Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- continued

It is the film Peter Pan that provides a concrete example for the ontological discussion of fictionality, based on such a design. Peter Pan is a 2003 American-British-Australian co-production directed by P. J. Hogan. This film was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the premiere of James M. Barrie’s stage play Peter Pan in 1904. Considering the relationship between the referent substance and the fictional work commonly referred to as Peter Pan, it is a fictional creation with a substance of particularly interesting characteristic.
　Other films that appear to be related to Peter Pan in this respect, include Hook (1991) and Finding Neverland (2004). Also, the film Labyrinth (1986) is a related work that retains a strong isotope equivalence that provides a very interesting example of reflection when viewed as a derivative work based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Although the film is an independent fictional world, it reveals various subtle existential phases in several relationships, such as the connection with the real world indicated by the original story and the situation depicted in it. When “fantasy,” which is understood under the definition of “the manifestation of events that are believed to be impossible in reality” becomes a film, the characteristics and factors of “impossibility” that is said unable to be manifested as a phenomenon and acknowledged “fictional” as a separate world that is distinct from reality, play an important function of the construction of peculiar creative principles in the construction of the world of each work, and reveal a new aspect of the possible world.
　The film Hook (1991, directed by Steven Spielberg) depicts a world that at first glance seems to be a sequel to the familiar Peter Pan story. After returning to the real world, Peter, who has grown up and forgotten everything about Neverland, receives a challenge letter from his mortal enemy, Captain Hook. However, this film cannot be said to be a sequel that depicts the situation after the passage of time as a fictional fact depicted in the original play Peter Pan. This is because the following dialogue is actually shown in the work.
These are the words of “Grandma” Wendy speaking to Peter’s children.

…that is the same window, and this is the same room where we made up stories about Peter and Neverland and scary old Captain Hook. And do you know, Mr. Barrie—well, Sir James—our neighbor, he loved our stories so much that he wrote them all down in a book.
Grandma Wendy in the movie Hook is the original Wendy, who conceived the story of Peter Pan. In other words, according to the movie Hook, the story of the well-known play Peter Pan is nothing more than a derivative work written by the playwright James Barrie, inspired by the story told by the girls. Therefore, the world of this film is a different kind of possible world with a larger expanse that includes both the story of Peter Pan and its author James M. Barrie. It also asserts the existence of real adventures that Wendy and her friends actually experienced, other than what is told in the story and written in the book, as a more solid fact. The film Hook certainly satisfies the conditions of “metafiction” as a fiction that is conscious of the framework of fiction, because of the inclusion of references to the fictional works Peter Pan or Peter and Wendy within its fictional reality. As a result, in this fictional world, Hook, Peter and Neverland are all transcendent beings of fictionality that surpass the limits of usual fiction and strongly retain more sound existentiality. This is the result of a skillful dramatic manipulation to blur the existence of the line that should strictly distinguish reality and fiction.
　Another Peter Pan related movie Finding Neverland, (2005, directed by Marc Forster) does not depict the world of Peter Pan but it describes the life of the playwright and novelist James Barrie, who wrote the story, and his intercourse with the the boys of the Davies family who were the models of the lost boys described in Peter Pan. The story about the author, who leads an unfortunate family life of discord with his wife, the boys who lead unfulfilled life after the death of their father, and their mother who has a mysterious charm that strongly captures the author’s heart, is known to be based in large part on facts. The film is a reconstruction of a “true story” from its own point of view, not an overt fantasy work like the novel Peter and Wendy or the movie Hook.
However, there is no doubt that the world of this work, presented as a film based on visual expression, is another fictional world of a different kind from these stories. The episodes depicted in the film themselves are only the lives of real people and the emotions shown by ordinary people, and it seems as if the “impossible situation” that is said to be the characteristic of fantasy is not introduced. However, the film reveals a unique fictional situation in the scene where Barrie performs the spectacularly successful Peter Pan in her house, in order to please the ailing Mrs. Davies. This is because the fusion of the world of the story of Peter Pan, which unfolds as a play-within-a-play, and the world of the characters of the movie Finding Neverland, which is being viewed as a fiction, is fulfilled in a visual expression. Let us rule out in advance any obstinate interpretation of such a scene as “a mental world reflected in Mrs. Davies’ imagination," which is fixed by the Ministry of Education. This is because, in a fictional world presented through visual expression, such as in a film, the “substantiality” of the scene should assert its existence in the audience’s mind in a more immediate way. If we accept the existence of fictional “facts” as they appear to the eye, without the stereotyped conceptual translation, it is possible to glimpse a wider and deeper world of “meta-reality” outside the constraints of reality. This is where the need to re-examine the meaning of the word “fiction” lies. The power of human consciousness as a "thinking reed" that transcends the limited senses and vision and contemplates in the mind the existence of another possible world that will never have anything to do with the real world, and the attributes of God as an eternal being and the universe as an infinite entity, will be able to demonstrate its potential more powerfully when it is free from the shackles of imposed ideas.