Alice in Wonderland. A story that is hauntingly strange, seemingly aimless, and yet so colourful it stays with you. It certainly stayed with me, because my father tried to read it to me in english when i was six and already struggling with 2 languages.
So I have a soft spot for this book. When I heard that Tim Burton was preparing an Alice, I was over the moon. This slightly morbid and crazy world totally fits in with Burton’s universe. The melancholy death of the Oyster Boy, anyone ?
And then I saw the first images. Spectacular. Smooth and yet victorian and dark enough. You could say that that Alice got first place on my list of the most expected movies of 2010. But … then I saw the trailer.
What ? It’s a sequel ? By Disney ?
We’ve seen that one before: a studio takes an honourable children’s classic, Peter Pan, and makes a Hook. Peter Pan is not a difficult story, and yet the movie managed to totally ignore the spirit of the original and turn into an american family entertainment movie. Was this really necessary ? Didn’t the original succeed at what it was doing ?
When they take a complex book like Alice, which can be read on about six different levels (i have a volume with lots of annotations to prove it), and write a sequel, I can’t help but fear the worst. It would have been a challenge to make a film sticking to the original (unlike the Disney cartoon), and writing a sequel adds another few level of difficulty. Lewis Caroll fanfic, in essence.
And with Disney, bless their mercantile little souls. I’m expecting good against evil, lots of 3D action, a few ‘awwwww’ moments, and all ends well. I don’t think I stand a high risk betting that they didn’t hire a writer team that can measure up to Charles Dodgson.
So I’m toning down my expectations – seriously. I’ll go and look at the pretty CGI, and hope for the best. Damn !
