Peter Pan (2003)

  People told me this adaptation was awful but I didn't think it was that bad.  Sure, the kid playing Peter Pan annoyed me, but pretty much anyone who's played that character has annoyed me.  I'm not a fan of boys who won't grow up.

Wendy Darling (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is right on the cusp of adulthood but would rather tell stories to her two younger brothers than have to worry about growing up.  One night, a strange boy named Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter) appears and asks her if she wants to come live in Never Land with him and his lost boys to tell stories forever and never grow up.  This sounds like a pretty decent deal so Wendy, Michael (Freddie Popplewell), and John (Harry Newell) get a sprinkling of fairy dust from Tinkerbell (Ludivine Sagnier) and off they go.  Never Land lives up to all their expectations, having mermaids, Indians, fairies, and of course, a constant villain in Captain Hook (Jason Isaacs).

Generally, Captain Hook is the more interesting of the main characters, depending on how he's played.  This iteration seems to be trying to bridge the gap between the goofy malice of the 1953 Disney animated classic and the more psychological evil of Dustin Hoffman in Hook.  Jason Isaacs' Captain Hook doesn't just want to kill Peter Pan.  He wants to destroy him.  The fact that Isaacs also plays Wendy's father, Mr. Darling, adds an interesting layer of Freudian symbolism as well.  If they had put Wendy on horseback at any point, I would have said the entire film was about her repressed sexuality.  But they didn't, so I think they were just trying to save money on casting.