Magdalena Tsanis
Madrid (EFE).- A “modern” Peter Pan and at the same time “faithful to the original story and the time in which it takes place”.
This is how Jude Law describes the new version of the Disney classic that he has shot under the orders of David Lowery (“A ghost story”, 2017) and that will premiere this Friday, April 28 on the Disney+ platform.
“A film that talks about childhood and its relationship with growing up obviously needed to be updated and rediscovered,” the British actor told EFE, who gives life to a more humane Captain Hook than the one in the original story and film and who in the past he was a friend of Peter Pan.
“Lowery’s script gives you the opportunity to understand the character, dive into his past and understand what made him become a villain,” Law said in a telematic interview, for whom it was essential to go beyond the cliché: “The guy The bad guy never sees himself as the bad guy, he tends to think he’s the hero.”
a great curiosity
Father of seven children, Jude Law has chained emblematic characters for children and adolescents in recent years such as Dumbledore from the Harry Potter saga, Dr. Watson from Sherlock Holmes, this Captain Hook or his next foray into the universe of Star Wars with the recently confirmed “Skeleton Crew” series.
However, according to what he tells EFE, these are not choices that he has made with his children in mind. “It’s just been wonderful jobs and opportunities to take on iconic roles or step into iconic galaxies,” she says.
“As an actor I have always had a great curiosity, one of the most exciting things about being an actor is the possibility of taking on different challenges and investigating different ways of telling stories (…), I have done all these characters because they seemed interesting, challenging and sometimes rewarding.”
Although he has no particular memory of Captain Hook from his own childhood, Law has revealed that this was one of his eldest son’s favorite stories. “When I was 4 or 5 years old, I loved Peter Pan and I used to play Hook for him (…) so when shooting the movie I had the strange feeling that I had done some scenes in my living room before.”
Wendy’s role
The invention of a past for Captain Hook is one of the great novelties of Lowery’s film; the other is the greater weight and heroism that Wendy has in the story and that is manifested from the very title, “Peter Pan & Wendy”.
Lowery remembers that this was the initial title that JM Barrie used for his book. “At the end of the day, it’s Wendy who travels to Neverland and we wanted to explore the story from that perspective,” he said.
The one chosen for this role has been Ever Anderson, the 15-year-old daughter of actress Milla Jovovich and director Paul WS Anderson, who made herself known by playing the young version of Scarlett Johansson’s character in “The Black Widow” (2021). .
The young actress highlighted, in a virtual meeting with journalists from around the world, the “thirst for adventure” of this new Wendy and the awareness that “it was not easy to be a woman at that time” so the idea of growing up gave even more afraid.
He has also highlighted the relationship of complicity that he establishes with Campanilla (Yara Shahidi): “They are allies and they work together, they listen to each other and help each other.”
The young English actor Alexander Molony, who plays a carefree, adolescent and somewhat selfish Peter Pan, considers it “a privilege to play a character that has been rooted in people’s childhood for so many years.”