Alice the rant
Ok didn't want to post this too soon. Wanted to give more people who were going to see it, the chance to do that first, but now --
Tim Burton is sooo not all that.
The movie has some pretty parts, but not enough. The 3-D seemed rather flat. The plot jars continually. The ending is deplorable.
The books were written for young children. The movie was made for people much much stupider than that. It was painful. There were 3 or 4 lines that were repeated to death through out. The sort of thing that turns up once in the book and then something more clever or interesting is said. Burton's March Hare does nothing but throw cups, again and again and again. WTF? The children of 140 years ago really were expected to be much more intelligent than the adults of today. It really makes me want to weep.
Wonderland(Underground) and Through the Looking Glass are two different places and they operate under different rules.
The world Underground may seem contrary, but it's definitely shifty. Alice keeps shifting sizes, questioning and being questioned about what she knows and who she is. Near the end she gets involved with a deck of cards and it ends by her declaring them to be just that. She names them, they lose their power, she wakes up. There is no real 'plot' at all. It's the tale of the experiences she has.
When she goes Through the Looking Glass she again encounters a place that questions many of her assumptions, but the feel is quite different. Much that happens there is specifically backwards, which was NOT the case underground. Also the entire story has a plot - it is a chess game. The book even has the notation for the game in question. Alice is a pawn who wants to get to the other side to become a Queen, she's not very concerned about checkmating the other king.
Burton (like apparently other movies do, but then there's a reason I've avoided the previous movies) conflates these worlds totally mingling characters from the books together. His world doesn't have any of the feel or logic of either of Carroll's. Here she is given the task to be the reluctant savior of the inhabitants by killing something because there's a 'prophecy' (Carroll would so have mocked that idea) and they're unexplainedly too lame to stick up for themselves directly until then.
That was not the White Queen. She has some ditziness, but not like that. Not at all. Burton's Queen was typical Burton, but nothing to do with any version of Alice. Someone like his character has no right at all to be a Queen. She was so pathetic it makes you like the Queen of Hearts (who is NOT the Red Queen, wrong book again and all. If it were a chess game she could not have beheaded her husband without instantly losing the game y'know. The book Q of H was a lot of furious noise, but I think they mostly could distract her till she forgot stuff.). At the end of the underground part the Q of H's crown flies onto the White Queen's head. Alice did not make it to Queen this time, because she wasn't in a chess game this time. This caused some remarks from other people in theater about management taking all the credit.
Who is the Jabberwock? In the book when Alice first comes Through the Looking Glass there is a poem in a book. It is backwards and she has to hold it to the mirror to read it. It is entitled 'Jabberwocky'. In the movie, the Mad Hatter deliberately misquotes it to her (shudder, that's like nails on the chalkboard to someone who memorized the real thing decades ago) In the poem, the ONLY appearance of the Jabberwocky in either book, the tale is told of how a BOY killed it. It's already dead when she first hears of it. It can not be some pet of the Queen of Hearts, she lives in a different world, besides it is already dead. It was a scary beast when it was alive, as are the jub-jub bird and the frumious bandersnatch. (the bandersnatch was probably the best thing about this horrible movie... that and the floral animation during the ending credits).
Speaking of grating Alice Kingsleigh? Really? Why? So they could make up any lame shit for the 'real world' part without being haunted by Alice Liddell's furious ghost? So if they are trying to tell her she gets to decide her own life, while insisting she do something she doesn't want to do, mainly because they've all gotten pathetic and stupid since she was last around... of course she comes back and says she doesn't want to marry Hamish, but she decides to be a promoter of imperialism and exploiter of China?
I thought - well this movie is supposed to be about what happens when an older Alice returns - okay that does give him a fair license to tell a different story. Foolishly I was completely unprepared for how horribly the worlds were butchered even so. It seems like there are many possible stories that could have been told that would have carried the stories on and added intelligently to them. Even if they did insist on combining story elements. This is not that.
Did you like anything? The part where she makes friends with the Bandersnatch and gets the sword. The way she interacted with the Q of H while she was in that Queen's castle. The graphics early on when she's just gotten into the wilds of Wonderland and is walking among mushrooms and the bugs are flying around. The end credit graphics were very lovely.
yah, that's about it.
I hope the Runaways movie is more fun.
Tim Burton is sooo not all that.
The movie has some pretty parts, but not enough. The 3-D seemed rather flat. The plot jars continually. The ending is deplorable.
The books were written for young children. The movie was made for people much much stupider than that. It was painful. There were 3 or 4 lines that were repeated to death through out. The sort of thing that turns up once in the book and then something more clever or interesting is said. Burton's March Hare does nothing but throw cups, again and again and again. WTF? The children of 140 years ago really were expected to be much more intelligent than the adults of today. It really makes me want to weep.
Wonderland(Underground) and Through the Looking Glass are two different places and they operate under different rules.
The world Underground may seem contrary, but it's definitely shifty. Alice keeps shifting sizes, questioning and being questioned about what she knows and who she is. Near the end she gets involved with a deck of cards and it ends by her declaring them to be just that. She names them, they lose their power, she wakes up. There is no real 'plot' at all. It's the tale of the experiences she has.
When she goes Through the Looking Glass she again encounters a place that questions many of her assumptions, but the feel is quite different. Much that happens there is specifically backwards, which was NOT the case underground. Also the entire story has a plot - it is a chess game. The book even has the notation for the game in question. Alice is a pawn who wants to get to the other side to become a Queen, she's not very concerned about checkmating the other king.
Burton (like apparently other movies do, but then there's a reason I've avoided the previous movies) conflates these worlds totally mingling characters from the books together. His world doesn't have any of the feel or logic of either of Carroll's. Here she is given the task to be the reluctant savior of the inhabitants by killing something because there's a 'prophecy' (Carroll would so have mocked that idea) and they're unexplainedly too lame to stick up for themselves directly until then.
That was not the White Queen. She has some ditziness, but not like that. Not at all. Burton's Queen was typical Burton, but nothing to do with any version of Alice. Someone like his character has no right at all to be a Queen. She was so pathetic it makes you like the Queen of Hearts (who is NOT the Red Queen, wrong book again and all. If it were a chess game she could not have beheaded her husband without instantly losing the game y'know. The book Q of H was a lot of furious noise, but I think they mostly could distract her till she forgot stuff.). At the end of the underground part the Q of H's crown flies onto the White Queen's head. Alice did not make it to Queen this time, because she wasn't in a chess game this time. This caused some remarks from other people in theater about management taking all the credit.
Who is the Jabberwock? In the book when Alice first comes Through the Looking Glass there is a poem in a book. It is backwards and she has to hold it to the mirror to read it. It is entitled 'Jabberwocky'. In the movie, the Mad Hatter deliberately misquotes it to her (shudder, that's like nails on the chalkboard to someone who memorized the real thing decades ago) In the poem, the ONLY appearance of the Jabberwocky in either book, the tale is told of how a BOY killed it. It's already dead when she first hears of it. It can not be some pet of the Queen of Hearts, she lives in a different world, besides it is already dead. It was a scary beast when it was alive, as are the jub-jub bird and the frumious bandersnatch. (the bandersnatch was probably the best thing about this horrible movie... that and the floral animation during the ending credits).
Speaking of grating Alice Kingsleigh? Really? Why? So they could make up any lame shit for the 'real world' part without being haunted by Alice Liddell's furious ghost? So if they are trying to tell her she gets to decide her own life, while insisting she do something she doesn't want to do, mainly because they've all gotten pathetic and stupid since she was last around... of course she comes back and says she doesn't want to marry Hamish, but she decides to be a promoter of imperialism and exploiter of China?
I thought - well this movie is supposed to be about what happens when an older Alice returns - okay that does give him a fair license to tell a different story. Foolishly I was completely unprepared for how horribly the worlds were butchered even so. It seems like there are many possible stories that could have been told that would have carried the stories on and added intelligently to them. Even if they did insist on combining story elements. This is not that.
Did you like anything? The part where she makes friends with the Bandersnatch and gets the sword. The way she interacted with the Q of H while she was in that Queen's castle. The graphics early on when she's just gotten into the wilds of Wonderland and is walking among mushrooms and the bugs are flying around. The end credit graphics were very lovely.
yah, that's about it.
I hope the Runaways movie is more fun.