Movie Ticket: $7. Popcorn: $4. Freedom to Imagine: Priceless.
December 2, 2009In Lewis Carroll’s story, doesn’t Alice just seem like an inquisitive, cute little girl?
Disney twists this base a bit when Alice is played by a woman seeming unwilling to fall into the rabbit hole. Just the fact that she is played by a woman instead of a little girl takes away the naiveté that Carroll’s Alice needed to even faintly understand Wonderland. Carroll’s Alice really does begin as an innocent little girl with wonders, she makes the decision of jumping down the rabbit hole to chase the white rabbit. Some might this a childish instinct, but maybe its just the key to life, the key to freedom.
Everyone has got to jump down that rabbit hole sometime in their lives.
The story somehow persuades taking risks, ‘live a little’. In the new movie, your creativity is pretty much lost when they put the pictures in your head. Of course that is the point of watching a movie, but we all know the book is always better. I think Carroll wrote the book to allow children to express themselves, to make Wonderland whatever they want it to be. In the movie trailer, Wonderland seems to be a dark, creepy place; but in Carroll’s story the setting is never really described. It just is what you make it.
The new 2010 Alice movie isn’t out yet, but that gives us the freedom to theorize: How differently can the impact a story gives on people be with the same characters and situations, when you tell(or rather, show) them what to imagine?
There isn’t much freedom is there?
Christian Long
Katherine H.
Melissa H
Rivu D.
Alex E.
Sylvia A.
The movie seems to be Alice as an older individual. There are some distinct differences between the book and the movie. There are two Queens. The movie itself though really does a good job portraying the Mad Hatter and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum from what I have seen in the trailer. I believe that the movie took their artistic freedom, as all directors do with their movies, but I do agree with Rachel. It is not the same story. It is later in life.
I really appreciate your line: “Everyone has got to jump down that rabbit hole sometime in their lives.”
It is so true. Especially if you think about the dreams you have had in the past few days. We all go to a place of madness, but what we learn from it is up to us.
There is definitely not as much freedom when you watch a movie. When you watch a movie you only see what they want you to see. You never get to know what one side of a room may look like because it is just a set. Yet, you never really think about and often forget it is there. Whereas in a book you can imagine as far as you want. There are no limits. The New movie coming out completely sets up a new scene from what we already know. Alice is no longer an innocent little girl. In a way, the freedom that Alice possessed in Carroll’s story has been replaced. It really isn’t Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland if you do not have the real point of the story,a child growing and discovering the world around her. It might as well be a completely different movie.
What I don’t think you are realizing is that Alice is returning to Wonderland. She falls back down the rabbit hole many years later, yet cannot remember being there before. She meets all the same characters and goes to the same places. It is not necessarily the same story, though. The plot is entirely different, therefore Alice being older will not hinder the story. Since it is a new storyline the writer obviously thought that Alice being 19 years old was critical to the story. After all, the whole reason Alice runs away is because she is about to be proposed to in front of many snobby socialites.
I think that the reason for the book allowing for far more interpretation, more personal creativity, is that the movie is already an interpretation of the book. The story of Alice has gone through a lot of conversions. From the pure idea in Carroll’s brain to the paper is was written on, to a company who printed it. Then annotations were added, restricting our ideas, but giving us a lead. The movie simply gives too much of a lead, it restricts our thinking, due to it being an interpretation of the book itself.
So while the original tries to make you think, the movie tells you what happened and adds its own special effects, its own soundtrack to the events. The thing I am most appalled by is the use of a grown woman for the role of Alice. This, in my eyes, is a major limitation to the movie and its ideas. Yes, now they can add another layer of meaning that Carroll did not, but i doubt it will live up to the original.