlesque dancer. This lady, known as “Tiny” Kline, slid down a 784 ft long cable nearly 150 ft off the ground at speeds up to 30 mph nearly every night for three years…while fighting cancer.

(3) There was an earlier version of Return to Neverland titled Peter and Jane featuring Kathryn Beaumont reprising her role as Wendy and Corey Burton in both the roles of Hook and Smee. Most of the voice recording for this version was already complete when the directors decided to go a different direction with the film. Beaumont was ultimately replaced by Kath Soucie, and the role of Smee went to Jeff Bennett.

(4) Somewhere out there, a live-action reference model version of Return to Neverland exists, and I need it. I have no idea if any of the voice actors were used as models as in the original film, but either way, I really wish we had some way to access the recording, or at least stills.

(5) Apparently, the filmmakers’ reasoning for replacing the crocodile with the octopus was that they thought a toothy crocodile would be “too threatening” for younger members of the audience. That, and they wanted to come up with a new, creative way to torture Hook. (For some reason, Korkis seems to think that the octopus can’t see well because he views Hook and the crew as fish. This is another “fact” which I’m pretty sure is wrong. I always assumed the vision of the characters as fish was just to show that the octopus considered them all potential food, not an actual indication of the creature’s sight…but whatever.)

(6) And last but not least, I have to include Hans and Corey’s takes on Hook as a character because my thoughts on the book wouldn’t be complete without them. I’ve shared some of this before but it bears repeating.

Hans Conried:

“He is a much maligned character. If you read the lines with any sensibility at all, you must have an animus against Peter Pan who could fly, and took outrageous advantage of this one-armed man. Hook was a gentleman. Pan was not. His behavior was bad form.”

Corey Burton:

“He’s the nastiest of Disney’s comical villains. He’s conceited and bombastic and takes great relish in his evil and that makes him really fun to play. Captain Hook is so theatrical, like an old ham actor of the vaudeville and music hall days. It’s not that he really scares anyone because you can see right through all of his bluster. He’s really just scrambling for the recognition afforded Blackbeard and the other great pirates.”

I find it interesting that Burton, though his take on the character is more comedic than Conried’s, still has a rather sympathetic view of Hook—that his attempts at villainy are, in fact, so over-the-top precisely because they are meant to cover up a deep insecurity that he isn’t living up to what everyone expects him to be.

Overall, the book had some fun and interesting bits but wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. I’d love to send Korkis an email and ask him about some of the issues I had with the book and pick his brain. Unfortunately, he just passed away in July of 2023, so that’s no longer an option.