Jude Law is a curveball Captain Hook in David Lowery’s Peter Pan & Wendy

“Peter Pan fans slam trailer for ‘woke’ remake,” bellowed the New York Post. Surprised? Me neither. With Florida governor Ron DeSantis basing an entire presidential run on a culture war with corporate Disney, the new live-action adaptation was always likely to offend someone. But what other radical ruptures might lurk in the movie proper, beyond the now established presence of girls among the Lost Boys?

The film turns out to be neatly inclusive throughout, the story given lightly progressive tweaks from the 1953 animation, much tweaked itself from JM Barrie’s original. (Keep an eye on who betrays and rescues whom.) But more striking is how much hasn’t changed at all. The director is David Lowery, auteur behind the far-out likes of A Ghost Story and The Green Knight. His involvement hands Disney another noisy interest group: film snobs.

For them, mixed news. As per tradition, we begin with Peter (Alexander Molony) spiriting away Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson) and brothers from their London bedroom to rollicking adventure. (All the young stars have stage school poise.) But from the start, Lowery seems overawed: anxious not to disturb the Burbank grown-ups just downstairs.

The children’s flight over digital Victorian rooftops segues into a cosmic black limbo. It provides a bona fide woah! moment before a descent into a Neverland that looks, as many big-screen fantasy locations do, tax-efficient. (The exterior shoot took place in Newfoundland: an oddly spartan paradise.) Offshore, naturally, we find Captain Hook, played by Jude Law. And here Lowery does apply a twist. Militant in his childishness, Peter is just a hair from tyrannical. This Hook, meanwhile, is emotionally wounded as well as one-handed. Amid achy reflections on adulthood and codependency, gangplanks and swordfights have the flavour of chores.

Law is good, visibly resisting the thought that he might one day reprise his role in panto. And those mixed-sex Lost Boys are a highlight: a ragged gang with tree-bark telescopes. But even they feel subdued. Early in the production, Lowery spoke of the responsibility he felt working with such stately material. “Not something I take lightly,” he said. Even more than the unseen hand of Disney executives, that much is clear. The result is tasteful, artisanal, melancholy and doomed. Children everywhere will squint a little before asking if they can see The Super Mario Bros Movie again.

★★★☆☆

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