[letsgotoofar]

I mean, I'll level with ya, I never bought the Peter Pan shit. Not in a million years. Jim may have used it as a starting point, but was light years away from any of that by the time Neverland was reaching maturation in the '70s and '80s; once you hit Bat Out of Hell 2100 in the '90s, the clearest antecedent of the Bat we have now (or had from approximately 2016 to around 2018 or '19), any influence was vestigial at best.

And in any event, as fun as a grim-dark reboot can be, here's my controversial hot take (as the kids say), influenced by numerous conversations with my dramaturgical creative partner: he didn't get Peter Pan at all, if that's what he got out of it. (Substitute character names from Bat wherever you like in what follows; although the Peter Pan mythos is essentially wisdom teeth to this thing, enough is infused in the structure that you can do so.)

It's not actually about youth, except in the sense of how brilliant it feels to have it when you're a child. The story isn't about whether eternal youth, joy, and freedom turn you into Caligula; in a certain sense, you don't need to make it any darker to portray that. (By which I mean: Peter is kind of a little monster already in-text, a profoundly unnatural and blithely uncaring child, because he's a representation of childhood. And it's worth noting, he is a child. Disney and the 2003 film, for all their respective virtues, were pushing it by making him a young teen. To make his analogue forever seventeen? Baby, that's a grown-up by Peter Pan standards. Even in 2003, there's a vague sense that one of the reasons Wendy has to leave him behind is that he gets kissing, he gets crushes, but he's not going to be able to meet her on her maturing level. Making your Peter Pan figure emblematic of the thrill of sex as a teenager means he's no longer Peter Pan. You've swerved off the road, to use a metaphor Steinman might have liked.)

It's about Wendy, and more specifically, her realizing she does want to grow up. She's ready to go back home, to get a room of her own, to remember this as one last grand hurrah of childhood (and a grander one, at that, than most people will ever get).

Making it a story about reckless young adults who are trapped as reckless young adults, and not gleefully arrested children and the girl who realizes she doesn't want this, fundamentally changes the story. There's a story there, but it's not the story of Peter Pan. The fact that the Lost are all so aware of how much they've aged internally is diametrically opposed to Peter Pan. (By comparison, think about how the film The Lost Boys isn't concerned much with Peter Pan beyond the allusion in the title. The allusion there works despite these being permanent young adults because they don't have much sense of their age. They're frozen older, but they're still frozen.) Tink becoming a Claudia (from Interview with the Vampire) archetype, disregarding that Tinker Bell is a whole other thing here, is especially out of place with the theme.

As for the sexual subtext, at best, Peter can be an awakening for Wendy (such as in the 2003 movie, where he's, like, 13 too), but he'll never grow up. He can't share in that, or, again, he stops being Peter Pan and starts being his analogue in Alan Moore's Lost Girls. If you put it in the story, it has to be via Captain Hook, as part of the "adulthood being scary but kind of alluring on its own terms" journey Wendy goes through.

And speaking of Hook, he bungled that, too. Having Hook as an authority figure (beyond the significant double casting that tends to come up, and the 2003 movie, again, I think did well on that by making it feel less like Wendy is attracted to her father and more like her father is to some extent the archetypal adult man and Hook is kind of the shadow of that, since for once Mr. Darling and Hook were kind of opposites and not mirrors) doesn't work either because Hook is Peter Pan's plaything. Functionally speaking, Neverland is Peter Pan's domain. Hook is there to lose to Peter Pan again and again; he's frankly been driven a little insane by it (and there's some hilarious subtext reading it as an adult, as J.M. Barrie emphasizes how dangerous and intelligent this guy is and puts him in a situation where a permanent kindergartner maims him and he doesn't have much control over it).

Hook is the antagonist not because he has power or control; it's because he's a vague representation of power and control used as Peter Pan's personal Washington Generals. (Google the Harlem Globetrotters, I can't do all your homework for you.) Making your Hook figure actually in charge of anything? Again, you can fashion a story about rebellious youth from that, but it won't be the story of Peter Pan.

Bat tries to have its cake and eat it too while still trying to come off like Peter Pan. Sometimes, you have to know when to stop at an allusion. (Joke ending of this lecture: "...and that concludes why Tanz der Vampire is a much better explication of Jim's favorite themes (albeit unintentionally), thanks for coming to my TED Talk.")

But then, TWG, you tried to avoid all that and were limited in how much of it you could mitigate. Isn't that right?