Bangarang!

Over the Thanksgiving break, my son discovered the wonder that is Hook. I was so glad to introduce him to this movie because, being a slight Peter Pan fanatic, this has been a favorite movie of mine ever since I was it in the theater.

Now he likes to chant "Hook! Hook! Hook!" like the pirates do, and he also loves to sword fight; he gets to be Peter Pan and I have to be Captain Hook.

I love to watch this movie again and again because it's so layered with symbolism and allusions; everytime I watch it I can see something that I hadn't before, or I can interpret it in a new way.

It often sends me online to look up the cast list, or trivia about the film. I just watched a little clip of the 25 year reunion of the Lost Boys. My husband was doing this the other night when he came across a prequel to Hook: a short film that focuses on Rufio, and how he came to Neverland.

I have to confess that I have actually spent alot of time trying to figure out what time period Rufio is supposed to represent. I realized fairly quickly that all the Lost boys are dressed in fashions from different time periods. Thud Butt is dressed in a sailor-type outfit, which were popular in children's fashion from the turn of the 20th century through the 1940's. Don't Ask, with his plaid sportcoat and greased back DA hairstyle, seems to be from the 50's. If you look in the background of the scenes, you can see boys dressed in Civil War hats and other indicators that these boys have all been in Neverland for varying amounts of time. I always surmised that Rufio was a pretty new addition; with his spiky red hair, tight pants, and leather jacket, he reminds me of a street punk from the late 70's or early 80's.

There are some modern amenities visible in the film, like a flat screen computer monitor, but his friend has a high-top hairstyle and the mohawk was much more popular in the 80's than it would be now. So although it's not exactly 'set' in the 80's, it seems like a possible implication.

The film was partially funded with a Kickstarter campaign led by the one and only Rufio himself. Actor Dante Basco headed up the idea, and he also appears in the film as the school principal.

This is a really interesting idea because Hook is slipstream itself (prequels, sequels, alternate retellings, and modern updates are all considered slipstream) and now we have a slipstream of something that was already slipstream.