My Problem With Peter Pan

Actually, the title's a bit misleading.  I have no problem with Peter Pan.  I loved the book.  It's delightfully dark and imaginative and fun.  Peter Pan is much less lovable, and Captain Hook is far more formidable.  Tinkerbell was just a blip on Peter Pan's pixie spectrum.  He forgot her.  He forgot the kids.  He was quite sad, really.   

Then Disney got ahold of the story, and they kid-friendlied it right up, which is silly because it's a children's story to begin with.  Children could just handle darker, scarier things back in the day.  Maybe it's because they could still get polio.  I don't know.  

Anyway, Disney created a more palatable version for modern(ish) kids.  Maybe post-war kids were needing less scary and more fairy.  I apologize for that rhyme.  Sometimes I can't resist. Even in the Disney version, however, Tinkerbell was a naughty pixie, and pirates were clearly the enemy.  That's not my problem with Peter Pan, though.

My problem with Peter Pan in the hands of Disney is what they're doing with it now.  Why does Tinkerbell have her own franchise?  Did everyone forget that she's a manipulative, abusive, murderous, betraying pixie?  She tried to have Wendy killed.  She told Captain Hook where to find Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.  Sure, she saved him from the bomb, but that would never have happened if she had comported herself like a nice pixie in the first place.  She brought that bomb on herself.  

So when I see Tinkerbell, I feel as though she's more villain than hero, and her entire pixie franchise is everything that's wrong with kids today:  behave badly, get rewarded.  It's so true that the nice guy finishes last.  I mean, where are John and Michael?  Why don't the Darling children have their own spin off? 

As if rewarding a bad pixie with fame and fortune weren't enough, Disney decided to further plunder and taint the Neverland legacy with "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."  Wait.  What? Neverland pirates are bad.  They're the enemy.  Why do the kids want to be Neverland pirates?  The pirates lose in the end of the Disney version, and they go on killing in the real version.  Now, they've been reduced to cute little kids with a bumbling Captain Hook who occasionally helps them on their little adventures.  This is most troubling.  Kids need to respect the villain for what it is:  evil and scary.  

Oh, Disney, I know you need to make a few more bucks, but please, please don't continue rewarding the bad guys.  It seriously messes with my head.  Tinkerbell should be in prison, and Captain Hook should be dead, skewered at the end of Peter Pan's sword.  You know who could give me this scenario?  Tim Burton.