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Alice in Wonderland
A Tim Burton film
Plot (Spoiler Alert)Alice returns to Wonderland after ten years. She believes it to be a dream at first, but then discovers that it is all real. There is a prophesy that shows Alice bringing the Red Queen’s chaos to an end by killing her dragon, The Jabberwocky. 
Blaine: I wished that “Alice in Wonderland" was longer than an hour and forty eight minutes. It goes by so fast every time I watch it. But I do love the look of it with all the different colors and I love the characters and seeing them all come together. After seeing the sequel, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, I realized that the story in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” was better telling the story of Alice bringing peace to Wonderland by slaying the Jabberwocky and helping the White Queen regain the thrown. Like “AVATAR”, it was more about the look of the movie than the plot because 3D was starting to become very popular around that time. Tim said that the idea of doing “Alice” in 3D seemed like a good mixture of good material and medium and that it was just another tool to make it what it should be and draw you into that world. Wonderland is basically all green screen and it’s the only Tim Burton movie where almost everything is CG effects. “Alice in Wonderland" was a year and almost four months away after I first discovered it and during that time I got to know about the actors I didn’t know about before, like Mia Wasikowska, for one. I saw her in a few movies before “Alice” and they were small roles and then when I finally saw her performance as Alice, I was very impressed with how she made the character so mature, but also can be fun and physical. In the film, Alice has been told she has lost her muchness and I think of muchness as courage, a sense of adventure and excitement combined together. Alice is confused at first and doesn’t know what she wants out of life and I think she had hopes and dreams once, but through the film she finds herself again. Alice believes slaying a dragon is a task she can not fulfill, but then after realizing that everything around her is real, she knows she can not allow innocent lives to suffer, so she makes the right choice and feels anything is possible if you have faith. And after everything she has been through in Wonderland and returns home, she knows what is best for her. Her father was a traveler and she was close with him before he died. Alice herself has had an adventure with exploring Wonderland twice and she feels she should be an explorer. Alice isn’t like everyone else in her world, she’s different and is odd and she is ok with that. It never crossed Johnny Depp’s mind that he would one day be playing the Mad Hatter, but when Tim Burton calls, Johnny is always interested in what he is offering. Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter looks like a clown because his skin is white, he has orange hair, he has these pink lips and dark sunken eyes and then this colorful suit. The Mad Hatter’s voice sounds like a child at times and other times it’ll sound Scottish. Tim Burton imagines a lot of characters in his films with dark sunken eyes and that I like to think is his trademark. The Mad Hatter’s dark sunken eyes, pink and then it’s purple on the top of the right eye and blue on the left. The hairdo Johnny Depp said they based off of Carrot Top. Johnny Depp said that Alice and the Hatter complete one another like a brother and sister do. He’s very protective of her and she is very protective of him. Johnny has done so many sword fights as Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, so he had to find a different way how the Mad Hatter would fight with a sword. Johnny doesn’t know how to dance nor does he like it. He’ll do anything Tim Burton tells him to do, but when it came to the Futterwaacken dance the Mad Hatter does in the film, Johnny was nervous about doing it. Tim didn’t even know what the Futterwacken dance would look like, but then one of the executive producers of “Alice” recommended to Tim that he watch this dancer, David Elsewhere Bernal, on Youtube and see how he moves. And as he was watching it, Tim knew he was the right person and so they got in touch with David and after Tim met him, he realized that both Johnny and David are the same height. So Johnny didn’t have to the dance. Tim let David freestyle his dance moves because David was there to dance and Tim liked his moves. Helena Bonham Carter’s character is The Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts combined as one character with a big head. Seeing the Red Queen’s big head reminded me of Martin Short’s Mad Hatter in the 1999 TV movie version of “Alice in Wonderland” because his head was big too. I didn’t think the characters would mention her big head in the film because in Wonderland everything is topsy turvy. It took four hours to put the hair and makeup on Helena and transform her into the Red Queen. It was exhausting for Helena to shout a lot because that’s what her character does. But it was all worth it for Helena because she loved playing the character. Anne Hathaway had auditioned for Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” as the daughter of Sweeney Todd, but lost the part to someone else, but Tim did have Anne in mind for “Alice”. Anne Hathaway was happy to be a part of the project and getting to work with Tim Burton and when she found out the actors who she was going to be working with, she said she had died and gone to heaven. I was amazed that Anne Hathaway was going to be in the film working with a director like Tim Burton and being in an ensemble with actors like Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. And she looks like a completely different person seeing her as the White Queen because she is bright white and so beautiful like an angel. Tim had talked to Anne about the relationship between the White Queen and her sister, the Red Queen and Anne was asking herself in what way are they similar to each other, but then she realized that her character actually really likes the idea of violence, weapons and the dark side, but she is so scared of going to far into it because she saw her sister do that, so the White Queen made everything appear very light and happy. The White Queen moves around like she is floating and Anne did that by taking tiny steps and she moves her arms around like she is gliding. Tim Burton was also reunited with other actors he has worked with before like the late Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Paul Whitehouse, the late Michael Gough and the late Christopher Lee to provide voices for the CGI characters. I could hear the late Alan Rickman's voice saying “Who are you?” when I found out he was playing the Blue Caterpillar and thought he was a perfect choice to do the voice of that character because he has played characters that can be insulting. I feel the late Michael Gough could have had more dialog as the Dodo bird along with the late Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky because they both just had a few words to say and that was it. Tim has lived in England and has watched a lot of English tv shows that actors like Mat Lucas and Barbara Windsor have been in so it was his choice to have them in the film as well, as the Dormouse and the Tweedles. Even though “Alice in Wonderland” could have been longer, I still love Tim Burton’s vision of it and all the different types of colors he used and my rating on it is four and a half out of five stars. Music by Danny Elfman Blaine: Danny Elfman’s music score is beautiful to listen to. |