Alright so I considered making this into a nice, long essay-style post but my thoughts aren’t really that organized so I’m just gonna do a sort of bullet point list on some of the little things about Spielberg’s Hook that I absolutely love.
Spielberg heard that Hook canonically resembles Charles II and went all out with it! Hoffman’s Hook, more than any other, looks like a gentleman straight out of the 1700s—the glorious red and gold coat, the fancy buckled shoes, the long curled wig tied with with ribbons and bows. The detail that went into his costume is amazing and I love how beautiful it is.
Everything about this Hook is over the top. Like royalty, he refuses to step down from his “throne” above the crew without Smee literally rolling out the red carpet for him. It’s very clear this Hook revels in finery. I mean look at his cabin. The man has not only the standard trappings of any 18th century nobleman’s home but even a miniature model of the island and a dang fireplace!
Is this ridiculous opulence in any way practical for a pirate? Absolutely not. Is it 100% accurate for Hook’s aesthetic and personality? Heck yes!
Neverland Bleeding into Reality
In stories like Peter Pan where there is both a “real world” setting and a magical realm, it’s always fun to look for little Easter eggs tying the two together so the audience is never quite sure how much is real and how much is imaginary. Neverland seeps into life in London in several places in this film. For example, on the plane, the voice that comes over the PA system and announces, “This is your Captain speaking…” is actually Hook himself—Dustin Hoffman.
Then there are some shots like this one, where Tootles, hearing Nana bark in the yard, recognizes that Hook is back. You probably noticed the ship in the bottle which is a replica of the Jolly Roger but did you catch the teddy bear?
Presumably we are looking at John’s top hat and glasses and Michael’s teddy bear from the original trip to Neverland…but if that wasn’t already meta enough, this same teddy bear shows up again later in the burnt out remains of the home underground when Peter is remembering why decided to grow up.
And this one might be a stretch but…early on in the film when we are getting a look at the pirate ship, we see a broom head beside a bottle that Tink is hiding behind.
Later, near the end of the film when Peter wakes up in Kensington Gardens and hears what he believes is Tink’s jingling, we see it’s actually Mr. Smee (Or is it?!) sweeping up some glass bottles that are clinking together.
Play-Acting and the Metaverse
Speaking of meta…this film has so many nods to the original. There’s the opening play with Maggie in the role of young Wendy, the painting of Hook in the dinghy that graces the bedroom wall, the latch on the window in the shape of the iron claw, Granny Wendy reading from the novel, and the whole Great Ormond Street Hospital scene. It’s nuts. (And by that I mean I love the attention to detail.)
But more than that, the entire film is set up like a sort of play. For example, when Peter arrives on the island, he is wrapped up in the sheet/parachute and his first view of Neverland is revealed when he pokes a hole in the sheet with his finger and begins ripping it apart. He’s literally parting the curtain for the audience here.
And everybody in Neverland is playing at being someone they are not. Tink plays dress-up and is very briefly the woman of Peter’s dreams—the woman she wishes she was but knows she really isn’t. Rufio is playing at being a fierce warrior who doesn’t need any parental figure—until he lays dying in Peter’s arms and admits that he wishes he had a father like Pan. And when the wig comes off, Hook—who in his usual attire comes off as an intimidating and dashing pirate captain—is reduced to little more than a pitiful old man who is past his prime.
Even Neverland itself is set up like the background one might see during a set change in a play with a giant compass rose and map lines visible in a flyover shot.
Hook and Pan’s Role Reversal
Another really intriguing aspect of this film to me is the way it totally flips the original on its head. Peter, who in the original is the fun, mischievous boy who steals away the Darling children, has become the workaholic adult who has no time for childish nonsense. That much is rather obvious but what is a bit subtler is that Hook’s role is somewhat reversed too. In most versions of the original, Hook and Mr. Darling are played by the same actor—Hook being a sort of fictionalized counterpart to Wendy’s rather serious and sometimes hotheaded father. Here, Peter has taken on the role of Mr. Darling as the “boring” adult and Hook, after stealing the children, becomes the “fun” father figure—to Jack, at least.
Last but not least, there is the theme of “believe hard enough and it will come true.” Much like in the original, flight requires belief for it work and the Lost Boys’ imaginary food is only actually filling if you believe it’s there. But what’s interesting to me here is that it isn’t just positive things that one seems able to believe into existence in this Neverland. For a long time, I thought Hook’s death in this version of the story was a bit of a cop-out. It seemed like having the (long-dead) crocodile come back to end Hook’s life was simply a way for the writers to avoid having Peter get his hands dirty. But then it occurred to me…if belief could brink Tink back from the point of death, why couldn’t it bring back the crocodile? Fear is an incredibly strong emotion that can often make the most rational among us have very strong irrational beliefs… I have now come to the conclusion that, in the moment when Hook heard all the clocks going off, his fear level was so amped up that he actually believed he was going to die the way he always thought he would—gobbled up by the giant ticking crocodile—and in a land of make-believe where anything is possible, that belief was strong enough to bring the crocodile back from the dead just long enough for it to do exactly what the captain expected it to. Ironically—and perhaps sadly—if this is the case, Hoffman’s Hook sealed his own fate.
So…I guess all of that is to say that while Hook may have its flaws, I love the research that went into the film. It’s clear that a lot of love for the original and a lot of effort went into the filmmaking process and that definitely gets some major brownie points from me.
