Go Ask “Alice”: Preview of Burton’s “Wonderland”

Yup, it’s a Tim Burton movie.

USA Today has some photos and neat interactive art from Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” As you can see from the above photo, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter looks a lot like Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love both Depp and Burton (although the later sometimes tests my patience). But I have a feeling that you’re looking for a faithful adaptation of the book, illuminated by Burton’s inimitable visual style, you might not be happy. First off we have the casting of Mia Wasikowska, a nineteen year old, as Alice. This isn’t some sixteen-year-old Judy Garland trying to pass as a twelve-year-old Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” (yes, Dorothy in the book was six). Rather, they’ve changed the plot to justify the casting of a young woman, which I guess was done so this wouldn’t get written off as a kids’ movie. Here’s how USA Today described it:

The traditional tale has been freshened with a blast of girl power, courtesy of writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Alice, 17, attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types. Off she runs, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited 10 years before yet doesn’t remember.

Among those who welcome her back is the Mad Hatter, a part tailor-made for Johnny Depp as he collaborates with Burton for the seventh time. “This character is off his rocker,” [producer Richard] Zanuck says.

The Mad Hatter is only one of many small characters in the book, but I guess we can expect that it’s pumped up here for Depp. As for the transformation of the Alice character, I don’t get the “blast of girl power” comment. If she was going to display any power, wouldn’t she boldly turn down the unwanted proposal rather than run away? You could argue that a Victorian young lady wouldn’t do something like that, but I think we’re pretty far off from adhering to Victorian mores here.

I’m not prematurely objecting to the story changes here, and some of the visuals described (the Red Queen’s “off with their heads!” cry is accented by a moat full of floating heads). I guess I just mourn the lost opportunity to do the book itself well (most other adaptations have been poor). Carroll (or Rev. Dodgson) had a lot of sympathy for children, and “Alice” was written as a gesture of understanding for children trying to understand an adult world of contradictory, peculiar rules that didn’t make sense to the sense of logic and fair play children have. I guess that doesn’t apply as much now, what with adults trying to remain children and kids trying to act like teenagers, but still it has value.

Anyway, again, I don’t want to trash this movie just on a paragraph in a short article. The best way to deal with it, I suppose, is just to go in regarding it as “Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland” (which is no doubt what the real title will be) rather than “Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.”