When that day comes, I shall futterwagon... vigorously.

[shadydave]

So, I saw Alice in Wonderland this weekend! It was pretty good, though as an adaptation it had some issues. The biggest problem is that while it LOOKED like a Alice in Wonderland/Tim Burton movie, it didn't FEEL like one. What it felt like was your typical Disney movie (which makes sense, as that's what the screenwriter usually writes). Now, as someone who has never read the books, and only vaguely remembers both the original Disney Alice in Wonderland (which I think this could work as a sequel to?) and the TV show with the mirror and Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee in hammer pants, even I can come up with the general premise:

WONDERLAND: ::weird as all get-out::
ALICE: WTF.

But somehow the movie didn't manage to convey this, which is really weird in itself, as that seems to be Tim Burton's stock-in-trade. It was most glaring in the character interactions, I think, which played much more like "I'm in your standard magical land, of course I'll have friendly magical and/or animal sidekicks!" as opposed to "GOOD GOD I JUST MET THE PERSONIFICATIONS OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS AND THEY'RE KINDA FREAKING ME OUT". Kirstin complained that they gave the Queen of Hearts regular human motivations and that was a mistake, which I think was the problem in a nutshell: their motivations are supposed to be either totally surreal or parodies of regular ones. (Regardless, I wish the White Queen had MORE of a personality; they kind of hinted at a fun contrast to her floaty flouncing with the cooking scene's gross ingredients, but mostly they just played the Good Queen thing straight.)

I liked the idea of the story (Alice, now grown up and being pressured into an awkward marriage, is brought back to fight the Jabberwock! And I'm psychic, apparently) but thought it could have been more fleshed out. Like, with the frame of her RL, it felt like it should be a bildungsroman, where Alice's adventures help her grow up and teach her valuable lessons about life, which is basically what the end said. However, that didn't actually seem to be a big part of the plot, and it's just sort of implied that this was the moral of the story all along. Also, I felt the story took a lot of shortcuts with the characters, because we should all know them already! Except, as mentioned above, they're not the regular interpretations, so we don't, really, and I felt kind of left out, MOVIE.

I did really like, though, that this movie basically boils down to being a fairytale where the heroine kills the monster and is not saddled with an inappropriate love interest. FTW.

As one would hope from an awesome cast, they did an awesome job (even if Johnny Depp's accent was all over the British Isles and, of course, Captain Jack). I particularly liked the actress who played Alice, Mia Wasikowska, who was both funny and made of win.

In conclusion:
- Why is a raven like a writing desk? Because Poe wrote on both!
- I am physically incapable of hearing "Oh Frabjous Day!" and NOT replying "Callooh! Callay!"

Comments

[libraflyter.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with your analysis. It felt like they knew all the beats to hit, but failed to hit them entirely (also, some of the plot points were random as hell, but not in an Alice in Wonderlandy way, like the Knave hitting on Alice or whatever the hell was up between Alice and the Hatter (who wasn't quite mad enough for me - Captain Jack Sparrow was waay madder. And his madness was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? WTF?)).

Anyone who doesn't think the answer to Oh Frabjous Day is Callooh! Callay! is wholly and totally wrong.

[shadydave.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know why everyone kept trying to ship themselves with Alice. That was also jarringly normal of them.

I just assumed the Mad Hatter was already mad, in a hilarious Wonderland kind of way, but then got PTSD, which is not so much fun. Ironically, I think Captain Jack would fit quite well in Wonderland.

[libraflyter.livejournal.com]

The shipping was like preemptively doing the pairings that the teenyboppers would wreak on ff.net anyway, and with roughly the same amount of skill.

Captain Jack (Sparrow) would fit in perfectly well, which was why I was so confuzzled by the Mad Hatter. Dude, I know you can be much madder.

[liberalnun.livejournal.com]

It was most glaring in the character interactions, I think, which played much more like "I'm in your standard magical land, of course I'll have friendly magical and/or animal sidekicks!" as opposed to "GOOD GOD I JUST MET THE PERSONIFICATIONS OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS AND THEY'RE KINDA FREAKING ME OUT".

Yeah, that's it. Alice didn't have friends or sidekicks in the books - Alice was freaked out by everyone all the time, and none of them understood her. They didn't get that surreal quality right - as you said, it looked surreal, but the characters weren't surreal.

[shadydave.livejournal.com]

I think it would have worked with Alice having sidekicks and friends if this time she had figured out WHAT was so weird about them -- like, they only talk in prime-numbers or whatever -- and she reciprocated, but instead they just made everyone more or less normal with some huge personality quirk. Which isn't the same thing as being fundamentally weird.