Hook

Steven Spielberg has said plainly that he does not like his 1991 film, and his reasoning helps while watching. He has described trusting the first act and the epilogue but not the body of the script, and painting over that insecurity with production value: in his own words, the more insecure he felt, the bigger and more colourful the sets became. So it is no accident that the most lavish stretch, the middle section in Neverland, is the thinnest on the page. The scale bears him out: the shoot occupied nine sound stages at the Sony lot in Culver City, with the full size Jolly Roger and its pirate wharf on Stage 27, the Lost Boys playground on Stage 30 and Hook’s cabin on Stage 10. Hidden hydraulics were fitted to rock the ship, then abandoned because the movement trampled the dialogue, so the Jolly Roger scenes play out on a deck that never moves. Filming ran forty days past a seventy six day schedule. At the 64th Academy Awards it took five nominations and won none: Art Direction, Costume Design, Makeup, Music (Original Song) and Visual Effects. A good fit if you want a director’s own diagnosis playing out set by set. Not for viewers expecting the second hour to match the first.