Steven Spielberg may have been disappointed with his work on his 1991 directorial effort Hook, but over time, audiences have come around to embracing the Peter Pan movie. After a chaotic production that saw filming going over-schedule, Hook debuted on December 11, 1991 to immense fanfare, but ended up being a box office disappointment. Though profitable by grossing $300.9 million on a $70 million budget, Hook made far less than expected. Critical reception was also far more mixed than usual for a movie helmed Steven Spielberg. However, the movie has developed a cult following over the years, giving Hook the happy ending it deserves.
The premise for Hook concerned a grown-up version of Peter Pan known as Peter Banning (Robin Williams), who's now a workaholic lawyer with two kids of his own. Banning has forgotten about ever being Peter Pan, but the turth comes roaring back into his life once his children are kidnapped by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). With the help of Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts), Banning returns to Neverland. Now he has only three days' time to regain his Peter Pan powers, a task that will require the help of the Lost Boys, who are now being led by Rufio (Dante Basco). Such an initiative will also require the nose-to-the-grindstone lawyer Peter Banning to remember the power of imagination.
Spielberg has expressed retrospective regret over how he executed Hook's story. However, audiences have come to feel quite differently about Hook — including the parts that inspire the most disappointment in Spielberg.
In the last decade, Steven Spielberg has made it no secret his thoughts on how Hook turned out. A 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Spielberg described how he felt comfortable with the opening scenes involving an adult Peter Pan in the real world, but then expressing discomfort with how he handled the direction of the Neverland sequences.
"...today...I would have probably done [Neverland] with live-action characters in a completely digital set. But we didn't have technology to do it then and my imagination only went as far as...[painting] trees blue and red." (via Entertainment Weekly)
Subsequent comments from Spielberg regarding Hook repeatedly follow a pattern of Spielberg expressing satisfaction with the down-to-Earth parts of Hook but disappointment regarding the Neverland scenes. Despite Spielberg's regrets over Hook, the last thirty years have seen a significant following spring up for the movie. Audiences, many of whom were able to grow up watching the feature repeatedly, tend to look far more fondly on the entire production — especially the Neverland segments. Whereas Spielberg sees only limited visual imagination in the Neverland portions of Hook, these sections of the story contain the elements that have allowed Hook to develop such a large following.
Among those elements are the performances of characters in Neverland. Dustin Hoffman's go-for-broke performance as Captain Hook, for example, has been hailed as entertaining even by Hook's detractors. Robin Williams' performance as the fully-restored Peter Pan has become similarly beloved. Most adored of all the Neverland residents, though, is the character of Rufio, whose popularity resulted in a short film prequel, Bangarang, in 2017. Meanwhile, several scenes involving Peter and The Lost Boys, including one where they engage in an imaginary dinner, have been widely cited as memorably entertaining. Clearly, there's a lot in the Neverland sequences of Hook that have managed to deeply resonate with audiences. While Spielberg may see this movie as a disappointment, audiences have managed to see the magic within Hook's unique vision of the Peter Pan mythos.