I suppose the movie has a sort of "Calvin and Hobbes" interpretation, where nothing that happened in the movie literally happened; it just happened in the children's imagination. That was suggested in the movie itself: The father is played by the same actor that plays Captain Hook. At the time, the father was acting sort of grumpy, so it's natural the children transposed him into the role of a villain.

Continuing with that idea, the rest of Never Land makes sense: Children like pirates and "indians" for adventures, so that's what they find there (Wendy likes Mermaids, so they're there for her - note that the boys aren't around when she visits the mermaids). The indians are even just like what british children from the early 20th century might imagine them as.

Taken literally, cutting off Hook's hand is a terrible thing to do, but in a child's imagination it might be a perfectly reasonably way to explain Hook's prostheses (all pirate captains need missing body parts, don't you know)

An argument against this interpretation of the story is that even the father sees the ship at the end. But notice: It doesn't really look like a real ship anymore. It looks like a cloud in the shape of a ship.

Anyway. If you do accept this interpretation, another question arises: So what? What does it really mean (or matter) if children imagine themselves going to Neverland?


Aside from the movie itself, there's another reason I'm disappointed by Peter Pan. I was hoping there'd be at least one old (say, from when Walt Disney was still alive) Disney movie that I'd really like. There are some I liked more than Peter Pan (Bambi, for instance) but nothing that really seized my imagination.
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