The Messed Up Origins of Peter Pan | Disney Explained - Jon Solo

(calm music) - What is going on Disney fans? My name is Jon Solo and welcome to another episode of messed up origins, the show where we dive into the dark history of some of your favorite Disney films. We are covering a highly requested topic today, the story of Peter Pan, and trust me when I say you're gonna wanna watch this episode the whole way through, because not only are we gonna discuss the story, which in and of itself is pretty dark.

We're also going to shed some light on the surprisingly creepy backstory of the author, J. M. Barrie, because when you know his backstory and his inspiration for writing the Peter Pan book, let's just say it gets pretty dark.

Now, Peter Pan's original conception was different than the one we know from Disney. He was first mentioned in a short story, in a book by J. M.

Barrie called, The Little White Bird, where he's described as a magical boy, who escaped from being human as a baby, and ever since flies around with fairies. Unlike the Peter Pan we're familiar with, this version is only a week old. So, a newborn baby.

It's important to note this is not a prequel to the older Peter Pan story. The book specifically says, there is not the slightest chance of his ever having a birthday. So he stays a baby forever.

But, this character is what inspired Barrie's creation of the older Peter Pan. So there are some connections between the backstories. The next piece of work to include Peter Pan was a play by J.

M. Barrie called, Peter Pan, or the boy who wouldn't grow up. The popularity of the play is what led Barrie to write the book, Peter and Wendy, which is basically the same story as the play but in book format.

And that is what we are diving into today. But before we get started, let's first go over what happens in the Disney film. Just sit back, relax, hit that like button, so we can reach our goal of 5,000 likes, and enjoy.

The story follows Wendy, Michael, and John Darling, three kids who live in London. While their parents are away at a party, they're visited by a magic boy who never ages, named Peter Pan, who they recognize from stories. He teaches them how to fly and takes them to the island of Neverland, where his clan of lost boys live, as well as his enemy Captain Hook.

At first, the Darling kids are having a pretty good time, but after being harassed by the mermaids, and interrogated by Indians, they start to get homesick and are ready to leave. On their way out, they're captured by Captain Hook, who plans on making them walk the plank, and blowing up Peter's hideout with a time bomb. Thanks to Tinker Bell's intervention, Peter survives the explosion, and defeats Captain Hook in a duel, saving The Lost Boys from his wrath.

Peter commandeers the pirate ship, uses some of Tinker Bell's fairy dust to give it some magic and make it fly, and then drops off the Darlings back at their house in London. There's a few details I left out of that summary but don't you worry because we're going to touch on them in just a bit, because the book is actually pretty similar to the movie. Only, the book includes a few more details that make Peter Pan's leadership over The Lost Boys seem a little more evil.

The story starts by telling us about Wendy Darling's childhood, and how she came to learn that it wouldn't last forever. Her mother would often tell bedtime stories to her and her brothers, Michael and John, and the boy who never ages would secretly eavesdrop on those stories every night. On one random evening, Peter is spotted sneaking through the window of the nursery and the Darling's dog, Nana, scares them away, but latches onto his shadow with her teeth.

Mr. Darling folds up the shadow and puts it in a drawer, and a week later, Peter and Tinker Bell come back to the house to retrieve it. They wake up Wendy who reattaches the shadow to its owner, and during the conversation that follows, Peter learns that Wendy knows lots of bedtime stories, and would therefore make a great mother to his gang of lost boys.

He offers to bring her to Neverland, and she accepts, and she takes her two brothers with her. The children head for the second star to the right and have a magical flight to Neverland and have a few interesting encounters on the way. They're flying for quite a long time, and on this journey, they learned that Peter Pan has horrible memory, beyond horrible, honestly, there's points of their flight where he'll veer off for a while, and when he encounters the Darling kids again, they have to keep reintroducing themselves.

I guess that's a result of his childlike innocence or whatever, but Wendy found it pretty annoying. When they finally arrive at the island, Wendy is shot down by an arrow from The Lost Boys, thanks to Tinker Bell telling them that Peter Pan ordered it. And then The Lost Boys build a house for her to recover in and call it a Wendy house, a term that's still used to this day.

While she's recovering, her brothers Michael and John make themselves at home with The Lost Boys and start adopting their ways of living. Peter shows Wendy around his underground camp, and she immediately takes on the role of mother figure. The Darling kids go on several adventures and spend a lot of time with Peter.

And over that unknown amount of time they learn a few things about him that are a little scary. For example, he says that all The Lost Boys are kids who lost their parents in a public park in London, called Kensington Gardens. So I imagine he's approaching these kids the same way he approached the Darlings, just encouraging them to go to his magical island where there's no rules and kids can do whatever they want.

But he's doing it to kids who wander away from their parents in a public park, so it kind of sounds like he's a child predator. We also learned that he kills The Lost Boys to thin the herd or when they get too old. He periodically alters their body so they can fit through the tree holes that lead to their hideout, don't even want to know what that means, and he'll sometimes feed them, pretend food, because he can't tell the difference between real and make believe.

It turns out that a magical child with the memory of a goldfish, not the best, at raising children. The first really dangerous mission that Peter takes the Darlings on, happens at Mermaids' Lagoon. Similar to the movie, the mermaids in the book were rude to Wendy and the entire Lost Boy gang.

Also similar to the movie, this is when Hook's pirate ship comes out of the nearby fog. It turns out that Hook's men had kidnapped the chief's daughter, and planned on getting her to reveal the location of Peter Pan's hideout, but she refused. So their new plan was to tie her up and leave her on a rock in the middle of the ocean at low tide, So when the tide rose, she would drown.

But Peter saves her by sneaking up to the ship and impersonating the voice of Captain Hook, who apparently wasn't on board at the time and just ordering the pirates to let her go. Coincidentally, the real Captain Hook climbs on board the ship, just a few moments after Tiger Lily has jumped off, and this is when Peter Pan reveals himself, and a short battle ensues. A cool detail about Hook I didn't know about, he doesn't have anyone standing guard on his ship because the souls of the people he's killed, protect it for a mile in every direction.

I'm sure there's other responsibilities the souls don't take care of, like pulling up the anchor and mast maintenance. But they got the standing guard thing covered. Captain Hook ends up injuring Peter, who winds up stranded on the same rock that Tiger Lily was supposed to be on unable to fly.

He makes peace with his incoming death but luckily a nearby bird volunteers her nest for him to use as a boat to sail back on. He makes it back to his camp. Everyone regards him as a hero, and to pay him back for saving Tiger Lily's life, the Indians agree to stand guard over his hideout.

Wendy starts to fall in love with Peter at this point, but when she asks him what he thinks of her, he says that she's his mother and he is her loyal son. That's a whole nother level of friend zone but it reminds Wendy of her own parents back in London who must be worried sick about them at this point, as it's been a few days since they left. She decides it's time for her and her brothers to fly back home and even invites The Lost Boys to come along with, to be raised by their parents.

Everyone is down for the idea except for Peter who decides to take a nap when the Darlings and Lost Boys fly out. The problem is, they encounter some pirates on their way and are taken captive on the Jolly Roger. Peter wakes up from his nap sometime later and Tinker Bell tells him about the danger the Darlings and Lost Boys got into.

He heads out to the Jolly Roger and on the way encounters the ticking crocodile that Hook is so afraid of. Being that Peter's a master of impersonations, he copies the ticking sound so that nearby animals and pirates will avoid him. When he boards the Jolly Roger, he sneaks into the cabin, the kids are being held captive in, and sets them free.

And then a battle between The Lost Boys and pirates breaks out. It's an intense fight but The Lost Boys come out on top, killing all but two of the pirates and Peter kills Captain Hook by kicking him into the jaws of the crocodile. He then takes over the ship and sails back to London with the Darlings to be reunited with their parents.

Actually, Peter wasn't totally willing to let the Darlings go. He flew ahead of the ship so he could put bars on their bedroom window, so they would think their parents didn't want them to come back. But when he got to the house, he saw how upset Mr and Mr.

Darling were and decided against it. The story ends in kind of a weird way. The kids and their parents reunite.

The Lost Boys are adopted by the Darlings and raised to adulthood. And while Peter refuses to grow up, he makes a deal with Wendy that he'll bring her back to Neverland for a week, every spring, so she can help him with spring cleaning. The problem is, Peter has no real conception of time.

So after only a few years of Wendy coming to visit him, he forgot about her completely for 25 years. When he visits her as an adult, she also learns he's forgotten all about Tinker Bell, Captain Hook and The Lost Boys. He makes a new deal with Wendy that her daughter, Jane, will visit him once a year.

And when Jane eventually grows older and has her daughter, Margaret, they make the same deal. And that is how the story ends, but we're not done just yet because there's a few things I think you should know about the author, James Matthew Barrie, and his weird fascination with boyhood. It's believed that his obsession started in 1867.

When James was just six years old, his brother David was killed just two days before turning 14, when he was knocked down by a fellow ice skater, and cracked his head on the ice. The word is, that David was their mother's favorite out of her eight living children. And the small amount of comfort that she found in his death would be that he would stay an innocent young boy forever.

And this is how the obsession with innocence and boyhood became anchored in James's psyche. It almost sounds like the start of some creepy pasta, cartoon conspiracy, but I promise this actually happened. Now fast forward 30 years, to 1898.

While chilling out in the one and only Kensington Gardens, James met George and John Davies, a four and five-year-old, that were walking around with their nurse. He was real polite, befriended their parents and met their three other sons, Peter, Michael, and Nico. He was so close with their family, they started calling him uncle Jim, On the surface, it might not look like there's anything wrong with his relationship with the family.

But in the book I mentioned earlier, James included a passage about a grown man, befriending a kid named David. Weirdly close to the name Davies, huh. And then lies to David's parents about having his own dead son to create empathy and bond with them.

I'm not saying that's what he did to the Davies parents, but what I am saying, is he's coming a little too close to a Lena Dunham level confession. And it gets even weirder. Some researchers dug up a letter that James wrote to Michael Davies for his birthday, and it's thought that Michael was his favorite of the Davies children.

The letter reads as follows, I wish I could be with you and your candles. You can look on me as one of your candles. The one that burns badly, the greasy one that is bent in the middle.

But still, hurry. I am Michael's candle. What?

I wish I could see you putting on the redskin's clothes for the first time. Dear Michael, I am very fond of you, but don't tell anybody. Totally appropriate to say to an eight year old, right?

He refers to himself as a greasy candle, that's bent in the middle, and I don't even want to know what that's a metaphor for. Makes a kind of racist comment about native Americans. Admittedly, the times were different back then, but you know, he still said it, and then said he wanted to watch the child change into the native American costume, which is, you know, questionable at best.

And then at the very end, he says, I'm very fond of you, but don't tell anyone. I'm going to go ahead and say, this is not normal behavior, even for the early 19 hundreds. But if you thought it couldn't get worse, it does.

Both Davies' parents died of natural causes when their kids were still young. But for some reason, I think maybe because he lived so close to them and because they had no reason not to trust him at this point, uncle Jim was the one responsible for transcribing the parents will, and sending it to the boys' grandma. And when she received it, instead of the will saying, the children should go to Jenny, it said they should go to Jimmy.

So he adopted them after their parents died and raised them to adulthood. The nature of their relationship is questionable. There's some people who firmly believe that J.

M. Barrie was truly scarred from his childhood and had only a platonic obsession with boyhood and innocence. Others are a little more suspicious and downright accusational.

I can't pretend to know the truth, but I won't deny there were some major red flags popping up as I researched this guy's life. It should be mentioned though, that despite that scandal Barrie did commit one supremely good deed before he died in 1937. He left the copyright to all of his Peter Pan works to a children's hospital in London which still greatly benefits from having the rights to this day.

And that is the story of J. M. Barrie and the boy who wouldn't grow up, Peter Pan.

I really hope you enjoyed this episode, it's one of my favorites that I've done so far. If you could hit that like button, so we can reach our goal of 5,000 likes, that would mean the world to me. Also make sure you subscribe for new Disney videos every single week.

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Until next time, my name is Jon Solo and remember Jon shot first.