When his young children are abducted by his old nemesis Captain Hook, middle-aged lawyer Peter Banning returns to his magical origins as Peter Pan.

With 200,000 accumulated work hours, the film is only second to Return of the Jedi for the most time-intensive ILM production in the company’s first 15 years of business.

The film is notable for featuring the first-ever dimensional matte painting — where a traditional matte painting painted by Yusei Uesugi was mapped onto 3D geometry by Stefen Fangmeier, allowing for camera parallax and resulting in a truly spectacular shot of Pan flying towards the magical landscape of Neverland.

Tinkerbell’s fluttering wings were nine-inch plastic devices built by the ILM Model Shop and photographed separately. Go-Motion animation created their flapping effects.

Hook would go on to be nominated in the Best Visual Effects category at the 64th Academy Awards (Eric Brevig, Harley Jessup, Mark Sullivan and Michael Lantieri).

Director
Steven Spielberg
ILM Visual Effects Supervisor
Eric Brevig
ILM Animation Supervisor
Wes Takahashi
ILM Visual Effects Producer
Kimberly Nelson LoCascio
ILM Visual Effects Art Director
Harley Jessup