Peter Pan Post 5: The Disney Version

 
"Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us."
~Colossians 1:9 MSG~


Hi! :)

Okay I know I should be writing in my Nano novel (I'm actually way behind I'm only at 8,000 words) but I'll write this instead. 

Okay.  Peter Pan.  The old Disney version.  I grew up watching it and enjoying it.  We have it on video cassette still, a fifty year anniversary version I think (yes, that cartoon is much older than we remember).  The same lass who was Cinderella in the Disney version is also Wendy in the Disney version of Peter Pan (and she's also Alice in Wonderland too).  And they all wear the same color: blue.  I wonder if there's something to that...

Once when I was re-watching the cartoon, at the beginning when the narrator was talking about how Wendy was an expert on Peter Pan, I was starting to wonder...  How did she learn so much about him?  It was as if he was a fantasy she had created, a story she was writing that came true.  Authors have to be experts on their characters, after all.  And when she finally does meet him, she talks to him like an author might talk excitedly to their character if they met them.  Probably not how it was meant to come out as, but I thought it was a cool thought.

Like I said before in one of the other posts, Peter Pan in the Disney version doesn't know what a mother is.
"What's a mother?" he asks.  Wendy replies, "Oh Peter, a mother is someone who cares for you, tells you stories..."
"Stories!  You can be our mother, Wendy!"
And thus, Peter forces her to become an adult figure without even knowing it!  That's something my sister pointed out to me and I stared at her like she was a genius.

Another fun fact about the cartoon is that the same man who did the voice for Captain Hook also did the voice for Mr. Darling.  Is that... a bad thing?  A friend of mine didn't like the Disney version much because it was like Captain Hood represented Mr. Darling, the only father figure in the story.  The friend was writing a paper on how feminism has been ruining the traditional, Biblical ideals of family at the time.  This made me sad, but then wait, remember at the end of the cartoon, when they've just gotten back and Mr. Darling sees the shadow of the ship in the clouds, and he says he has the suspicion that he saw that ship before a long time ago when he was very young?
I do wonder what that meant.
But then again, at the beginning of the cartoon, the narrator says, "It has happened before, and it will happen again."  The coming of Peter Pan.  So I suppose Mr. Darling went to Neverland, in the cartoon version when he was a boy (none of this is in the book but I can appreciate what it tries to explain, that the coming of Peter Pan is like the phase that all people go through when they are children, that childishness, that wonder).  That fact sort of redeems him in my mind.  It reminds us that all adults were once children.

Now, on to Wendy.  No one is very nice to her in Neverland.  The mermaids try to drown her, Peter himself says a few mean things ("Girls talk too much!" it's meant to be funny but it's kinda sad) and he isn't quite as mannerly as he is in the book, the Indians aren't very nice to her either, and that's when she gets mad and wants to go home.

Opposed to this is the actual book where Wendy realizes that she herself and John and Micheal are beginning to forget their parents, and that's when they decide they should go home before they in turn are forgotten (and this version is in the 2003 movie so that's cool).

But overall the Disney version has a quite different feel/worldview to it than the book did.  It leaves you with a happy feeling, and it makes some people mad that Wendy didn't stay with Peter in Neverland.  Some said she wasn't being sensible, but I will talk about that also in my last post.  It will only be one more post on Peter Pan... unless I feel like it's too long.  Then it will be seven... heehee my favorite number.

Anyway, the cartoon sequel to Peter Pan that was also done by Disney but a long time later turned out to have an even different view of Peter Pan than the first one!  I was young when it came out, maybe five, but I absolutely LOVED it.  I found out later that a lot of what I loved was really the MUSIC... I put it above  (lol I grew up when all the sequels were coming out and I ended up liking them better than the first ones lol oh well and my sister liked the first ones better but she's four years older so...)  Now I'm slightly embarrassed to say I liked it better than the original cartoon.  He was kinda annoying to my sister and I only noticed it when I got older.  But there are some things about it that always made me nostalgic, besides the music.  The two pics above are from it.
By the way, I found out that the same person who did the soundtrack for the sequel is also doing the music for the Tinker Bell movies, or at least he did one of them. 

I thought I would share one post of a series of posts about Peter Pan that I thought are amazingly thought out.  This one is about Neverland the island.  And they're clean, and very interesting besides.  If you're interested.
http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-neverland-a-state-of-mind

There is just too much to talk about so I won't talk about everything and exhaust the topic.  Hopefully you're not getting bored...
I'll probably just talk about one more thing, in my next post on the subject (and yes I will be doing an interview thingy about my Nano novel so comment and tell me if you want to be tagged).

Good bye. (: