„I Still Don’t Like That Movie.” Steven Spielberg Wasn’t Convinced by The Script of The Film with Robin Williams, Which Earned $300 Million
Steven Spielberg was unsure about the film he made with Robin Williams in 1991. Nevertheless, the movie was a box office success. The director, however, even years later, cannot convince himself of his work.
Almost every artist has works in his career that he likes more or less, and Steven Spielberg is no exception in this regard. He, too, has films that he isn’t proud of and that he wishes he had done differently, and one such production is Hook, starring Robin Williams.
The new version of the Peter Pan story, in which the main character grew up and returned to Neverland to defeat Captain Hook, turned out to be not quite what the filmmaker would have wanted. 1991's Hook made its money, with a budget of $70 million it collected nearly $301 million in box-office, so the result was really good. Nevertheless, the production received poor reviews. It didn’t win the sympathy of reviewers – at Rotten Tomatoes we can find only 29% positive reviews from critics (the situation is better on the audience side).
Spielberg himself also recognizes the shortcomings of his own work, although he hopes that someday this will change and he will eventually like his own movie as much as the audience does. He told this story in 2012 during the Kermode & Mayo Film Review program.
I want to see Hook again. I still don’t like that movie. I’m hoping someday I’ll see it again and perhaps like some of it.
Six years later, he still wasn't convinced about his creation. As he confessed during an interview for Empire magazine, he wasn't sure about the film when he shot it, because he didn’t have confidence in the script and he didn't know what he was doing.
I felt like a fish out of water making Hook. I didn’t have confidence in the script. I had confidence in the first act, and I had confidence in the epilogue. I didn’t have confidence in the body of it. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, and I tried to paint over my insecurity with production value; the more insecure I felt about it, the bigger and more colourful the sets became.
So Hook remains a movie that Spielberg can't seem to convince himself to, although it appeals to many viewers, looking at how much money it has made and the good reception it has received from them.
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