The first time I saw the VHS cover of “Hook” it was flattened, laminated, and dusty between the pages of a three ring binder in my local library’s media section. I asked my mom what it was and what it was about and was that really a pirate and a fairy and was it a scary movie and before she could even answer, I asked if we could borrow it. Please. She studied the cover. Told me it was a retelling of Peter Pan. Which meant nothing to me.
I watched it on loop that week, and when it was time to return it, I didn’t put it in the dropbox outside the library. I walked it to the counter, told the librarian I was both returning the movie and checking it out again. She smiled, said she’d have to check if anyone had reserved it. They hadn’t. This process repeated for weeks until finally the librarian gave me the copy—dusty cover and all--and told me to keep it.
“Hook” (1991), directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Jim V Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo, wants to recast J.M. Barrie’s classic story written, but instead of focusing on the everlasting boy from Neverland who is incapable of growing up, Spielberg’s “Hook” tells the story of Peter Banning (Robin Williams), a version of Peter Pan who has grown up completely. Maybe too much. But despite boasting the star-studded cast and a well-loved director, “Hook” was not highly thought of by critics. It still isn’t. Try mentioning to your movie-buff friend that you think “Hook” was a great film. See how they react.
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times spoke for many: “Very much like Peter, it has clearly gotten harder for this director to break free of the lure of material things and believe in simple magic.” Only those critics with the stomach for some sentimentality reviewed the film favorably. And there weren’t a lot of them.
Which is where I come in. Like many of us, I’m sure the pirates, fairies, and fantasy lured me to the film, but, thirty years later, looking back, on a subliminal level, I imagine something deeper was happening. My father wasn’t some big shot corporate lawyer. He was an entrepreneur, but just as absent, consumed by work, and emotionally distant as Peter Banning. His mechanic shop, where I spent my summers after he and my mother divorced, had become his Neverland. It wasn’t a world of pirates, fairies, or fantasy in any sense of the word. It was an industrial warehouse filled with shiny tools, spare parts, the smell of gas and oil, and engines firing over whatever was playing on the radio. Even when my father was around, he was busy—mind and heart perpetually elsewhere. Thinking. Strategizing. Imagining. “Hook” wasn’t just a movie, it was a mirror. Or, maybe it’s better to say that’s what I wanted it to be—an accurate reflection of my life as it was and would be.
“Hook” opens with a sequence where Peter continually disappoints his family—he takes a call during his children’s play, breaks his promise to attend his son’s baseball game, ignores his wife’s pleas to be more present to the family. But actually, he’s happy. He’s living in a corporate Neverland where he is the Pan—all things to all people in the skyscraper—followed by a pack of high-powered Lost Boy colleagues that love to crack jokes, play games, spend time with one another.
While my father worked, I sat idly, sometimes answering the phone for him, but most the time staring off, dawdling through the rows of boats. I had no friends to play with. No adventures to find. There was Solitaire and Minesweeper on the office computer, maybe a book if I remembered to bring one. But most of the time there was nothing to do except wait. For what? My dad to say it was time to leave, usually around 7 or 8 pm so we could go home, shower, and fall asleep only to wake up and do it all again. I played silent partner to my father, Lost Boy to his Pan.
Peter isn’t evil. He’s caught in a world, like my father, like all of us, that applauds work obsession. And, he actually hasn’t forgotten how to play pretend, he’s just relocated his playful inner child to a different arena, veiling it with a suit of seriousness behind spreadsheets and business deals. Peter’s new Neverland is firmly rooted in reality, but it is no more present to anyone in its orbit than Peter is to his family.
Spielberg unfolds an enchanting redemption arc for Peter as he rediscovers his inner child, gains empathy, and overcomes the pirates inside and outside him to reconnect with his family and save the day. It appears Peter has moved from villain to hero. And, in a society that frequently snatches fathers away from their families to provide, we need more stories of redeemed fathers.
Yet, these narratives, if we aren’t careful, can inadvertently perpetuate unhelpful and unhealthy hopes for those living with the reality of an unchanging, emotionally distant parent who is unable to defeat the world’s pirates this side of paradise. I wanted my father to turn out like Peter. I wanted him to stop spending so much time at his shop billing clients, answering calls, turning wrenches. I wanted a big moment, a kind of symbolic outward sign of a new inner reality in my father’s life, something like Peter Banning taking on Captain Hook in order to save his children. That was it. I wanted to be saved. And while I wouldn’t say I was lost, I wasn’t saved either. There was no moment to show when my father completed his arc, when we promised to reconnect. And, he’s not the only father who has failed to complete a redemptive arc.
And yet, in my hope for this kind of change, I almost missed my mother, who was quietly there for me all along, taking me to the library to rent the same movie week after week, enduring my countless viewings on our only TV, and never discouraging my inexhaustible curiosity of the film. I almost missed the librarian, too, who never criticized my lack of diverse choices but always greeted me with a smile and eventually gifted me my heart’s desire.
If we are honest enough to strip away the drama of the film—Peter questing to save his kidnapped children—we can see he’s really not a hero. He’s doing what he ought to have been doing all along. His arc is less Villain to Hero and more Bad Dad to just “Dad”. Misaligned to aligned priorities. And we see, too, what I’ve discovered as I’ve aged—the real, unrecognized heroes of “Hook”.
As viewers, we are tempted to do as Peter does—focus only on Peter and his journey, his struggle, his transformation, his heroism. But what about the others? What about Moira’s unwavering devotion, love, patience, and strength as she mitigates the disappointment of her children while also suffering the absence of her beloved partner? And what about Jack’s and Maggie’s resilience as they grow up with a father who seems to love everything in the world more than them? And even Wendy, who in her old age summons the courage to speak truth to power when she tells Peter that he has become a pirate.
These characters operate in the background, navigating the complexities of life with perseverance, displaying a kind of heroism that our corporate-centric world often overlooks. Like many of us living with work-worn parents, these characters—not Peter—become the blueprint for the deeper heroisms of love and forgiveness.
Even as we celebrate the redemption of fathers like Peter, we have to be careful to not only focus on characters like him, who, at root, move from doing what they should not be doing to acting as we should expect. Instead, we have to look closer at those who are already embodying virtues in short supply in this world. Those relegated to supporting roles who love, forgive, and endure—and especially those that love, forgive, and endure without getting the Hollywood resolution we all hope to experience.
“Hook” is better than its reputation, and it is not simply about a father’s redemption. It’s a reflection of our society’s subtle Neverlands, the groups of Lost Boys bandying about in our midst, and the unsung heroes dotting the backgrounds of our lives. It teaches us to celebrate the major and minor heroisms present in all our stories—from big transformations to quiet endurances.
Garrett Mostowski is a pastor and writer in Detroit, Michigan