If you've gone to see the new Alice in Wonderland movie you know two things: one, Tim Burton can still pull off a stylized movie with plenty of fashionable flare, and two, Tim Burton also can't tell a good script from a bad script.
Well, maybe that last one isn't quite fair. Perhaps, I should say that Disney can no longer tell a good script from a bad script. Actually, its not that surprising though when you consider that the script was penned by Linda Woolverton, the same screenplay writer who wrote the scripts for both The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. Maybe its her that can't tell a good script from a bad script? Who knows!?
Lets talk about what went wrong shall we?
One issue is with how the story is told in general. In both the book and the 1951 version, Alice is the least highlighted character. With the exception of the beginning, you really don't notice Alice much. Instead, the focus is more on the experiences she has and the characters that she meets. The reason for this is not to ignore Alice, but to make you feel as if you ARE Alice. You see things much like she sees things. In life, you don't notice your self but you notice other people and other places that seem strange to you. This is what makes the movie and book's characters so memorable. This idea is completely thrown out the window in the new movie. It attempts to not only highlight the strange world and characters, but highlights Alice's life and feelings as well. The end result is that both feel washed over. You never feel that you've fully experienced Wonderland and Alice's story just feels awkward and forgotten until the end.
Pictured above: Tim Burton ignoring the main character
Another annoying this is how they butchered the characters. Let me tear apart a minor character for a second to better tell you what I mean. Take the door mouse. In the book, there is a goofy interaction between the March Hair, the Mad Hatter and the Door Mouse. The Door Mouse was simply a sleepy character that only moved when provoked and was happy to simply nap, even when being tossed around by the March Hair and the Mad Hatter. In the new movie, they erase the whole sleepy mouse thing and basically copy and paste a generic fantasy mouse instead. New Door Mouse (as I feel like calling it) is just like reepicheep, despereaux, and every other sword swinging mouse that has ever come along in fantasy. They just hollowed out the original character and filled the empty shell with a newer and much more boring personality. This way of doing this is awful and can be seen repeated over and over in both the characters and nonsensical plot.
This character especially sucks
Of course, not all of them are simply generic fantasy stand by types. Others are just plain stupid. Take the caterpillar for instance. Its been turned into an awkward sage who never makes any sense, yet everyone keeps coming to him for his confusing gibberish he calls advice. Or the Mad Hatter, aka Johnny Depp as a drunk irish skitzophreniac. Yea, it makes just about as much sense in the film as it does here. What were they thinking?
The Caterpillar: ugly and confusing
Ok, here's my last point before I stop bitching about all this. I want to talk about the queens. In the new movie, they have two queens, the Queen of Hearts and the White queen. This is stupid. Let me tell you why. In the original books by Lewis Carroll, there were three queens total. The Queen of Hearts, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Red and White queens from Through the Looking Glass. Through the Looking Glass was, in part, imagined by Carroll as a chess game where there were two queens, a white queen from the white pieces and a red queen from the red pieces. In the new movie, they simply smash two of the three queens together for no good reason. The queen of hearts is a monarch and the white queen is a plastic game piece. They just don't belong together. Its just silly to think about. Imagine Queen Elizabeth waging war against a checker piece. It's plain to me that the main people behind this had little to no interest in understanding the original pieces of literature and just threw this crap story together.
Who will win!?
I guess thats all I really have to say. I know I'm being nit picky, but really this movie won't be remembered or cherished the way the books or original Disney movie are and the reasons, for me at least, are as obvious as the Queen of Hearts new awkward, confusingly over sized head.
But the visuals looked nice at least.
