Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Mia Wasikowska.
Directed by Tim Burton.
Rating: 3/10
Tim Burton's approach to Alice in Wonderland is reflective of the approaches taken with the recent Chinese "Three Kingdoms" movies -- such as John Woo's Red Cliff -- in that the directors appear to be interested in telling a story that really has nothing to do with the material they are adapting. At least with Red Cliff, Woo did include some of the appealing aspects directly from the source material -- not necessarily tangible elements such as names and events, but thematic elements such as the planning of war strategies and the rivalry amongst great men. But Burton's Wonderland only plays lip service to Lewis Carroll's famous nonsensical children's books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
It is otherwise preoccupied with being a generic fantasy adventure, where someone from the normal world is dropped into a strange world, only to discover he or she has been prophesied to arrive and bring peace to a dark land by defeating an evil creature. Seriously, isn't this just a ripoff of The Chronicles of Narnia? 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska, destined for better things) finds herself surrounded by odd creatures and talking animals and learns she needs to contend with an evil queen. If there was such a thing as negative points for originality, this would take the lion's share.
And, of course, none of this has to do with Carroll's Alice books. The movie could be considered its own fantasy story with plenty of references to the books, from the characters it uses to its recall of certain events (it replays the scene of Alice's first arrival, with the tiny door and "Drink Me/Eat Me" puzzle). But in the very act of giving the characters of Wonderland (or, as they call it, "Underland" -- apparently Alice misnamed it as a kid) backgrounds and predictable movie-character personalities, the film misses the mark entirely. The Alice books have no plot and its characters are mostly tied to the particular story parts they belong to; they exist mainly to communicate the next confounding headstanding of common logic and conversational conventions. One of the ideas behind the books is that the rules with which we govern ourselves and our society are entirely arbitrary and completely open to interpretation. And at the very least, we are to find this amusing.
Understandably, Burton and screewriter Linda Woolverton were tasked with creating an accessible children's movie capable of making a lot of money while taking advantage of having a big star (Johnny Depp, whose Mad Hatter is ridiculously over-written). So naturally they would have to give their movie a plot and characters with actual motivations, neither of which exist in the books. But my primary and original complaint is this: if you decide to do this with Alice in Wonderland, what's the point? The Alice books gained fame for being totally unconventional, and you decide to make a totally conventional movie out of them? Why not just make your own story, with your own characters, which is essentially what you're doing in the first place? Making a movie out of Alice in Wonderland in this manner is like claiming a lot to build a Victorian house on, then actually building a regular house miles away.
To be fair, this will always be the dilemma when adapting Alice in Wonderland. We have been brought up to value story and to appreciate details in characters, events, and backgrounds (of even fictional realms). In a literary and cinematic world filled with fictional universes, Wonderland is one of the most famous, but it's also one of the least conforming because it doesn't lend itself to these traditional interpretations. It defies being made into a movie, yet filmmakers want to try again and again because the books are so famous and beloved and the characters are so intriguing (although, think about it -- they're intriguing because they don't act like normal characters at all). There are plenty of other worlds to explore and make crowdpleasing movies with fantastic visuals about. If you're going to make Alice, please try thinking way outside the box. Carroll might've appreciated that.
(Some last words: I actually do adore the original 1951 Disney animated Alice in Wonderland -- at least that movie was episodic and silly, which is as close in spirit to Carroll's books as any approachable musical animated movie could be. It had no plot and its characters annoyed Alice because they talked to themselves as much as they talked to her, which, on a surface level, pretty much encapsulates the books. Meanwhile, the best modern analogue of Alice is probably Spirited Away. As for the Burton movie, nitpicks: I hate the idea of consolidating the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts (the character is played by Helena Bonham Carter). They are not the same person, and, really, the movie only uses the traits of the Queen of Hearts, so why even bother calling her the "Red Queen"? Also, the monster is called the "Jabberwock," not the "Jabberwocky." There, I said it. I shall move on now -- or, if I'm lucky, wake up.) (added 6/7/2010)
