Why Steven Spielberg Walked Out Of A Test Screening For Hook

Steven Spielberg is the quintessential filmmaker of the late 20th century, but even he has a hard time watching his own stuff. At least, he did on two specific occasions, one of which was the test screening for his 1991 "Peter Pan" sequel "Hook," during which he felt as though the movie simply wasn't working and made a hasty exit 40 minutes in.

Spielberg has an interesting test screening history, having made one viewer run out of the theater to vomit during an early "Jaws" screening. Following that seminal 1975 thriller, the director went on to see continued success. However, contrary to what the casual viewer might think, that success was punctuated by multiple setbacks, such as when Spielberg's 1979 war comedy "1941" failed to impress critics despite making a decent enough $94 million at the box office on a $32 million budget. For someone like Spielberg, though, such a performance simply wasn't good enough, especially considering he'd basically invented the summer blockbuster with "Jaws" four years prior.

That wouldn't be the last hiccup in the filmmaker's long and esteemed career, either. Five years later, he delivered the Indiana Jones sequel "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," which he later reflected on as being far too dark for his own sensibility. The movie also seemed designed as some sort of refutation of his earlier work, which had been characterized by a nostalgic, childlike wonder. When he chose to embrace such a thing again with "Hook," it should have made one of the director's finest films. Alas, to this day, "Hook" ranks among Spielberg's lowest-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems the filmmaker had an inkling things were heading in that direction when he screened the movie for the first time.

Steven Spielberg has said he knows a movie is good when he forgets he directed it. In the case of "Hook," though, it's often felt as though Spielberg would rather forget he directed it altogether. Not only has he spoken about his dislike of certain scenes in the movie on multiple occasions, he actually walked out of a test screening.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 1993, Spielberg revealed that he'd left two sneak previews in his career, one of which was — unbelievably — 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It's hard to imagine directing a bonafide classic and feeling it wasn't good enough, but according to the filmmaker, he finds screenings "terrifying" in general. "I stand in the back, I pace," he explained. "Or sometimes I sit and become a member of the audience, and I just love them loving what they're watching. Other times, I sit there with flop sweat pouring out of my ears." It seems an early screening of "Hook" in Texas fell within the latter category. "I was upset by my sense that the film was not working on that audience in Texas," he recalled. "I gave it 40 minutes, then I got up and I went out to the car, and I fell asleep in the back seat of the limousine."

Despite the director's anxiety, the audience in that theater gave the movie a 96% approval rating. Unfortunately, Spielberg's fears were later proven right when the film finally hit theaters, as critics were about as impressed as they were when "1941" first arrived. Indeed, the LA Times' own Kenneth Turan wrote, "It has clearly gotten harder for this director to break free of the lure of material things and believe in simple magic."

"Hook" famously saw Robin Williams portray an older version of Peter Pan (or, as he's known in the movie, Peter Banning). Now a lawyer who has become obsessed with his work at the expense of his own innocence, Peter is forced to embrace his inner child when he's pulled back into Neverland after Dustin Hoffman's Captain Hook kidnaps his children. On paper, it seems like the Steven Spielberg movie; it's a film that celebrates the idea of childhood wonder, which had characterized so much of the director's best work up until that point in his career. Perhaps that's why audiences turned out for what was otherwise a critical disappointment. Even so, "Hook" made a decent enough profit at the box office, bringing in $300 million in theaters on a $70 million budget.

For the most part, however, it appeared Spielberg agreed with the critics. In fact, the director didn't have much faith in "Hook" even while he was filming it, so it's no wonder he walked out of the movie's test screening. Things haven't changed much in that regard in the years since the film's debut, either, with Spielberg telling Entertainment Weekly in 2011 that while he remained "proud" of the pre-Neverland scenes, he was "a little less proud of the Neverland sequences" due to the fact he was "uncomfortable with that highly stylized world." In fairness, as someone who very much remembers watching the movie as a kid, nobody was picking apart "Hook" in that way. Kids who grew up on the film just thought it was a fun time, and wasn't that really the point? "Hook" even inspired Jon M. Chu when he directed "Wicked," so there's that.