the live-action version with Jude Law – Corriere.it

A dreadful rusty hook instead of a right hand, cut off by Peter Pan and fed, Bennato said, to that damned crocodile. Long hair dyed black to hide the gray of incipient gray hair. Captain Hook of Peter Pan & Wendy, the live action version of the Disney animation classic, arriving on the Disney + platform from April 28, is a decadent character, bad as expected and very human at the same time. He is played by Jude Law who at the press conference, no longer having long hair but with a pair of very thick moustaches, explains that he underwent countless and involuntary trials when his eldest son, around the age of 4, went through an obsessive phase: «It was his daily imposition. He was supposed to be Peter Pan, I was Captain Hook. There’s an epithet that we put into the film: “codfish” which is a tribute to those games with my son. When he wanted to insult me ​​he gave me cod.’

The version told by director David Lowery starts from two observation points. The first is the story of a betrayed friendship between Peter Pan and Hook. “Neither JM Barrie Peter’s novel nor the 1953 animated classic tell the story of the enmity between Peter Pan and Captain Hook. At some point, enlightenment came to us. What if Peter and Hook had been friends to begin with? What if they had arrived together in Neverland to then see their paths split to the point of resentment and continuous struggle?». The rivalry between the two has something primitive, in fact. “It is the struggle of two friends who did not want to separate and who are now in a constant state of war – says Alexandre Molony, a young English actor who plays Peter Pan -, a war that reached the point of no return when Peter cuts off his hand” .

THEThe second observation point concerns Wendy, who becomes the protagonist together with Peter Pan. Wendy has the face of Ever Anderson, so equal to mother Milla Jovovich as to create in the viewer a temporal regression effect very much in line with the themes of the film. “Wendy Darling is a teenager who is spending the last night at home before going to college – says Ever Anderson -, she would not want to go, she would not want to grow up”. Peter Pan from the distant Neverland picks up the signal and runs, shows up with the fairy Tinker Bell at the window of the Darling brothers and drags them into an adventure that will lead them to meet the terrible Captain Hook and his pirates, and to make friends with the lost children. “In the novel Wendy acquires the role of mother of the lost children, an idea that we have completely abandoned,” explains David Lowery who wanted to give a more contemporary connotation to the story than the novel by JM Barrie Peter and the 1953 animation classic the whose role was very important to give a precise aspect to the characters of the story. «The novel contained illustrations but it was the film that ensured Peter Pan and company a permanent place in pop culture – reflects Jude Law -. Captain Hook’s overcoat is red not because it is described in the book but because it was given to the history of cinema by the animated classic».

Lowery knows he’s taken a big responsibility: «Peter Pan is in everyone’s imagination, one of the jewels of the Disney library. It wasn’t an easy decision to agree to direct this film, but ultimately it was too great an opportunity to turn down.” A question of the will to grow, in fact. Peter Pan & Wendy comes out in the year of celebrations for the hundredth anniversary of the production company founded by Walt Disney. «I am very proud to be part of the Disney centenary party with this film – adds Jude Law -. At the same time I am happy that a more modern connotation has been given to a timeless story. Our Peter Pan is contemporary, up-to-date, faithful to today’s world and thinking».