"All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again"

Peter Pan (1953)

With the box office disappointment of Alice in Wonderland, Disney never lost momentum and kept going strong right into the animated adaptation of J. M. Barrie's story of Peter Pan. Continuing the theme of escaping the mundane responsibilities everyday life brings us that Wonderland already explored. Only this time, a box office hit was what they had.
Many people strongly love this story. The idea of a place you can escape to where children never grow up, with pirates, mermaids, indians, and fairies that made you fly. It's a story that's hard not to love. Most people born within the western world these last one hundred years have dreamed of being whisked off to Neverland. Myself included.
Returning to this movie, for me, had me excited since out of many of the classic films, this one had been one I hadn't seen in MANY years. And most of the finer details had escaped my memory, so I knew going in, that a fresh perspective was what I was definitely going to get.
So.....
Let me begin by saying one major thing I had forgotten about this movie....
Peter Pan is an a-hole.
When your a child, and you are mesmerized by the magic of the story, and the grand adventure of it all, the finer details go over your head. But seeing this through the eyes of adulthood, the appeal of Neverland escapes me. Which, in some sort of irony, fits with the theme of the story. Peter Pan truly is the essence of youth. The one child who figured out how to escape the confines of mortality and achieve eternal youth. And his avoidance of maturity is quite apparent. He's boastful, ambivalent, immature, and completely oblivious of his treatment to the people around him.
In fact, Disney smoothed a lot of Peter's truly darker characteristics out of his telling of the story. In the original story, he killed the Lost Boys who showed signs of aging, or just to remind them of who was in charge. Making many people believe that the pirates were made up of lost boys who managed to escape him....
Yeah, kinda paints a new perspective of the flying sociopath, huh?
Anyway, the Darling children all get wrapped up on the wonderment of Neverland with the exception of Wendy. Who, out of all three, is on the cusp of growing up. So it makes sense for her to see through the veil, and find that staying a child forever isn't all that it cracks up to be. Once again, bringing the common ground of this movie and Wonderland together even more.
Aside from how unappealing a person the titular hero turns out to be, this movie shocked me with it's violence, drug use, and racism. Not only does the movie feature ALL of the children sharing a peace pipe with the natives, right before the break out into the ever popular musical number "What Makes the Red Man, Red?", but also features Captain Hook blatantly shooting one of his men dead. I had to pick my jaw off the ground quite a few times. Never before has a Disney film truly showed it age than this movie. So don't expect a theatrical re-release anytime soon, folks!
All political incorrectness aside, the movie holds up well, with a strong voice cast such as Hans Conried (a man with one of the best British speaking voices ever to grace this earth), Kathryn Beaumont (whom we already know as Alice from the previous movie), and many others. Also, the animation truly stands out strong, due to Disney's use of live action filming for animators to reference. Lots of strong points overwhelm the cons of this movie for sure.
But reflecting back on this movie, reminds me of why we love to revisit it. Especially as an adult. As we age, our sense of 'play' and 'adventure' lessens, as we are overburdened with the everyday responsibilities of adulthood. Wendy's parents see her maturity at the beginning of the movie, and suggest the idea of moving out of the playroom, and straight into adulthood. Every child's nightmare. But, by visiting the extremity of Neverland, we are all reminded of why growth and maturity are just as vital to life as youth. And the ticking crocodile of death is something we all have to face, eventually. And just as the movie says in the beginning, this right of passage has happened before, and it will happen perpetually over and over again.
Neverland is where we all learn to grow up.