Popcorn and Barrie
M. Barrie’s novel in the other, and tonight they are going to argue.
Is the Peter Pan book like the Disney movie? Some of it, yes. But I read the whole novel, and a handful of things in it are the opposite of what most people remember from the screen. This video is a book versus movie guide, and it spoils the ending of the book. For the films, I only compare what I could check in two sources, and I label everything reported.
The Films
First, which films. As of November twenty twenty-six, here is what two sources agree on.
Disney’s animated Peter Pan was released on February fifth, nineteen fifty-three, by RKO Radio Pictures. The Turner Classic Movies database credits three directors, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi and Wilfred Jackson. It also credits the source as Barrie’s play, which is worth remembering.
In two thousand and three, P. J. Hogan directed a live-action Peter Pan with Jeremy Sumpter as Peter. IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes both give a United States release of December twenty-fifth. And in April twenty twenty-three, Disney released Peter Pan and Wendy on Disney Plus, on the twenty-eighth. Disney’s own press release says David Lowery directed, with Alexander Molony as Peter and Ever Anderson as Wendy. Disney calls it a live-action reimagining of the Barrie novel and the nineteen fifty-three film.
So here is the fun part. The two Disney versions both lean on each other, and not only on the book.
What I Read
The book I read is the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number sixteen, whose title page reads Peter Pan, with Peter and Wendy in brackets. The file says it matches the nineteen eleven original publication.
It runs to seventeen chapters, and about fifty thousand words. In it, Peter appears about four hundred times and Wendy about three hundred and sixty. So when I say the book, I mean the novel, not the play and not any film.
Tinker Bell
Start with Tinker Bell. In the book she is jealous. She tricks the lost boys into shooting Wendy, and Peter banishes her for a week. But the narrator explains that fairies are so small they have room for only one feeling at a time. They can change, but it must be a complete change.
And she does change. Later Hook poisons Peter’s medicine, and Tinker Bell drinks it to save him. Her last words are you silly ass, which is the thing she says to him all through the book, and she says it lovingly. She can only recover if children believe in fairies, and they clap.
Reported by Collider, in the Disney film she is jealous and betrays Peter. In the book she does not sell him out. She dies for him, nearly.
Wendy and the Arrow
The shooting itself is different too. In the book, Tootles fires, and Wendy falls with an arrow in her breast. What saves her is the acorn button that Peter gave her as a kiss, hanging on a chain. Collider reports that in the film Peter catches her after the boys’ shots send her falling. Same moment, a lot less cruel.
The Lost Boys
Next, the lost boys. In the film, as reported by Collider and a second summary I checked, they come back to Neverland with Peter. In the book they do not. When Wendy and her brothers go home, the boys come too, and Mrs. Darling says she will have them. Mr. Darling is grumpy that six is a large number, until the boys assure him that he is not a cypher in his own house. Then they all go to school. In time they stop believing and lose the power to fly. Tootles ends up a judge, and one lost boy becomes a lord.
The Window
Here is the biggest one. In the book, the children are away a long time, and Mr. Darling sleeps in the dog kennel as a punishment for chaining Nana. Reported by Collider, the film brings the children home before their parents even get back. So the film has no Mr. Darling in a kennel.
And the film leaves out the cruellest scene in the novel, which is Peter barring the nursery window. He wants Wendy to think her mother has shut her out. Then he sees Mrs. Darling at the piano, crying, and cannot stand it. He unbars the window and flies away. That is a book scene. Collider lists it as only in the book.
Hook
Hook, too. In the book, he poisons Peter’s medicine with five drops of something he brewed from rings. He dies when Peter kicks him instead of stabbing him. Hook jumps into the sea, and the crocodile is waiting. The narrator says the clock was stopped on purpose, so he would not hear it. Reported by Collider, the film leaves his fate open as he swims away from the crocodile.
Peter Himself
Then there is Peter. Collider argues that Barrie’s Peter is meaner and more selfish than the screen version, and after reading it, I see the point. Here is what the text shows me.
On the flight to the island, he lets Michael fall asleep and drop, and laughs, because he thinks it is funny. He catches him at the last moment, but the narrator says it is his cleverness that interests him, not the saving. He forgets to show them how to stop. He tells John he kills pirates by waking them first, and, asked how many, says tons. And when his boys seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, he thins them out.
None of that is in my memory of the cartoon. It is also not villainy. The narrator calls children gay, innocent and heartless, and says Peter, alone, forgets unfairness the moment it is over. That is the whole trick of the book, and it is hard to film.
What the Book Has
Now some things I cannot compare, because I could not check them in two sources. So treat these as what the book has, nothing more.
The mermaids never speak a civil word to Wendy. Peter sits on their tails when they get cheeky. The Never bird gives him her nest, though neither can understand the other. Tiger Lily’s tribe calls Peter the Great White Father, and he lets them. Wendy sets the boys exam questions about their parents, all in the past tense, and the questions show she is already forgetting. If you only know the screen version, those are the details to look for when you pick up the book.
What the Films Cannot Do
Last, the ending, which is where the book is least like any film. Peter comes back each spring for Wendy, then forgets. He does not know who Hook was, or who Tinker Bell was. Wendy grows up. Years later her daughter Jane flies away with him, and the book ends with Wendy at the window. The same source says the film has none of this, and I could not find the ending in any adaptation I could check, so I will not claim one.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The films keep the pirates and the flying, and drop the sadness. The book is a story about a boy who forgets, and a mother who waits with the window open. I would watch the movie for fun, and read the book to see what it cost. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which Peter you grew up on.
