Will Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland be as bad as the Flintstones, or will he make it work with real live actors?
It was last November that I heard that Tim Burton was going to be working on a new version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – and this week it was announced that he has found his Alice, the Australian actress Mia Wasikowska.
Now, I am a huge fan of Tim Burton but I do think I will give this one a miss. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Alice books: I still reread them, from time to time – and I think the original, animated Disney film was quite good, especially for the time (if a little bit too sweet and too safe to my taste.)
That’s the problem though. I think that the animated movie is the best medium for the Alice in Wonderland saga, if you want to translate book to screen. It’s not just because the first movie version was an animation that I think so; it’s all those weird creatures, from hookah smoking caterpillar, to Mad Hatter, to the Red queen – and the long and short versions of Alice herself.
To use real life actors would make the story/movie, paradoxically, less real to me.
I know Tim Burton is very good at whatever he does; he’s very talented, very clever, and almost as imaginative as he is solid (as a film maker and story teller) but I fear that this one is not going to work.
I have these frightful visions that, however good everybody’s intentions will be, this may be a disaster along the lines of The Flintstones, or the Asterix movies. Okay, I’m sure that Tim Burton will give us something better than The Flintstones (a movie film critic Barry Norman warned his viewers not to see – his advice a simple, ‘Yabbadabbadon’t!’)
Still, I don’t want to see a vaguely okay Alice movie; I want a perfect Alice movie, because the original is as close to perfect as any story can ever hope to get. However, because the two Alice books are so strange, and so surreal, I truly do believe that the only way to do them justice is to go for an animated adaptation.
I would have loved for Burton to do just that. As I said in the beginning, the original Alice in Wonderland movie was quite good, but also a bit too saccharine and too cosy. With Tim Burton in the driving seat, that problem would have been solved, of course.
An ‘Alice in Wonderland’ with real live actors, even with all the computer-driven gimmickry possible: Not for me, I think.
So, what do you think: Could a non-animated Alice in Wonderland work – and maybe more generally: Do you think some stories can only be told in a certain format or do you think all stories can be adapted, and transformed, from one medium to any other?
(Original Tenniel book illustration)
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July 28th, 2008 at 14:44
Bit of crossed wires here, it’s not live action, is mocap. So think Beowulf and the like. Half animation sort of. And knowing Tim he’ll take a dark stab at it
July 28th, 2008 at 14:48
I think you don’t know enough about the project. Read up on American McGee’s Alice. This is not quite the original Alice, this is a much darker, adolescent character where Wonderland has become twisted.
July 28th, 2008 at 14:51
Ah, thanks Mac…
Much better! (Though a lot of people thought Beowulf didn’t quite work: a bit of a porridge effect - not much expression in movement, if I remember well; I didn’t see it yet myself.)
Anyway, so it might actually work - and if anyone can pull it off, it would be Burton, I think,
J.
July 28th, 2008 at 14:59
Thanks ix as well! (I was typing my first response while you posted yours.) I will go and look it up.
Believe me, I MUCH rather want this movie to be a huge success!
J.
July 29th, 2008 at 14:11
I was going to say the same thing as ix, but America McGee’s Alice is being developed by Wes Craven, NOT Tim Burton.
I have yet to see any Mo Cap movie since The Polar Express, which was the first to use the technology. But it’s a developing thing and improves every time it’s used. By the time Burton uses it I think it’ll be nearing the half dozen mark at least so shouldn’t look too zombie like.
July 29th, 2008 at 15:00
Right. That’s always how it goes - and I would trust Burton more than most to get it right when he starts to work with this technique,
J.
March 24th, 2009 at 20:21
Alice in Wonderland- A New Look
Jessica Rosario-Artist
jessicarosario.com
If you like the traditional Tim Burton or even Disney’s version of “Alice in Wonderland” you’ll love this Artist and her website! Jessica’s work makes you think about what it would be like to go down the rabbit hole and to encounter these eerie alien-like characters.
Her work is hypnotic, stare into the eyes of Jessica Rosario’s portraits long enough, and you’re bound to feel both completely mesmerized and completely spooked. Her subjects haunt the viewer from inside the image as if they were hiding some terrible secret.
She creates scenarios of isolation and distance that occur in an ambiguous time and space, with a focus on the interaction between characters and the suggestion of narrative. The artist executes her compositions using a combination of photography and digital manipulation. Props and vintage costumes are carefully selected, as are her subjects.
Remarkably captivating yet exceedingly eerie, and to think these are all self portraits!
March 24th, 2009 at 20:32
Thanks for visiting & commenting - and for the link to Jessica Rosario’s site,
J.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:27
The topic is quite trendy in the net at the moment. What do you pay attention to when choosing what to write about?
April 15th, 2009 at 12:56
Hello again. Well, I checked and I wrote this on July 28th, 2008, which is quite a while back. I didn’t know it was a trendy topic, to be honest (then or now.)
I do write a column each day and most of the time I pick something, based on an article I come upon in one of the many international newspapers I browse through, each day.
There are some topics that I am always interested in but as a general rule I will pick whatever catches my fancy - and since I have an odd sense of humor, that can be pretty much anything,
J.