Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” - Who’s Alice?
Last year, the rumors first started buzzing about Tim Burton’s 3-D adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which he would make for Disney. It’s part of a three-picture deal that will also include an adaptation of his 1984 short film, Frankenweenie.
In picking Tim Burton, the famously prudish Disney must be fully aware of the direction he will take the story. Alice in Wonderland is a story that, in our jaded times, has been found to be laden with innuendo. The video game American McGee’s Alice explores the darker side of Wonderland - and was also rumored for a film adaptation, although that seems to have been put on hold. In Lost Girls, writer Alan Moore explored the sexual undertones in three famous girl heroines: Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Wendy from Peter Pan, and, of course, Alice.
These days, it’s almost cliché to explore the darker world of fairy tales and children’s stories. People have been doing it since the ’60s, and it’s old now. Disney’s original Alice in Wonderland might have been benign, but many other interpretations are not. How far will Disney let Burton go? And how far do we really want him to?
It might actually be refreshing to see a “straight” telling of the story, without ascribing any darker meanings or motivations to the characters. The story is scary enough by itself.
Burton’s Alice will be filmed mostly in motion-capture, à la Beowulf, and some speculate that Alice will be one of the few live-action characters in the film. Rumored to play the part at various times have been people like Amanda Seyfried (Veronica Mars), Lindsay Lohan, and Evan Rachel Wood. Newcomer Ryan Nikole Parker (yes, she’s a girl) has recently been named.
It’s hard to imagine exactly how Tim Burton’s often-grisly visions will mesh with the innocent fantasy world that Lewis Carroll created. But whatever the final result, it should be interesting to watch - I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
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Lindsey Lohan as Alice! I love it! She’ll probably show up for work coked out of her mind and hung over so she’ll already be seeing a cheshire cat!
If I may quote Erik Wolpaw: “The problem with making a dark and disturbing version of Alice in Wonderland is that it’s pretty dark and disturbing to begin with, which gives it little training wheels that help cultural firebrands ride it into geniusdom once every eighteen months or so. Masterminding a trippy reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll is like making a version of Crazy Traxi, only crazy! At this point, about the edgiest thing you could do with Alice in Wonderland is try to make it a little less fucking insane.”