Filmmakers are film fans, right? There’s just no way you’d devote your life to a creative endeavor and not be a fan of it. So, you have to assume that directors, whether they’re working on no-budget horror, blockbuster superhero films, or even a heartfelt indie drama, are influenced by similar works or other filmmakers who have inspired them. So, even though David Lowery’s newest film, “Peter Pan & Wendy,” can be written off as yet another live-action Disney remake (yawn), the filmmaker does have quite a few surprising homages and inspiration that he recently broke down for The New York Times.
Are you curious how Andrei Tarkovsky or the cult classic horror film “Candyman” have influenced the kid-friendly “Peter Pan & Wendy?” Or how “Master and Commander” and “Raising Arizona” gave David Lowery inspiration for certain sequences in his newest Disney adventure? If so, Lowery has broken down all of that and more.
There are some of the influences and homages that aren’t all that surprising. “Master and Commander” inspired the version of Captain Hook seen in the film. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” is homaged in one scene involving Tiger Lily and the Lost Boys. But what about Tarkovsky?
In “Peter Pan & Wendy,” there’s a scene where Tinkerbell sprinkles pixie dust on Wendy when she and Peter meet the Darling children. Apparently, the image of Wendy floating all the way to Neverland before she wakes from her sleep is directly inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1975 film, “Mirror.” Apparently, Lowery went so far as to include a screenshot of the film for his “look-book.”
Then when it came to Captain Hook and the way he is visualized in Lowery’s film, the filmmaker apparently used an image of Bill the Butcher from Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” to nail the right vibe. “That became the Captain Hook I saw in my mind while I was writing the script,” he said.
As for the iconic hook prosthetic the Captain uses on one of his hands, the filmmaker supplied the prop department with an image from the horror film, “Candyman.” We want it to be rusty,” Lowery said, “and to feel like it was a piece of metal that he pulled from the boat and had a blacksmith hammer into a barely usable form.”
Lastly, there was inspiration when crafting a montage towards the end of the film which shows Wendy’s adult life. To help Lowery come up with how that montage would look and feel, the filmmaker referenced the Coen Brothers’ “Raising Arizona.”
“As someone who is still in the process of growing up, it’s really helpful for me, on a therapeutic level, to see a character look at the future with a sense of wonder and anticipation,” Lowery explained.
So, if you put all of those influences and inspirations into a blender and run it through the mind of David Lowery, apparently you get “Peter Pan & Wendy,” which is available to stream on Disney+ now.
