Disclaimer: ALL PICTURES ('Alice in Wonderland' 2010 & 'Alice in Wonderland' 1951) PROPERTY OF DISNEY.
Directed by Tim Burton
Genre is Fantasy/Adventure
Duration is 1hr 48min
Written by H.E. Smale
This is a long one suck grab a cup of tea and buckle up!
For my latest hyperfixation, I jumped down the rabbit hole and revisited Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010).
Burton's adaptation, despite commercial success upon its release, has been highly criticized over the years, being deemed one of Burton's biggest flops in terms of his style and presence as a director, and the beginning of Disney's journey into massacring their classic films through live-action remakes.
But pushing aside Burton's connection to this film and its place in his catalogue of work, many have brought up points of how this adaptation completely misses the point of Lewis Carroll's original novel, and the ideas and themes it presents.
Not to mention criticism regarding the overall style and appearance of the film and its characters.
But where others see this film as a butchering of the original story, I see it as a unique idea born from the original, that not only gives us a new narrative but also a new version of Alice for young adults to relate to this time around as opposed to children.
So let's take a deep dive into Alice in Wonderland (2010).
Freedom of Choice VS Destiny
"If the whole point of the story is that she regains her strength and determination to decide her own fate, why does she fulfil the prophecy forced upon her and slay the Jabberwocky? It's contradictory."
Regarding this point, I can partially agree as it feels as though the actions contradict the intentions.
But as with Carroll's original novel, Alice is going through a change, and that change is no longer the transition from child to young teen, but from teen to adult.
In this sequel, Alice (played by Mia Wasikowska) is now nineteen and facing the situation of an arranged marriage to a man she finds unappealing, to say the least. She feels like she is being caged into life in a society she is an outsider to, with a lack of control and consultation regarding major life choices.
Upon re-entering Wonderland (or Underland, as it is called in this film), she comes to learn she is the one destined to slay the fearsome Jabberwocky, and in doing so restore power to the rightful ruler of Underland, The White Queen (played by Anne Hathaway), and put an end to the bloody and tyrannical reign of The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter)
In both worlds, she is being forced into a situation without her consultation, and being led around at the whim of everyone else. But I believe that the acceptance of one pathway (that being her decision to fulfil the prophecy and save Underland), which ultimately gives her the courage to stray from the other (the arranged proposal) is once again reinforcing Carroll's original themes of ageing and maturing, but in regards the next step of the journey.
A major theme in the original novel is "seeing life as a meaningless puzzle" which subverts our expectations, with many experiences having no clear-cut solutions, as is the way with life.
But while it is true that many events in life are out of our hands and appear at random, there also come pathways that are harder to stray from; choices that must be made and situations we can't escape. All that comes with maturing into adulthood.
From her first moments back in Underland it is made clear through exposition that she is the one destined to slay the beast, and it's reinforced multiple times throughout the film. So there is no doubt that she will eventually rise to the challenge. She can't escape it.
What the true journey is, however, is her regaining her "muchness" as The Hatter puts it, and finding her strength and drive - something that many of us face when we are entering that transition into being an adult.
We question who we are, what we want to do, and where we want to go. Life has become less random as our awareness and understanding have developed, and now we face the next challenge which is navigating our way through life, through the choices we do or do not make.
Through her hero's journey, she rediscovers who she is, and realises that being able to strive forward in the events she can't escape, gives her the power and courage to determine the ones she can.
The Curious Case of The Mad Hatter
A criticism focusing more on stylistic choice, many have voiced their opinion that Johnny Depp's portrayal of the classic Mad Hatter is, in this film, over-the-top, overshadowing, and inconsistent.
Despite being no more than another side character among many others in the original story, this sequel has brought the character to the forefront and loaded him with a PTSD-inducing backstory, and subsequent personality disorders that set him apart from the previous depictions of just being an eccentric Hatter.
It's been argued that too much focus was put on the hatter which took away from the development of Alice's character. And while I agree that more time should have been given to Alice, it can't be denied that The (Mad) Hatter has become one of the most famous characters from the original story.
People have gravitated towards this riddle-filled, eccentric tea drinker, and therefore I enjoyed the new direction with this character.
I think Depp's performance appears overshadowing next to Wasikowska's purely because overall her character throughout the film comes across as flat and one-dimensional.
She doesn't have much to do and is constantly being led around for most of the film, and the only things we learn about Alice that make her appear as an outsider to the rest of society are surface-level traits such as being against stockings and wondering what it would be like to fly, rather than paying attention to what's happening around her.
Ultimately, if Alice had been given more depth and more intricate scenes that served the same level of plot progression as the Hatter's, his performance would have felt less overpowering.
In terms of Depp's portrayal of the Hatter, a person's preferences are subjective. Some like his hatter, and some don't.
I enjoy watching this character, and the darker direction they took him in, giving him more depth, even if his backstory has been entirely contrived for the purposes of the film. It goes hand-in-hand with this darker vision of the classic story, and here we see a version of his madness that in many ways feels more based in reality as a result of his life experiences.
We see elements such as stained fingers and increased levels of excitability that were real symptoms that hatters in the nineteenth century experienced (along with other conditions such as psychosis and mercury poisoning) due to high mercury concentrations in their hat glue.
Additionally, the hatter's switching between a lispy English accent and a deep Scottish brogue has been described by Depp as "experiencing a kinder form of personality disorder" - a defence mechanism that kicks in when recalling traumatic events from his past or in a situation where he needs to be strong or brave.
Is it all too much? Maybe. But at the end of the day, this is a story set in a world where cats disappear, and a rabbit has a pocket watch.
Randomness Turned Conventional
Possibly one of the biggest criticisms regarding this film is how Burton has taken a story that famously has no coherent plot or objectives, and has butchered it by using the standard "hero's journey", cookie-cutter narrative to make it profitable for the masses, and removed the very aspect that has led to it being a classic.
The whole point of the original novel is that Alice is trying to navigate her way through the randomness and harshness of this strange adult world she finds herself in, with the story acting as a metaphor for the transitional period between child and teenager.
She has no control over her constant change in size and the discomfort it brings her. She is surrounded by unreasonable, eccentric, and at times condescending adults, and her ultimate quest to make it to the beautiful gardens is said to be an abstract symbolic representation of her desire to retain her childlike wonder and innocence as she matures.
All of these themes and ideas make sense as a piece of children's literature for children to grasp and relate to.
But Alice is no longer a child in this retelling.
As previously mentioned, during the transition into adulthood, life, while still random, becomes more purpose-driven with more consequences arising from the choices you make. And I think this film reflects that.
The original story and animated film work as entertainment for children (and adults) and are ultimately designed for children, as they are drawn in by the randomness and wonder that Wonderland brings.
But now I find myself the same age as this new rendition of Alice, and looking back at the original story with its episodic nature and lack of clear plot and structure, I find it more difficult to digest and relate to.
Part of this could be that Burton's version was the only version of this story I grew up with, not watching the Disney animation until I was eighteen, and only listening to an audio recording of Carroll's novel in recent weeks. So I didn't experience the original version as a child like many others did.
However, this didn't stop me from finding wonder in Burton's version and the eccentric characters portrayed in his Wonderland. It was a generic fantasy film that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I may not have been the age to relate to the character of Alice in the film, as opposed to the original story, but like her original self, I was drawn in by this fantastical world.
But ultimately I believe at this point in my life, I desire more concrete structures and objectives. And so now I find myself aligning more with Burton's Alice, and the journey of self-discovery she is on.
Overall I love this film.
It may have its flaws such as a poorly defined main character, and an overuse of CGI that many feel creates a detachment between the characters and the world they are navigating, but ultimately I believe it to be an engaging fantasy film.
Additionally, despite many calling it the start of the line in disappointing Disney remakes, I believe that this film tried to bring something new to a classic story that has been adapted multiple times over the decades.
It's not in the same boat as other remakes such as Lion King (2019), The Little Mermaid (2023), or Aladdin (2019) that I perceive as failing to do more than simply retell the same story we already know with a lack of charm that the originals brought.
Burton's Alice in Wonderland took a story we all knew with beloved characters and repurposed them into something new and fresh. Similar to how the Maleficent films took the story of Sleeping Beauty but from the perspective of the former villain.
Through all this, I feel the film has still retained the themes and ideas of Carroll's original story as a means to navigate transitional periods in life.
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