"Curiouser and curiouser!"
Where do I even begin with this horrendous excuse for an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll? Considering I LOVE the original book, watching this movie was really hard for me. If you want a better adaptation of the book, watch the 1951 Disney production. If you want a better movie, go watch the 1951 Disney production. Although I really hate this movie and what it did to Carroll's work, I'm going to do a review about it anyways, because this gives me an excuse to depart from my usual method. This time, I won't be doing my usual structure for adaptation reviews, but I will just be talking about the book first, and then the movie, pointing out stuff they changed or added. At the end, I will still do my bit of talking about both of them, and the summative thoughts.
The Novel
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written by British author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and published in 1865. One word to sum up this book would be "nonsense". The entire thing just makes no sense because it's not meant to. The world of Wonderland doesn't seem like it follows any rules, but the way the inhabitants think are weirdly logical; it's crazy logic, but it sort of makes sense. For example, the Mock Turtle at one point says that they called the old turtle teacher "tortoise" because "he taught us" (apparently in Carroll's dialect, both are pronounced like "to-toys). It's crazy and weird, but it kind of makes sense. At another point, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she has to go from here. The conversation goes as follows:
"Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough."
The way he thinks is clearly mad, but it's also not wrong. The logic makes sense in a really weird way.
And I think that's what's so attractive about Carroll's world. It's weird, crazy, and fun, but it also makes sense in a really crazy way. And it's really fun reading the book, finding yourself agreeing with what these characters are saying, and going, "Am I crazy too?" It's a wild ride to say the least.
The novel doesn't really have a plot. It's very much an account of Alice's strange wandering through Wonderland, encountering different and interesting figures. And while most novels have a coherent plot and an active protagonist to follow, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland doesn't have either of those. Alice just aimless walks through Wonderland and it really doesn't have any point to it. The book is called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but it's not structured as such. The book doesn't even have a character you could consider a "main villain"; and even though the Queen of Hearts often takes that role, she could not possibly be considered a villain, but more on that later.
There are also a large amount of songs/poems in this book. Carroll apparently wrote most of, if not all of these himself, and while some of them are pretty fun, I skipped them during my second reading cause poems are not my thing. One of my particular favourites though is from the "sequel", Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. It's a nice little poem called "The Walrus and the Carpenter", which starts off pretty nice and then takes a crazy dark turn towards the end, which is probably why I liked it. The poems are actually very well written, and I have to give Carroll props for writing them. I just don't enjoy poems enough to say they're brilliant or whatever.
Another thing that makes Carroll's book so unique are its characters. Alice for example is an interesting character because of how bland she is. She's written as a self-insert for the readers, and since the focus was always in the world, Carroll intentionally wrote her as being bland; I think this was a really clever choice because Alice never overshadows any other characters or any scene she's in. Sometimes she could be the most interesting one in the room, but her character (just like you, the reader) gets so immersed in the world of Wonderland, she begins act almost as mad as the inhabitants by the end, which was extremely amusing to read about. But to be frankly honest, it's very hard to pinpoint exactly what made Alice such an interesting character because there aren't much characteristics to pinpoint from. We know nothing about Alice and while she generally takes the straight, principled stance, she could also act just as strangely as the Wonderland inhabitants, something I found very interesting.
Another important thing I will note is the Queen of Hearts. She's usually portrayed as the "big bad" of the book, but apart from her being prominent in the end and being kind of intimidating, she never poses a massive threat to Alice. Her threatening to execute everyone is true, but in the book it's implied that no one ever dies because the King just pardons everyone while the Queen isn't looking. And since she's also a playing card, she just isn't a big threat to Alice. She's the "biggest threat" of the book compared to any other adversities the Alice comes across, but she never comes across much threats anyways.
Wonderland is just so inherently interesting. The world works on weird logic, the characters are so much fun, and the plotless structure that the book had really works to its advantage and fleshes out the world greatly. Even its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (which I also intend to review) is equally great, even though the sequel does have a plot. Carroll is just a good writer, and the wacky illustrations by Sir John Tenniel help even more.
Now that I've talked about the original novel why it was so good, let's now tackle the "adaptation".
The Film
Even before we start, I can already see a glaring issue with the movie just by looking at the poster. The movie's supposedly called "Alice in Wonderland", so you would think they want to bring the focus on our protagonist. But by looking at the poster above, you see that THEY HAVE THE MAD HATTER FRONT AND CENTER. I don't even understand the movie's fascination with trying to make the Hatter a big character; in the book, he's there for a chapter, is very entertaining, and comes back towards the end to be funny again. Johnny Depp's portrayal doesn't match the Hatter of the book at all, and it's kind of clear that he's supposed to be the main draw of the movie. And the Hatter's role in the movie is increased A LOT, mainly because of a big change that I think ruined the movie completely.
The movie is not an adaptation of the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's not even an adaptation of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. It's a weird sequel to the first book, even though the setting and the characters are nothing like they were in the book; but the movie claims that it's supposed to take place years after Alice's original visit to Wonderland, so I guess it's a weird sequel to it (but then again, Through the Looking-Glass book is barely a sequel to the original book anyways).
Weirdly enough, the entire plot of the movie is based on a throwaway poem (that's sort of pertinent to the story of the book) from Through the Looking-Glass called "The Jabberwocky". The poem is about a young warrior (presumably Alice), who kills a Jabberwocky (a big dragon-like creature). The poem is mentioned maybe two or three times in the book, so using it as the main plot of the movie makes little to no sense. And unfortunately, the biggest weakness of the movie is that it has a plot. A lot of the books' whimsy and attraction comes from its plotless structure that gives you the sense of exploring the world of Wonderland freely, and by having a plot, it takes away from that. The 1951 Disney production was so good BECAUSE it was also plotless; Alice just wandered around until she woke up, and it works really well. The movie trying to have a plot just ruins the whole point of wonderland.
Another issue is Alice, portrayed by Mia Wasikowska. Alice is actually just as bland as the book version of her. But the issue is, bland Alice doesn't work in the context of the film and because of that, she's not very likable. It's true that the novel Alice was supposed to be a bland stand-in for the reader. But the movie Alice is supposed to be a heroic knight character who is supposed to develop throughout the movie to become independent and do what she wants with her life. The problem is, Alice stays exactly the same level of bland the entire movie and acts like she's changed only right at the end. If they had shown a progression of character that warranted the line "Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast", I would have been fine; but they don't. Alice stays bland throughout the movie and there is not a single scene that shows her having that kind of character progression, which frustrated me.
Another thing I noticed was that Wonderland is just dark and gritty. They could've done something really WONDERFUL and turn Wonderland into an explosion of colours, which are now muted and dull. And the premise that the entire movie is about some revolution really annoys me because Tim Burton thought that Wonderland needed an action plot to make it interesting, when it just made it worse. Fantastical and nonsensical places like Wonderland should really only be told in the way that Carroll told it; by making the book about Alice wandering through the land, it lets you become immersed into the plot easily because there isn't a big plot distracting from the wonder of the land.
The movie's plot isn't bad (rather, it's really uncreative), and some of the acting's good, especially Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat and Sir Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky. But the problem is that it's just not Wonderland. It's kind of a boring movie overall. It doesn't work well as an action/fantasy movie, and I frankly don't have that much to say about it because I frankly don't want to remember it.
Personal Opinions
The Novel:
The novel is one of my all-time favourites. I still re-read the novel every few months, and it's always a lot of fun. I just spend a few hours reading it and its sequel, and it's just a lot of fun. By making his book plotless, Carroll really allowed the reader to focus on nothing BUT Wonderland, which I think is why the book is still popular to this day. It's just so easy to fall into the book and let the scenarios play out in your mind with the help of Sir John Tenniel's brilliant illustrations and Carroll's fun prose. Carroll actually makes a lot of jokes in the book, and I've laughed out loud a lot of times just because it was that funny. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is, in my opinion, one of the best books I've ever read. It has the ability to make me want to go back and read it over and over again, a quality that's hard to find in many books. I would highly recommend it to everyone.
The Film:
Don't bother with it. It's just a boring movie. The plot is pretty boring and uncreative, the acting is, although great for some actors, not that good either. It's not a fun movie to watch because nothing is interesting. I have not watched the sequel, and I never intend to. The sequel also looks equally boring, and once again based on a really obscure and insignificant concept from the novels. It fails as a movie and an adaptation.
Overall Assessment
The saddest thing about this movie is that it was made on a pretty good premise; it was an interesting idea to turn the movie into a pseudo-sequel to the events of the original story (even though the world is completely different), but they completely botched it. The things that made the world interesting are completely gone, and the charm of the novel and the unique "plotless" structure of the book are just completely killed by Burton's need to turn this into a fantasy action flick. It's not a good movie, nor a good adaptation. If you want to watch a GOOD Alice movie, go watch the 1951 Disney movie. It angers me so much that they took an amazing novel and somehow turned it into this horrible mess of a movie. I will eventually review Through the Looking-Glass since I also really liked that one, but I do not intend to review any other Wonderland movies made by Tim Burton.
For my next review, I'll be reviewing another "adaptation" that would consider "in-name-only", meaning that they took the very basic concept of the book and made a movie that barely resembles it in comparison. And for this one, I'm going to be talking about a book series that was a childhood classic to many. A series that brought Greek gods and monsters classing with the human world. A book series that is actually being made into a TV series. I think you've guessed what I'm talking about, and I'm going to be talking a LOT about what horrible job Chris Columbus did to the glorious works of Rick Riordan. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
