So have you all seen Tim Burton’s
Alice in Wonderland?
Holy Harry Belafonte, I HATE this movie.
I really don’t know why I’m writing about Alice in Wonderland so long after it’s come out. By this point, most people already have their opinions formed about the movie, so I doubt I’m going to change anyone’s mind. I just barely saw it, though, and I feel motivated – nay, compelled – by the deep, abiding love I hold towards the original Lewis Carroll books to speak.
That, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a good angry rant about something. I think I might develop acid reflux. I don’t think I’ve ever been so delighted that I hated a movie, because now I just get to unload.
If you just watch the movie without actually LISTENING to any of the dialog, you may notice that it LOOKS a whole lot like what Alice in Wonderland should look like. And, make no mistake, the visuals are fantastic. Every character looks perfect. Yes, I know the Mad Hatter is just Johnny Depp in another bizarre and slightly effeminate costume, but I think it’s a good look for the CHARACTER, if you can forget about the actor. The Queens look brilliantly strange – and I actually think I like Anne Hathaway’s mincing princess look over Helena Bonham Carter’s bloated head effect (more on that later, though).
The problem, though, is that the film sounds like it’s embarrassed by its source material. The original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and its sister novel, Through the Looking Glass) aren’t so much structured narratives as they are a romp through the craziest nursery rhymes you’ve ever heard. Most of the famous sequences from the original novels are explicitly structured after nursery rhymes – like Tweedledum and Tweedledee or the Queen and Knave of Hearts. Even sequences that aren’t explicitly from nursery rhymes have a nursery-rhyme feel. Think of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare stuffing the Dormouse into a teapot, then think of Peter Pumpkin-Eater – see what I mean?
The minds behind the new Alice in Wonderland seem to think the movie should be more “mature,” not all caught up in this nursery rhyme nonsense. They even go so far as to change the name: Alice is now having adventures in Un-derland, not Won-derland. “Look,” they say subtly, “we changed the name so it’s DARK now. This isn’t your sissy kid’s book – this is DEEP.”
Actually, I think most of the problems with Alice in Wonderland can be summed up by just complaining about the NAMES of things. It seems a silly complaint, but I find it deeply symbolic (and, besides, when you’re talking about Alice in Wonderland, a little silliness SHOULD be right at home).
The movie gets the names of EVERYTHING all wrong, and there’s no greater evidence of that than the way the poem “Jabberwocky” is used in the plot. In the original novels, “Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem Alice finds in the Looking-Glass world – and that’s it. The genius of the poem is in the way the words IMPLY meaning without actually meaning anything. Take a look at this:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Half those words don’t actually mean anything, but they FEEL like they do. You can imagine what something “mimsy” would be like. Personally, I think of milkweed, but that’s just me. Even when Humpty Dumpty (if you’re playing the nursery rhyme drinking game, you can take a shot now) explains the meaning of the words, he REMAINS vague – a “tove” is “something like a badger, something like a Lizard, and something like a corkscrew.” The truth is, the meaning is completely irrelevant – it’s all about the delicious sounds and the images they create in your head.
The Burton flick, though, takes all these strange, wild words and ties them down to explicit meanings. I NEVER thought the Bandersnatch looked anything like that great shambling dog-muppet from the movie, nor did I imagine the Jubjub bird looking quite like that. The Jabberwocky… well, that looked all right, but there’s a pretty famous illustration of the beast that they’d probably be crucified if they strayed from.
But still, they got the NAME of the creature wrong (and yes, even I’ll acknowledge that this is a petty complaint). The POEM is called “Jabberwocky.” The MONSTER is called “Jabberwock.”
The “Frabjous Day” bit is the BIGGEST offender here, though. In the original poem, even though we don’t know what “frabjous” means, it’s obviously an exclamation of delight. “Frabjous day” is said in the same way someone would say “happy day.” It’s NOT some foretold future event. The Alice movie turns the poem into a prophecy about the “Frabjous Day,” which I found tragic. When you attach a definition to the poem, you weigh it down to the point where it can’t move anymore – and that’s a shame, because the poem used to dance.
The film ruins most of the original elements from the book by endowing the nonsense names with significance. Then, they continue to mess things up by trying to create nonsense names that have the same strength as Carroll’s originals. The problem, though, is that the words they come up with are just STUPID. They assign names to the juice Alice drinks to shrink and the cake she eats to grow – and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. These items lasted 150 years without names, and they sure didn’t need names now, especially not ones that sound like something a six-year-old came up with while trying to recreate the complete works of Robert Jordan – uninteresting and completely forgettable. Seriously, I don’t remember what they even called the darn things, so why include the names.
And the Hatter’s dance at the end of the movie… I think they called it “Funterwaggin” or something like that. The entire time, though, I thought of someone committing unspeakable atrocities with a Radio Flyer, which is NOT what the film intended, I’m sure.
Strangely enough, though, it’s the names that remain true to the original story that bug me the most – simply because they now feel out of place in the story. I mean, sure, they CALL that thing in the green hat the Mad Hatter, but he moves and acts a whole lot more like Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.
Let’s beat that comparison some more. Alice is Frodo, the Red Queen is Sauron, the White Queen is Galadriel, the Tweedle Twins are Legolas and Gimli, and the Dormouse is Reepicheep.
I know that last one’s from Chronicles of Narnia, but… screw you.
Speaking of Lord of the Rings, there seems to be some rule now that every big fantasy flick has to end with an epic battle. Now, I like a big fight as much as the next guy (actually, considering my favorite storytelling medium regularly involves men in spandex punching aliens who are shooting them with guns loaded with bears wielding chainsaws, I probably like a big fight MORE than the next guy). Battles, though, are more appropriate in works like Lord of the Rings and Narnia, when the whole story is told DURING A WAR.
Now, there is a bit of war imagery in Alice in Wonderland. Still, the biggest fight in BOTH books is over a broken rattle. That’s it. Lewis Carroll’s work didn’t NEED a big dumb fight because the story was more about the innocent explorations of a child, which often lead into nonsense. Get rid of the nonsense, and you have Alice talking to herself for two hours.
“We can’t have that,” say the producers, “so let’s have her be the prophesied warrior that delivers the land from darkness. Why not?”
I’ll tell you why not: because THAT’S NOT ALICE IN WONDERLAND. You take the nonsense away from Alice in Wonderland, and it turns into… The Once and Future King, apparently.
And, yeah, ALL the nonsense is gone. Every little bit of nonsense from the original source material is explained away, rationalized. The Cheshire Cat doesn’t just “disappear,” but he’s “good at evaporating” – which makes me think there’s a course at the local community college for that. The Hatter’s not mad “just because,” but he’s driven to madness by the Jabberwock’s attack (and, frankly, for a “Mad” Hatter, he seems pretty lucid most of the time). Even the Red Queen’s bulbous head is explained away as a birth defect.
I could go on (ask me sometime about the Knave of Hearts, I dare you), but I’m writing this late at night, and I have work in the morning. Let me sum up like this: Tim Burton’s adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings somehow showed up to my birthday party wearing a “My Name Is Alice in Wonderland” sticker. When it noticed the mistake, it chose instead to pretend it actually WAS Alice in Wonderland and pranced around, talking in a high squeaky voice, little noticing me shake my head and sigh, because I know the REAL Alice in Wonderland, and boy is she going to be embarrassed.
Oh, and it forgot to bring me a present. Shame on you, Lord of the Rings. Shame on you.
