Topic: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

[Inkling]

Just got back from the midnight showing.  I said I'd make a thread for the movie, so here we are.

I'm not really sure what I think.  The characters were all very well done, I will say that.  I was surprised that the movie actually wasn't as trippy as I expected.  It was more linear, more of a normal story's plot, than I thought it would be.  Maybe Burton toned it down for a PG movie.  Then again, there were some rather dark and violent scenes for PG.  I'd like to hear comments from someone who isn't rambling at 2:30 in the morning.

My very spoilerish opinion of the last scene in the movie: Alice goes to China because that's where the opium is.

Bonus Round comments on the trailers:  In the lull between two previews I leaned over to my friends and said "Is it me, or has 'knockoff of Harry Potter' become its own genre?"  A random stranger in the next row up said "You're absolutely right."  We all had a hearty chuckle, but were just a little bit sad on the inside.

[Cobra]

In a bit of random you tube search I watched the Disney version (Occasionally you can get lucky and find all sorts of things before the PTB take them down). I never realized how little plot that story has. From what I hear this Tim Burton is an original story sort of like a sequel to Alice in Wonderland (Well a sequel that isn't through the looking glass).

[Snork]

Alice goes to China because that's where the opium is.

That was weird....But not un-expected tbh.

[Plank of Wood]

If this movie is alright then I won't feel as bad for not trying to stop Burton from remaking 1984.

[Krakow Sam]

http://entertainment.todaysbigthing.com/2010/03/04

[Plank of Wood]

I can't see him putting pumkins and spiders in 1984. They were both made unobjects after unperson #4562 used them in a tripleplusungood fasion.

[Inkling]

Now that Sam kind of mentions it, every human in Wonderland and most of the ones in the normal world had incredibly white skin.  Most of them were either members of the Queens' courts or well to do Victorians, but the point stands.

[Krakow Sam]

Well, I went into this film with low expectations and it exceeded them.
By being worse than I could ever have expected.

Utter.
Crap.

Yeah, yeah, it looked nice, but it was the usual lazy Burton stuff. The plot was laughable, which is more than I can say for the jokes. The whole good vs evil chosen one guff was totally out of place. The inclusion of a prophecy ruined any suspense or surprises. The characters were mostly wooden, with a few exceptions (I liked the Cheshire Cat) and the ones that weren't wooden were just hyper and full of ran-dumb humour. The Mad Hatter was just pure Johnny Depp ego-wanking, especially when he made his occasional totally unexplained and unecessary lapses into a Scottish accent.

The one part of the film I actually enjoyed was when Alice has a flashback to when she was younger, because it reminded me there was a film under this name which wasn't thoroughbred horse****.

EVERY THUMB DOWN!

[Inkling]

I'll restate what I said when we were talking about this in IRC.  Take some of the original and unique characters from Alice in Wonderland, shove them into a generic hero's coming of age story, slather it in Tim Burton aesthetics, and you have this movie.  I didn't dislike it as much as Sam did.  Most of the characters were done very well, unfortunately the story wasn't.  And yeah, Depp's Mad Hatter bounces back and forth from a lispy, frilly English accent to a caricature of a drunken Scottish rebel.  I'm sure it was supposed to make the Mad Hatter seem even madder, but it was just jarring.

Oh, and one of the last scenes really bothered me. The movie had stuck well enough to the time period for the whole movie, then at the end the Mad Hatter does a dance to some really out of place hip hop music.

[Krakow Sam]

Oh, and one of the last scenes really bothered me. The movie had stuck well enough to the time period for the whole movie, then at the end the Mad Hatter does a dance to some really out of place hip hop music.

Lets not forget a nineteen year old Victorian girl being made a guy's business partner because she can point at a map

[LadyM]

I got to see it in IMAX and I rather enjoyed it. It focused on a return by Alice to Wonderland so it wasn't based on the original. It was more about her journey of self discovery, about finding out what she wanted and didn't want in her life so at the end she was able to make decisions in regards to her life, to take control. Something most women (especially then) don't do.

The Mad Hatter was played very well, he went in and out of madness which could have been somewhat real if hatters really worked with mercury or other chemicals. There was the one moment that they he and Alice understood each other, they both wondered if they were mad. I also picked up that the Hatter was in love with Alice but would never say it. I wasn't the only one who thought that, several people in my group thought the same thing.

I would see it again.

[Krakow Sam]

I'm a little less worked up now I've had a nights sleep after seeing this film.

As far as I could see there really was no journey of self discovery for Alice. She started and ended the film as exactly the same person. If at the start she had been all timid and 'yes I'll wear my rib-disfiguring corset if it will make you happy mother' then maybe something could be said for character development. But she basically starts and ends the story as a sort of headstrong oddball.

A lot of reviews picked up on the fact that this is basically Narnia with an Alice in Wonderland paintjob. Its all so jarring and pointless when you consider the original book and most of the screen adaptations have never been about epic forces clashing. They were about a level headed and rather logical young observer having a series of encounters with characters and situations which used warped logic and were basically fun house mirror reflections of the 'real' world. Alice is never in any sort of danger in the previous stories, firstly because she plays the role of a sort of outsider who isn't involved directly in any of the weird goings on, and also because in previous adaptations it actually WAS a dream, not some implausible hole-based pocket universe.

I just think in the end the entire endeavor was pretty charmless and had a strong sense of design by committee. There were little if any subtle little nuggets of humour, no absurd and witty dialogue or surreal asides, and while the whole thing certainly looked nice, I think in the end it really lacked heart.

I think to sum it up, the film needed more of this:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSn2BLDwfQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSn2BLDwfQ</a>

and less of this:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWK1KLUaUfY" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWK1KLUaUfY</a>

[eropS]

I thought the movie version of the L****W was well done... I liked the Chronicles of Narnia and thought that the movie was a good adaptation. Haven't seen Prince Caspian, mainly because that and the Voyage of Dawn Treader were weak in comparison to The Final Battle and The Magicians Nephew.

[Inkling]

I don't think Sam is saying that the Narnia movie was bad, he's saying that an epic, if PG, battle doesn't belong in Alice in Wonderland.

[Krakow Sam]

Well, I wasn't a huge fan of the tL****W either but they did a good job with the source material and they stayed true to the principals of the book. It was an enjoyable enough watch.
Whereas all I could think of during Alice was either how bored I was or how nostalgic for the old cartoon version some of the jokes were making me.