{"id":1104,"date":"2011-12-10T01:57:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T05:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2011-12-10T01:57:08","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T05:57:08","slug":"neverland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1104","title":{"rendered":"Neverland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"neverland\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I just finished watching the miniseries Neverland<\/em> that came on the Syfy channel here in the USA.  The miniseries provided an interesting explanation for the nature of Neverland involving an 400 year old alchemist from Queen Elizabeth I\u2019s era (how do you write possessives with roman numerals?) and some galactic space-time continuum jargon.  I enjoyed the friends-to-enemies back story of Peter and Hook, and the explanation of how both pirates and Indians wound up in Neverland.<\/p>\n

What I felt was most lacking were the main characters\u2019 motivations.  In fact, I\u2019m not even sure what Peter wanted, besides to oppose Hook.  Meanwhile, Hook wanted superpowers (in the form of a special mineral dust; I\u2019m glad they didn\u2019t call anything \u201cpixie\u201d or \u201cfairy\u201d), but seemingly for no deeper reason than any typical villain wants superpowers\u2014because they\u2019re superpowers.  I would\u2019ve tried to give them deeper issues.  For example, perhaps Peter is seeking parental guidance and approval.  Perhaps he knows what kind of loving relationship he\u2019s missing out on by being an orphan, and this is torture for him.  It would be pretty clich\u00e9 (orphans in books are always struggling with this issue), but Peter might get away with it, since it would help explain the whole \u201cWendy is our mother\u201d element of the traditional Peter Pan tale.  An issue for Hook: perhaps he sees in Peter everything he could\u2019ve been were he a bit more clever and popular.  Perhaps he\u2019s just plain jealous of Peter and the relationships he\u2019s able to forge in Neverland.  He hates Peter because he craves everything he has.  Wanting the superpowers is his way of getting even, or at least that\u2019s his hope.  \u201cOnce the power is mine, I\u2019ll have nothing to envy.\u201d  These are just examples; the point is, I think the characters would\u2019ve been more sympathetic with these deeper issues plaguing their minds.<\/p>\n

The special effects were fantastic for a TV film, though the flying looked rather awful.  But I can\u2019t blame them too much for that; I think humans always look pretty horrible flying.  The flying looked much better in Disney\u2019s animated version, I reckon because animators could have so much more control over the characters\u2019 feeling of weight, and how the center of gravity swings back and forth during a flying move so that it looks like the body is moving of its own accord and not attached to some invisible string.<\/p>\n

Lastly, the ending made no sense at all, but this is another thing I can\u2019t blame them too much for.  Neverland<\/em> is trying to set the stage for the tradition Peter Pan story, and the beginning of the traditional Peter Pan story makes no sense.  But J. M. Barrie could get away with that in his day, because back then people didn\u2019t have very high standards.  (OK, different standards at least.)<\/p>\n

Over all, it was some good food for my writerly imagination.<\/p>\n

This review<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

\n

When this Peter Pan origins tale isn’t gutting small children with giant swords, it’s pumping Native Americans full of bullets and pushing Pirates off cliffs. Oh and there’s sex in it too, and fairy genocide \u2014 so yeah, "gritty" is one way to describe it. Or you could say: a bunch of adults ham-fistededly stuff somewhat salacious origin tropes into a poor, unsuspecting fairy tale.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apparently someone grew up watching too much Disney and not actually reading<\/em> many fantasy stories.  Neverland<\/em> was hardly what I\u2019d call \u201cgritty\u201d at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished watching the miniseries Neverland that came on the Syfy channel here in the USA.  The miniseries provided an interesting explanation for the nature of Neverland involving an 400 year old alchemist from Queen Elizabeth I\u2019s era (how do you write possessives with roman numerals?) and some galactic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[99],"tags":[453],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-hO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}