Cloudy, with a Chance of Fun

This article from The Onion blew my way from some site or another and it made me think of Peter Pan.  Imagine that.

Scientists Theorize What Would Happen If They Touched A Cloud

The line that brought to mind Pan is: While Foote claimed that a person would likely attain instantaneous unconsciousness if laid horizontally atop a cumulus cloud, opposing scientists argued that a person would fall right through.

For me, it brought to mind Peter Pan and the Darlings atop the clouds.  But you know what?  That's another movie creation.  Disney it seems.  But not entirely.  There is a case to be made for the practice of alighting on clouds in Barrie.  ...see how we bump against clouds... says Wendy, and the Narrator informs us slightly afterward: but if they saw a cloud in front of them, the more they tried to avoid it, the more certainly did they bump into it. But that's all he says.

It's quite probable that a stage production featured the children resting atop clouds prior to Disney.  Though perusing through The Peter Pan Chronicles by Bruce K. Hanson (which is devoted to the stage and screen) turns up nothing in the picture-laden book.

Though the silent movie is filled with marvelous and many F/X, clouds don't factor in at all.

It's one of the additions to Peter Pan that I do enjoy.  And not just slightly tying in to Barrie's text.  Just in general, it fits well with the mythos.

Interacting with clouds had a wonderful twist in Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates.  Captain Hook is peering at Pan, the Lost Boys and the Darlings flying admist the fluffy white in the sky through a telescope.  He's appalled, and as I recall, says they are molesting clouds.  [Yes, he uses that word.]  Rather than looking at clouds and deciding what they look like, the kids are treating the clouds like clay and sculpting them to their whim.

In my own tales of Pan?  In Peter Pan's NeverWorld I have Amy skidding into a cloud.  In Peter Pan: Betwixt-and-Between a character brushes off a bit of cloud.  I also use clouds thematically.

It's just a fun concept, played out beautifully in Hogan's film of Pan.  Have a gander at a short couple of clips.

(P.S. - A commerical for the ThreeSixy Peter Pan aired while writing this post!)