Psycho's Movie Reviews #82: Hook (1991)

Hook is a 1991 American fantasy swashbuckler adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by James V. Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo. It stars Robin Williams as Peter Banning / Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell, Bob Hoskins as Mr. Smee, and Maggie Smith as Granny Wendy. It acts as a sequel to J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel Peter and Wendy focusing on an adult Peter Pan who has forgotten all about his childhood. In his new life, he is known as Peter Banning, a successful but unimaginative and workaholic lawyer with a wife (Wendy's granddaughter) and two children. However, when Captain Hook, the enemy of his past, kidnaps his children, he returns to Neverland to save them. Along the journey, he reclaims the memories of his past and becomes a better person.

Spielberg began developing the film in the early 1980s with Walt Disney Productions and Paramount Pictures, which would have followed the storyline seen in the 1924 silent film and 1953 animated Disney film. It entered pre-production in 1985, but Spielberg abandoned the project. Hart developed the script with director Nick Castle and TriStar Pictures before Spielberg decided to direct in 1989. It was shot almost entirely on sound stages at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California.

Released on December 11, 1991, Hook received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances (particularly those of Williams and Hoffman), John Williams' musical score, and production values, but criticized the screenplay and tone. Although it was a commercial success, its box office take was lower than expected. Spielberg also later came to be disappointed with the film. It has gained a strong cult following since its release. It was nominated in five categories at the 64th Academy Awards. It also spawned merchandise, including video games, action figures, and comic book adaptations.

Plot:

Successful San Francisco corporate lawyer Peter Banning has become a workaholic, straining his relationship with his wife Moira and their children Jack and Maggie. After promising to attend at least one of Jack's baseball games, but missing the last game of the season, Peter flies with his annoyed family to London to visit Moira's grandmother, Wendy Darling. In London, Peter, Moira and Wendy attend a charity dinner in Wendy's honour at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, leaving Wendy's old friend Tootles and her housekeeper Liza with the children. When they return, the children are missing, and there is a ransom note from Captain James Hook. Peter involves the authorities, but Wendy insists that only he can save Jack and Maggie, as he is really Peter Pan.

Peter refuses to believe her; later, in the nursery, he encounters Tinker Bell, who brings him to Neverland with pixie dust. She drops Peter into Hook's pirate haven, where he reveals himself to Smee and Hook after seeing his children on display. Surprised to see how weak Peter has become, Hook challenges him to fly and rescue his children, preparing to execute him when he fails. Tinker Bell persuades Hook to release Peter instead, promising to train him for battle over the next three days. After accidentally falling overboard and being saved by Neverland mermaids, Peter is then taken to the Lost Boys, now led by Rufio. The boys mock Peter at first, but eventually recognize and train him, encouraging him to use his imagination to restore his memory and abilities.

Meanwhile, Hook despairs that he will not have true revenge on Peter, until Smee suggests they manipulate the Banning children into switching sides. This does not work with Maggie, but Jack is swayed due to Peter's repeated broken promises. Hook has the pirates play a game of baseball, which Peter sees while trying to steal Hook's namesake. Dismayed to see Jack treating Hook as a father-figure, Peter returns to the Lost Boys' camp with renewed determination. After seeing his shadow move independently, Peter follows it and discovers the treehouse where Wendy and her brothers once stayed. Inside, Tinker Bell helps Peter remember how he was lost as an infant in the early 1900s, brought by her to Neverland, and had his adventures with the Darlings. He also recalls frequently visiting Wendy after the Darlings returned to London, until Wendy grew old. Peter then fell in love with Wendy's granddaughter Moira and chose to stay, losing his memory and being adopted by the Bannings.

Recalling Jack's birth is the strong, happy thought that restores Peter's ability to fly, bringing him back as Peter Pan. Rufio turns his sword over to Peter in reverence, the Lost Boys celebrate and, that night, Tinker Bell professes her love for Peter with a kiss. However, Peter still chooses to save his family.

Peter and the Lost Boys fight Hook and his pirates the next day, as Jack watches. Peter rescues Maggie, and Hook's crew surrenders, but Rufio duels Hook and is fatally wounded. With his dying breath, Rufio wishes he could have had a father like Peter. Jack comes to his senses about his father, and they reconcile. Peter duels Hook and defeats him, whereupon Hook is devoured by the reanimated corpse of the taxidermied Crocodile. Tinker Bell takes Jack and Maggie back to London, and Peter appoints young Lost Boy Thud Butt as his successor, before leaving.

Peter awakens in Kensington Gardens, seeing someone resembling Mr. Smee sweeping up some empty bottles nearby. Tinker Bell appears and bids a tearful farewell to Peter before departing. Reuniting with his family at Wendy's house, Peter decides to devote more time to them. Peter hands former Lost Boy Tootles his old bag of marbles (which Thud Butt had given to Peter earlier), whereupon Tootles joyfully sprinkles himself with pixie dust and takes off. As Peter and his family watch Tootles fly back to Neverland, Wendy remarks that their adventures are truly over; Peter counters that "to live would be an awfully big adventure".

Production

Inspiration:

Spielberg found a close personal connection to Peter Pan's story from his own childhood. The troubled relationship between Peter and Jack in the film echoed Spielberg's relationship with his own father. Previous Spielberg films that explored a dysfunctional father-son relationship included E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Peter's "quest for success" paralleled Spielberg starting out as a film director and transforming into a Hollywood business magnate. "I think a lot of people today are losing their imagination because they are work-driven. They are so self-involved with work and success and arriving at the next plateau that children and family almost become incidental. I have even experienced it myself when I have been on a very tough shoot and I've not seen my kids except on weekends. They ask for my time and I can't give it to them because I'm working." Like Peter at the beginning of the film, Spielberg has a fear of flying. He feels that Peter's "enduring quality" in the storyline is simply to fly. "Anytime anything flies, whether it's Superman, Batman, or E.T., it's got to be a tip of the hat to Peter Pan," Spielberg reflected in a 1992 interview. "Peter Pan was the first time I saw anybody fly. Before I saw Superman, before I saw Batman, and of course before I saw any superheroes, my first memory of anybody flying is in Peter Pan."

Pre-Production:

The genesis of the film started when Spielberg's mother often read him Peter and Wendy as a bedtime story. He explained in 1985 "When I was 11 years old I actually directed the story during a school production. I have always felt like Peter Pan. I still feel like Peter Pan. It has been very hard for me to grow up, I'm a victim of the Peter Pan syndrome."

In the early 1980s, Spielberg began to develop a film with Walt Disney Pictures that would have closely followed the storyline of the 1924 silent film and 1953 animated film. He also considered directing it as a musical with Michael Jackson in the lead. Jackson expressed interest in the part, but was not interested in Spielberg's vision of an adult Peter Pan who had forgotten about his past. The project was taken to Paramount Pictures, where James V. Hart wrote the first script with Dustin Hoffman already cast as Captain Hook. It entered pre-production in 1985 for filming to begin at sound stages in England. Elliot Scott had been hired as production designer. With the birth of his first son, Max, in 1985, Spielberg decided to drop out. "I decided not to make Peter Pan when I had my first child," Spielberg commented. "I didn't want to go to London and have seven kids on wires in front of blue screens. I wanted to be home as a dad." Around this time, he considered directing Big, which carried similar motifs and themes with it. In 1987, he "permanently abandoned" it, feeling he expressed his childhood and adult themes in Empire of the Sun.

Meanwhile, Paramount and Hart moved forward on production with Nick Castle as director. Hart began to work on a new storyline when his son, Jake, showed his family a drawing. "We asked Jake what it was and he said it was a crocodile eating Captain Hook, but that the crocodile really didn't eat him, he got away," Hart reflected. "As it happens, I had been trying to crack Peter Pan for years, but I didn't just want to do a remake. So I went, 'Wow. Hook is not dead. The crocodile is. We've all been fooled'. In 1986 our family was having dinner and Jake said, 'Daddy, did Peter Pan ever grow up?' My immediate response was, 'No, of course not'. And Jake said, 'But what if he did?' I realized that Peter did grow up, just like all of us baby boomers who are now in our forties. I patterned him after several of my friends on Wall Street, where the pirates wear three-piece suits and ride in limos."

Tom Hanks was Spielberg’s original choice for the role of Peter Pan.

Joseph Mazzello auditioned for the role of Jack Banning, he was turned down because he deemed too young for the role. And Mazzello was later cast as Tim Murphy in Jurassic Park.

David Bowie, Christopher Lloyd, and Donald Sutherland were considered for Captain Hook.

Filming:

By 1989, Ian Rathbone changed the title to Hook, and took it from Paramount to TriStar Pictures, headed by Mike Medavoy, who was Spielberg's first talent agent. Robin Williams signed on, but he and Hoffman had creative differences with Castle. Medavoy saw the film as a vehicle for Spielberg and Castle was dismissed, but paid a $500,000 settlement. Dodi Fayed, who owned certain rights to make a Peter Pan film, sold his interest to TriStar in exchange for an executive producer credit. Spielberg briefly worked together with Hart to rewrite the script before hiring Malia Scotch Marmo to rewrite Captain Hook's dialog and Carrie Fisher for Tinker Bell's. The Writers Guild of America gave Hart and Marmo screenplay credit, while Hart and Castle were credited with the story. Fisher went uncredited. Filming began on February 19, 1991, occupying nine sound stages at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Stage 30 housed the Neverland Lost Boys playground, while Stage 10 supplied Captain Hook's ship cabin. Hidden hydraulics were installed to rock the set-piece to simulate a swaying ship, but the filmmakers found the movement distracted the dialogue, so the idea was dropped.

Stage 27 housed the full-sized Jolly Roger and the surrounding Pirate Wharf. Industrial Light & Magic provided the visual effects sequences. This marked the beginning of Tony Swatton's career, as he was asked to make weaponry for the film. It was financed by Amblin Entertainment and TriStar Pictures, with TriStar distributing it. Spielberg brought on John Napier as a "visual consultant", having been impressed with his work on Cats. The original production budget was set at $48 million, but ended up between $60–80 million. The primary reason for the increased budget was the shooting schedule, which ran 40 days over its original 76-day schedule. Spielberg explained, "It was all my fault. I began to work at a slower pace than I usually do."

Spielberg's on-set relationship with Julia Roberts was troubled, and he later admitted in an interview with 60 Minutes, "It was an unfortunate time for us to work together." In a 1999 Vanity Fair interview, Roberts said that Spielberg's comments "really hurt my feelings." She "couldn't believe this person that I knew and trusted was actually hesitating to come to my defense...it was the first time that I felt I had a turncoat in my midst."

Soundtrack:

The film score was composed and conducted by John Williams. He was brought in at an early stage when Spielberg was considering making the film as a musical. Accordingly, he wrote around eight songs for the project at this stage. The idea was later abandoned. Most of his song ideas were incorporated into the instrumental score, though two songs survive as songs in the finished film: "We Don't Wanna Grow Up" and "When You're Alone", both with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. The track called "Prologue" as made appearances in trailers for Matilda another film by TriStar Pictures.

The original 1991 issue was released by Epic Records. In 2012, a limited edition of the soundtrack, called Hook: Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, was released by La-La Land Records and Sony Music. It contains almost the complete score with alternates and unused material. It also contains liner notes that explain the film's production and score recording.

Release/Reception/Box Office:

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 29% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 66 reviews, with an average rating of 4.70/10. The site's consensus states: "The look of Hook is lively indeed but Steven Spielberg directs on autopilot here, giving in too quickly to his sentimental, syrupy qualities." On Metacritic, the film has a 52 out of 100 rating, based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine felt it would "only appeal to the baby boomer generation" and highly criticized the sword-fighting choreography. Vincent Canby of The New York Times felt the story structure was not well balanced, feeling Spielberg depended too much on art direction. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post was one of few who gave it a positive review. Hinson elaborated on crucial themes of children, adulthood, and loss of innocence. However, he said that Spielberg "was stuck too much in a theme park world".

Spielberg, Williams, and Hoffman did not take salaries for the film. Their deal called for them to split 40% of TriStar Pictures' gross revenues. They were to receive $20 million from the first $50 million in gross theatrical film rentals, with TriStar keeping the next $70 million in rentals before the three resumed receiving their percentage. The film was released in North America on December 11, 1991, earning $13.5 million in its opening weekend. It went on to gross $119.7 million in the United States and Canada and $181.2 million in foreign countries, accumulating a worldwide total of $300.9 million. It is the sixth-highest-grossing "pirate-themed" film, behind all five films in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. In the United States and Canada, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film in 1991, and fourth-highest-grossing worldwide. It was the second highest-grossing film in Japan with theatrical rentals of $22.4 million. It ended up making a profit of $50 million for the studio, yet it was still declared a financial disappointment, having been overshadowed by the release of Disney's Beauty and the Beast and a decline in box-office receipts compared to the previous years.

My Review:

To this day, I still find that entire idea fascinating. It’s just a simple, genius way to take a well known fairy tale, update it and expand it. The formula has since been duplicated and tweaked ad nauseam with films like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, and a bunch of others. Hook lead the charge though and as my rewatch began, I instantly found myself wrapped up in its conceit. Yes, Hook hooked me. The first thing that stands out is Spielberg absolutely made Hook for the kid I was when it first came out. Nothing about the movie is remotely subtle. The entire opening act is filled with foreshadowing akin to cutting off someone’s hand and putting a hook there. From the hook-shaped window clasps to the pirate ship in a bottle to dialogue literally using the word “hook,” if you watched this film not knowing where it was going, you’d be silly not to see it coming. That, coupled with a high level of schmaltzy melodrama, make the film’s opening necessary, but a little taxing.

After the children are kidnapped and the aforementioned family friend Wendy (played by Maggie Smith, looking exactly the same as she does today) tells Peter the truth about who he is, the film starts to make a difficult but successful transition. The introduction of Julia Roberts’ Tinkerbell does the bulk of the work taking a movie set in a very familiar reality and moving it to a place of infinite possibility. It’s a huge pivot, one that could have gone horribly wrong, but Spielberg absolutely nails it and eases the viewer from one tone to another. When Peter gets to Neverland, the immediate takeaway is the sets. I mean, holy shit. From Hook’s ship and its dock to the Lost Boys’ tree and all the interiors, Hook’s Neverland is a visual feast that was rightfully nominated for a Best Art Direction Oscar. It’s a world you want to walk around in and explore every nook and cranny of. Which, for or better and worse, you kind of get to do.

While Hook successfully transitions between tones, and the Neverland sequences are gorgeous, the movie gets a bit bloated in its second act. First, there’s the main plot of old Peter having to become Pan again (he has no idea how to fight or fly). Then there’s Hook trying to gaslight Peter’s kids. Tink is in love with Peter. Rufio is insecure. It’s just a lot. Most of it works because the performances are so on point but there is a sense that some of the plotlines are a tad unnecessary. A lot of the scenes are a bit stagnant and drawn out too. So, by the time Peter actually becomes Pan and goes after Hook with the Lost Boys, you’ve all but forgotten the very real-world stakes that, back in London, a family is searching for kidnapped kids.

Thankfully, as this is all happening, Hook has so many unforgettable moments peppered in that the faults are almost completely overshadowed. There’s Rufio’s incredible introduction via wooden windsurfing, the joyous imaginary food fight, the manic baseball game, the touching moment of Pockets touching Peter’s face. These, and others, are perfect scenes that are so delightful, the fact they just keep coming and coming makes everything OK.

That said, what you realize watching Hook today is that there are also lots of not-so-great moments. For example, when you finally find out how and why Peter Pan left Neverland, it’s more than a little uncomfortable and creepy. (He kisses Wendy’s granddaughter, his eventual wife, while she’s sound asleep without having ever met her.) The big finale also isn’t nearly as magical when you realize Williams learned how to sword fight but Hoffman almost certainly did not, as we see almost the entire Hook vs. Pan sword fight from behind him. There’s also the painful realization of Tink as a tragic character, stuck with a love she’ll never be able to act on; the oddity that the Lost Boys don’t mourn the death of Rufio; and that we’re meant to believe Peter “ran away” from his real mom as a baby and then Tink kidnapped him. There’s a laundry list of bad choices made in the movie and though the ending brings everything together fairly well, there’s plenty to leave you scratching your head in confusion.

All things considered, though, Hook remains a fun, watchable movie. I can’t imagine a better person to play Peter than Robin Williams, and watching him go from stern adult to a playful child is completely lovely and makes you miss him so, so much. John Williams’ score is also aces. He’s done a lot of classic scores, of course, but few instantly bring tears to my eyes like Hook’s does. It’s akin to weaponized nostalgia. Rufio and Smee, played by Dante Basco and Bob Hoskins, are also mega-standouts. Though neither is in the film a lot, they create such unforgettable, magical characters that each has stood the test of time and remain truly iconic. As the credits rolled on Hook, I was left with mixed emotions. Yes, many of the flaws pointed out to me by comedians in 2013 remained. This is not a typical, airtight Spielberg masterpiece as I’d once thought. And yet, there’s so much good throughout that I absolutely walked back my “Hook is bad” mindset. Hook isn’t bad. It’s just flawed. And the good things are numerous enough that I think it’ll continue to endure long after it’s taken off Netflix.

In conclusion, I highly recommend you give it a watch if you haven't already; 10/10.