'Alice in Wonderland 2' - Sequel to the Tim Burton Film

[BD3Dfan]

EricJ does have a point there.

While most will go to say it was Burton himself that goofed up on the AIW remake, many don't stop to consider someone else on the line. If I read in some sources correctly, Linda did have a somewhat self-righteous flair to the changes put in the story. It might be possible that Burton was working with what he had without realising 'Wait, something's not right here', followed the script without giving it a proper read-through or took what was written and executed it.

Sure, Burton may be polarising to some, but even a broken clock can be right twice a day. Sometimes, the problem can run deeper. Since Linda Woolverton's back on the writing team for the sequel, I'll do myself a favour and not see it. Sure, the wonderland in the 2010 film is rather lush, if not, a bit too much in the CGI department, but if the writing's not up to scratch, it just isn't worth seeing, no matter how much everything else is in it.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by BD3Dfan

EricJ does have a point there.
While most will go to say it was Burton himself that goofed up on the AIW remake, many don't stop to consider someone else on the line. If I read in some sources correctly, Linda did have a somewhat self-righteous flair to the changes put in the story. It might be possible that Burton was working with what he had without realising 'Wait, something's not right here', followed the script without giving it a proper read-through or took what was written and executed it.

Again, think Burton entered into the first movie not only willingly but droolingly--"Wow, it's Alice, so it's like really twisted and nightmarish, with mushrooms, 'n stuff! " Basically, the quick interpretation most of us had of the story in high school/college without ever having read it for the last ten or twelve years.
The movie started out as the Wes Craven videogame, Disney inherited it from Dimension and wanted to soften it down and mainstream it by turning it into "the live-action cartoon", so they brought in ol" "It's not a remake, it's a pop-culture homage!" Apes/Chocolate guy to make it look like Nightmare Before CHristmas.

Not to mention, given Tim's other, ahem.....themes (tactful pause to not actually say "ambiguously gay" ) that usually show up in his "adaptations"--Batman Returns leaps nimbly to mind--I don't exactly think it was Linda who came up with the last-minute no-particular-reason subplot of "The Queen wants everyone to stifle their free-spirited individuality and look just like HER! "
There's big-@$$ ol' whopping Linda trademarks (persecuted feminist heroes escaping annoying fiances to save the entire kingdom with one hand tied behind their back) and there's bigger-@$$ ol' whopping Tim trademarks.

[assydingo]

The flack this movie gets appears to be a result of it adapting the spirit of the book instead of the book itself.

Why are people unable to get past that? We have the animated Alice, plenty of live action versions, etc. How would this movie being less unique be to it's benefit?

I say this contrary to the fact I was worried when it was announced. Turning Alice into a seventeen year old? Why do that? What if she's not the same?

The movie was focused on that central question. Is she still Alice?

This is a nice nod to the book where Alice asks, "I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?"

Linda Woolverton does a fantastic job developing and answering that question. I love what she did with the character of Alice and how Mia Wasikowska portrayed her.

In terms of the sequel... hard to say much without an idea of the plot. I can say that I have faith in the writer so here's hoping.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by assydingo

The flack this movie gets appears to be a result of it adapting the spirit of the book instead of the book itself.

And that it wasn't even that!
Made-up faux-Dr. Seuss "jabberwocky" words? Battle kingdoms? Prophecies? Magic potions? Okay, we'll even give you that the toothy monsters might have been left over from Wes's videogame script.
(The RQ and WQ weren't "at war" in Looking Glass, chess was just simply a normal everyday occurrence, and the two socialized frequently. Need we add, the bossy Red Queen and decapitation-obsessed Queen of Hearts were NOT the same person....That's not just cluelessness taken to an annoying extreme, that's just nuts. )
How about the Mad Hatter "wondering" whether he's should get treatment? He doesn't "wonder" whether he's mad, he IS mad; everyone in Wonderland is!

Carroll's "spirit" of Wonderland was a cheeky frustration of logical Victorian thinking, with his poem parodies and silly twists of logic ("I don't know where I'm going!" "Then it doesn't matter which direction you go."), and in their own loose-with-the-text way, Disney's cartoon aced it the first time.
"Things that begin with an M" and "Muchness" weren't even meant to have Deep Philosophical Import, they were simply throwaway filler Carroll threw into the dialogue for a laugh--You can practically hear the Ed Wynn delivery on "Have you ever seen a Muchness?...Then how can you say something can be 'much of' one?" FTM, most people couldn't fathom Monty Python when it first came out, but more people have no trouble understanding the Dead Parrot sketch today.
I still subscribe to my "Linda made crap up with refrigerator magnets off of anything she couldn't get from the cartoon or remember what people show-off quoted" theory. It seems to answer most audience questions.

[JavaJulien]

I really did not like the first one. I'll probably watch it again to see if my opinion change since it's been over 2 years since I've seen it.

[assydingo]

Originally Posted by EricJ

And that it wasn't even that!
Made-up faux-Dr. Seuss "jabberwocky" words? Battle kingdoms? Prophecies? Magic potions? Okay, we'll even give you that the toothy monsters might have been left over from Wes's videogame script.
(The RQ and WQ weren't "at war" in Looking Glass, chess was just simply a normal everyday occurrence, and the two socialized frequently. Need we add, the bossy Red Queen and decapitation-obsessed Queen of Hearts were NOT the same person....That's not just cluelessness taken to an annoying extreme, that's just nuts. )
How about the Mad Hatter "wondering" whether he's should get treatment? He doesn't "wonder" whether he's mad, he IS mad; everyone in Wonderland is!

That's what I meant by it's not same story as the book. The details are different, sometimes extremely so.

Originally Posted by EricJ

Carroll's "spirit" of Wonderland was a cheeky frustration of logical Victorian thinking, with his poem parodies and silly twists of logic ("I don't know where I'm going!" "Then it doesn't matter which direction you go.") "Things that begin with an M" and "Muchness" weren't even meant to have Deep Philosophical Import, they were simply throwaway filler Carroll threw into the dialogue for a laugh. ("Have you ever seen a Muchness?...Then how can you say something can be 'much of' one?") FTM, most people couldn't fathom Monty Python when it first came out, but most people have no trouble understanding the Dead Parrot sketch today.
I still subscribe to my "Linda made crap up with refrigerator magnets off of anything she couldn't get from the cartoon or remember what people show-off quoted" theory. It seems to answer most audience questions.

I read The Annotated Alice four years ago. I remember finding all that stuff interesting. At it's heart it seemed to be frustration with normal thinking and restrictive imagination. I'd say this movie conveys that.

[The Mad Kiwi]

I enjoyed the film was for what it was even though it didn't meet my (admittedly high) expectations. I place the fault solely on Woolverton's screenplay. She doesn't get Carroll's tone and wit and instead tries to mold his universe to fit the classic fantasy archetype found in The Chronicles of Narnia (I like to call this film Alice in Narnia, actually). The production design, costume design, effects, cinematography, and score were all excellent. The performances were quite good considering the material they were working with. The actors try to imbue some madness into their straightly-written characters with varying degrees of success. It's really that pedestrian script that bogs things down.

Burton already had Woolverton do a re-write of her screenplay to make the Hatter more prominent and polish a few things (I've read her first draft, and a lot of it reads like fan fiction). I just wish he had her do another re-write to nail the tone. The problem with trying to pigeonhole Wonderland into a sensible fantasy world is that in fantasy, you have to have rules as to how this world works, an internal logic, as it were. The beauty of Wonderland is that there ARE no rules, so you're left with a dilemma. Either you stick to how Carroll presented this work and just make a crazy free-for-all, or you change the way things work so that they make sense. Woolverton only did a halfway job on the latter so that her Wonderland is neither the surreal dreamworld of Carroll's nor a fully-realized fantasy world ala Middle Earth or Narnia.

I'll admit, though, that I find it confusing people are acting like this was supposed to be an adaptation of the books. I guess it's because you'd think it would be given the title, but I knew for a long time before the film came out that this was supposed to be a sequel the way Spielberg's Hook was for Peter Pan (protagonist of the original returning to the fantasy world years later as an out-of-touch adult). And, honestly, we've had so many faithful Alice films over the years that we need a little shaking up. I think the ideal thing for this film would've been to retain Woolverton's story structure but make it Alice's first visit and therefore infuse more of Carroll's dialogue into it. At least then you have a picture with arc and structure while still retaining the book's spirit and wit. Plus, you don't have the confusing continuity issues when you try to look at this as a sequel to Wonderland and Looking Glass.

As for the sequel, I say no. The first one was an example of what happens when you hand a mediocre script to a good director (great presentation, so-so content). Burton won't come back for this as he's opposed to sequels. He only did Batman Returns because he wasn't satisfied with how the first came out. He was happy with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (hence no Great Glass Elevator sequel), and he's happy with Alice. I fear the sequel will be handed off to someone green who'll really let Woolverton run willy nilly and won't have much presentation pinache to elevate the material.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by The Mad Kiwi

The actors try to imbue some madness into their straightly-written characters with varying degrees of success. It's really that pedestrian script that bogs things down.

What's frustrating is that the ACTORS (apart for Burton's two quirk-obsessed alter egos, and Ms. Snotty who got too much of an idea that the movie was about her) had read the book and got it right:
Stephen Fry is the maddeningly cool Cheshire, Alan Rickman is snootily philosophical as the Caterpillar, and Matt Lucas's Britcom byplay of "Ain't nohow, contrarywise" as both Tweedles is as close to the rhythm of the book characters as I've ever heard anyone get it.
Which is why you feel sorry for them, and wonder whether it might been against SAG rules if the actors had just picked up the screenwriter, dumped her outside the studio gates and did the movie themselves.

Burton already had Woolverton do a re-write of her screenplay to make the Hatter more prominent and polish a few things (I've read her first draft, and a lot of it reads like fan fiction).

"The Dormouse doesn't get to do anything in the book, let's make her an empowered female character!" Yeah, that sounds like fangirl fiction.

The beauty of Wonderland is that there ARE no rules, so you're left with a dilemma. Either you stick to how Carroll presented this work and just make a crazy free-for-all, or you change the way things work so that they make sense. Woolverton only did a halfway job on the latter so that her Wonderland is neither the surreal dreamworld of Carroll's nor a fully-realized fantasy world ala Middle Earth or Narnia.

As have been demonstrated by at least a dozen bad versions, there are two distinct categories of ways to ruin Carroll: A) Not get the jokes, or B) write your own.
If A) you don't get the jokes, you recite the original dialogue straightforward with somber solemnity as some kind of inscrutable Shakespeare, take all the cheeky play out of Carroll's puns, and confuse and disturb every kid in the audience, or
B) If you try to make up your own without understanding the story either, you try to paste some kind of A->B narrative on it (which usually involves a "villain" or Alice learning a "lesson" or "saving the day"), or try to out-Carroll the author at his own game.
In this case...."Futterwacken"?? Linda, this isn't "The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That", you don't get to make up funnier words than the dead author does.

And, honestly, we've had so many faithful Alice films over the years that we need a little shaking up.

What, "We've had so many good versions, we need a bad version!"?
If anything, this one's "shaken" us back into reading the book and appreciating the two or three good versions.

Burton won't come back for this as he's opposed to sequels. He only did Batman Returns because he wasn't satisfied with how the first came out. He was happy with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (hence no Great Glass Elevator sequel), and he's happy with Alice. I fear the sequel will be handed off to someone green who'll really let Woolverton run willy nilly and won't have much presentation pinache to elevate the material.

I think Disney still has Tim on his Free E-Ride card (one hole has been punched for "Frankenweenie", and another for being taken off of "Maleficent", with one hole remaining), and they're not going to think about anyone else.
They'll certainly offer it to him--and the Tim of today is not the Tim who "didn't want" to do BR--in which case, Tim's first thought would be "They liked the dancing! ", and try to come up with an even bigger villain than the Queen.

One would be wise to also watch the fate of "Oz, the Great & Powerful", which Disney is already treating like an Alice sequel, and if it doesn't survive the contentious winds of March (like John Carter couldn't), anything can happen.

[assydingo]

Originally Posted by EricJ

They'll certainly offer it to him--and the Tim of today is not the Tim who "didn't want" to do BR--in which case, Tim's first thought would be "They liked the dancing! ", and try to come up with an even bigger villain than the Queen.

Futterwacken should be left out until the movie is over and then all the characters futterwacken during the credits. I can't wait to hear story details. I'm excited and a little anxious.

Even if we disagree a lot I enjoy reading your posts. It's nice to see someone so impassioned.