Garrett Hedlund‘s quite the looker, but no one’s taking the “sexiest Hook” mantle from Jason Isaacs. Mrrrow.
Scan down the (long, long) list of live-action Disney movie reboots currently in development, and somewhere on it you’ll find Warner Bros.’ Pan, a Peter Pan origin story story directed by Pride and Prejudice and Atonement‘s Joe Wright. In it the major baddie will reportedly be not Hook but Blackbeard, a role for which Hugh Jackman and Javier Bardem have been rumored. But Hook will still be there, and Deadline reports that TRON: Legacy‘s Garrett Hedlund (the non-Charlie Hunnam Charlie Hunnam) beat out Ezra Miller and Boardwalk Empire‘s Jack Huston for the role.
So what will origin story-era Hook be up to? If what we’ve heard about the script so far is correct (and it may not be), he’ll be a crewmember of Blackbeard’s who’s actually friends with Pan, only at some point they’ll have an Anakin-Obi-Wan moment and diverge onto separate paths. (No word on whether Tusken Raiders will be involved.) And then there’s the glorious (note the sarcasm, please) tidbit that Peter will gain clout on Neverland by becoming the “the savior of the natives.”
Pan. Please don’t.
Because I’m actually looking forward to this. I view most of the other fairy tale reboots (and Peter Pan isn’t a fairy tale, I know, but it’s part of the Disney wheelhouse, you know what I mean) through a lens of cynicism. Maleficent looks awful. The Alice in Wonderland sequel—officially titled Through the Looking Glass now, and potentially starring Sacha Baron Cohen in whatever the hell Through the Looking Glass role you would put Sacha Baron Cohen in—just needs to go away. Disney’s Cinderella went and replaced the director who wanted to make a more dark movie with Kenneth Branagh, and I’m never gonna talk smack about Gilderoy Lockhart, but I’d have liked to see a grim (harr harr) fairy tale movie instead of a shiny confectionary treat with pretty clothes for once. Even cynics can be pleasantly surprised—see: Frozen—but I have been done with this damn fairy tale movie trend for years.
But the gooey center at the middle of this bitter, calcified human-shaped Gobstopper is that I have a real weakness for Peter Pan stories. The Mary Martin-starring musical fills me with more of a bitter glow of nostalgia than any Disney movie does. Hook is a damn cinematic masterpiece, and I will start a food fight with anyone who claims otherwise. I only saw the 2003 version with Jason Isaacs fairly recently, but it wormed its hooks into my heart within the first five minutes. I’m considering giving Once Upon a Time, like, a fifth shot and finally watching season three because of Neverland. It’s intense. I’m totally biased. Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella/Beauty and the Beast? Nahhh. Peter Pan origin story? Bring it.
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