Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland certainly *looks* like it's going to be his trademark combination of surral goth gorgeousness--but one thing troubles me.
I've always read (or watched) Alice as a child's point of view of the world: it doesn't make any sense. Adults run around like crazy people worrying about being on time, they have funny dress-up parties just to sit around and have inane conversation that no one relates to, and kids have to live in this crazy place, sometimes feeling enormously important and big, sometimes feeling unbelievably small, and sometimes worrying about having their heads cut off for breaking an arbitrary rule they don't understand.
So what's my problem? The Alice trailer is all about the Mad Hatter--or, rather, about Johnny Depp.
Yes, everyone loves Johnny Depp. He's got the reputation of being a real-life Mad Hatter, especially when he is paired up with Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, who also is in this movie.
But the trailer is narrated by Johnny Depp. If we consider the trailer a little movie of its own, then the climax is when Depp's voiceover says, "...some say to survive it, you have to be as mad as a hatter. Which, luckily, I am."
It's not about YOU, Hatter! It's about Alice! It's about the little girl in the crazy nonsensical adult world! SHE should be narrating because it's HER story.
Sigh.
I don't want to take all the fun out of this movie, but it'll be sad to me if it's the Hatter's story instead of Alice's. That would just strip away the brilliance of the story, making this version pretty much just a fun acid trip with fancy costumes. Oh, and Johnny Depp, of course.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Trouble With 'Wonderland'
Saturday, July 25, 2009
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