Alice in Wonderland tells the story of a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a nonsensical world. In the most recent adaptation, directed by Tim Burton, a 19-year-old Alice returns to Wonderland (or as Burton calls it, Underland) and embarks on a quest filled with adventure, humor, violence, and terror. When the film hit the screens in 2010, critics claimed that it was untrue to the spirit of the original work, seeing it as more Disney than Carroll. However, while his storyline and stylistic elements cannot be found in the original tale, I believe Burton addresses many of the same themes as Carroll.
Today, many of our favorite novels have hit the big screen. The hardest thing however in doing this is that sometimes the novels change our images of what we had imagined or how we expected the adaptation to result. Those who say a book is a book and a movie is a movie, just don't seem to understand the conventions. I think personally I would much rather sit through a movie that got the story just right than sit through a movie that changes specific aspects and twists the original.
Another adaptation lies within the game Alice Madness and Alice Madness returns which in themselves present a twist to the original story. Alice McGee's Alice (or as she has been referred to in other re-tellings the Alice Through the Looking Glass; aka evil Alice), tells the story of young Alice Liddell and how she lost her family in a fire, blamed herself, and was sent to an insane asylum.
Then of course there is the historical viewpoint of the story where Alice is based off an actual person within the family Carroll had become friends with. He would take the children out on fishing trips and tell them the story of a girl who fell down a rabbit hole.Many biographers suppose that he was romantically or sexually attracted to her as a child, but no evidence has proven such. There are however, at least three direct links to Liddell in the two books: the stories are set on her birthday and half birthday, the stories are dedicated to Alice Pleasance Liddell, and the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass which spells out her name.
I don't know which story is true, nor do I have a favorite. I tend to like them all and I find it interesting how people try to twist them into something more positive. It's like people hate living in a world where reality exists and I can't fully understand that.
Great post! I have always loved Alice since encountering the original books as a child (though I'm not at all sure they were meant for children, ordinary children at least!). And I loved American McGee's Alice, which although it's darker and bloodier than the books is/was a very creative and devilishly enticing game.
ReplyDeleteBut I hated Tim Burton's Alice, a wretched, over-designed, over-hyped knockoff that was the final nail in the coffin for me for a filmmaker I once loved. His early films -- Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks, and Ed Wood, were all sheer genius, and the first of his two Batman films was brilliant as well. Alas, it's been all downhill from there ...