The worst part about the White Queen mocking her sister's "facial deformity", is that in the sequel, you find out it's HER FAULT her sister has that deformity. Imagine being deformed for the rest of your life because your sister got you into a tragic accident, and then she spends the rest of her life talking shit about you for it and using it against you. No wonder the Red Queen wanted to take her down.
It's weird how the white queen was almost perfectly set up to be the hidden big bad. Even when i first saw her, something about her made it hard for me to fully trust her.
I think the worst thing about the red queen being villified for her big head is that in Through the looking glass, we find out that she wasnt even born with it. Her head swelled due to blunt force trauma. and because of that, of an accident where she got seriously injured, she lost her throne, and was ridiculed and ostracized by everyone around her. But yeah, she's just a villian >:(
@@spencerfrankclayton4348Lewis Carroll legit described the red queen as being "Formal and strict, but not unkindly. Pedantic to the 10th degree. The concentrated essence of all governesses" Hardly what *I'd* call a villain
@@DrCandyStriper TBF the movie Red Queen is heavily conflated/combined with the Queen of Hearts, as is incredibly common with Alice in Wonderland adaptations from what I've seen.
I used to say this about counter-cultures like scene/emo/etc.. It seems that it's a counter-culture to rebel against the 'norm', and yet, within that counter-culture there is a list of criteria you have to meet to be consider (X-style) enough to participate. Hold the aesthetics of going against society, but reinforcing the same system you rebel against. Probably why "Nightmare Before Christmas" was their Holy Grail of works ... Tim Burton's same brand. Sorry, not sorry. When I first watched that film to try to fit into the counter-culture scene .. I was incredibly underwhelmed and couldn't even pretend to like it. It is incredibly bland. The antagonist children are irritating, spooky boogie was not a missed opportunity, and Sally ... poor Sally. Everything in that film was a miss-step. I did enjoy the Corpse Bride for the piano, but it held the same "fitting into the status quo" narrative over-arching again. At least it was a little more vibrant and entertaining. Unfortunately, that film was never considered by any modicum of mainstream as noteworthy ... It completely bewilders me as to why it doesn't.
Mister Mangoat I was a very small child during the emo scene but did Nightmare Before Christmas even have the aesthetic of counter-culture?, it just seemed to just be cute macabre, typical Halloween stuff
@@jonnysac77 I'd argue yes. Simply because that description alone 'cute macabre' is definitely the Emo/Scene aesthetic. Not only that, but the love of stripes is also something found in the counter-culture. Plus, if you consider that it is very 'Addam's Family' in the attitude of 'everything nasty is good, and everything good is nasty', it's definitely a statement against the 'norm' and therefor a counter-culture. "Oooh normies hate bugs, so we, the crazy outcast emo/scene/goth/punk kids like bugs". Very counter-culture. :P
There’s even a book series where the adult butterfly-person version of him is one of the main love interests??? And he’s a bit of an arsehole as well. It’s a lot like twilight lmao
I think, the only time that would be okay, is if the point of the narrative is that the main character is a shitty person and you're supposed to hate them. But if that's not the case, then I agree with you.
@@dananyb9857 And even with that, I love some shitty characters because of the complexity of their characteristics. Not to say I forget what they did, but become obsessed with how they did it and how their mind functions. The fact he hated the character was just so weird to me as well, because Alice doesn’t really have a slate of a personality. She’s just a little girl 😭
Also, according to many people whose analysis I've read, he's kinda supposed to represent her dad... (especially with the "All the best people..." scene) Electra through the looking glass!
I wanna point out that the reason the caterpillar is continually warped into a wise, beloved leader is because the people responsible for that interpretation are, y'know, the exact sort of people the caterpillar originally represented. They read him in the original text as being _correct_ because they empathize with him over Alice.
When I first watched the movie, I was expecting the white queen to become the villain. The way she acted resembled the people Alice was protesting against in her world. It was strange how she was supposed to be seen as a good person, yet got away with mocking her sister. The red queen was made into the cruel nightmarish being that the world hated, even the people around her wanted her dead. To me, it didn't feel like the red queen was an actual character, but more of what society would stereotype as what would happen if a "misfit" were to be in charge. The movie felt like it was society trying to make it seem as if the problem would only come from the people that didn't fit properly in any acceptable category, and that they were evil because of that.
And in Tim Burton's 'Through The Looking Glass', we can further agree with what you say here as it turned out, the White Queen was really the "villain". Can't help but to feel really really sorry for "the bloody big head". So unfair!!
I think Anne Hathaway even talked about how the White Queen’s wardrobe was meant to show she has her own darkness in her. (Eg. Her nail polish and lipstick) Wish the actual story bothered to be that thoughtful.
Nurul Aisyah She was 6 when she lied. The red queen hit her head because she was upset. She grew bitter and angry as she was constantly teased by the mad hatter. But her resentment canine from herself. She hated her big head. Her jelousy of her sister replaced any love she had in her heart. The crown that was supposed to be hers was taken away because of HER OWN ACTIONS.
Why do u guys feel such an intense need to make the bad characters good? And she turned out to be not so horrible in the second movie, and ppl still criticized the shit out of it. Get over yourselves, man.
@@lemonadelemon1960 Exactly, they call a child a villain for lying to their mother and inadvertently causing her sister to have a deformed head. But all the actions outside of lying aren’t the White Queen’s fault. By that logic you should say their mother was also a villain by not believing the Red Queen.
You know who defended this crap??? Yes, even Bobsheaux can sometimes defend films that are not at all good. Like, the live-action Alice in Wonderland duology.
That really makes the White Queen’s actions in this movie and all the head shaming seem even WORSE! If everyone knows it was an accident, how dare they humiliate her so? That’s one of the things I disliked about the sequel.
Eh. There were artworks with most of the main characters front and center, that isn't so unusual. But yeah, making his part so large was rather heavily leaning on starpower of a friend. The plot focus is the big thing.
changing it to 'the red queen vs the white queen' instead of the queen of hearts vs alice draws a weird parallel to the Russian revolution that I don't know if they were going for or not
Further proof of your theory: they keep calling her the Red Queen instead of the Queen of Hearts. Those are two different characters from two different books. The Red Queen is a really helpful, if somewhat gruff, character. She's the one who helps Alice navigate the weird chess scape world of Through the Looking Glass. Whereas the White Queen... other than being a bumbling idiot, her main thing is jailing people for crimes they haven't committed yet. Including the Mad Hatter btw. Like.
Or make her a tragic villain, works too.Or have alice have declaring democracy. The white queen would have been a good other villain. Alice between both sides or just say fuck the system, neither of you will rule.democracy at the end.
"White Queen Feminism" really, *really* needs to become a part of our collective vocabulary; it fits perfectly as a nutshell-name of the aesthetics-only feminism we see so much of in media.
Honestly I am *so tired* of adaptations shipping Alice with the Mad Hatter, while retconning him into an actually helpful character. I get that he's the only character who everyone's heard of who's human, male, and not an obese twin, and therefore the only character who *can* be shipped with Alice by mainstream conventions, but... I don't *want* romance in my Alice in Wonderland adaptations. Romantic subplots are boring. I just want a romp through a zany nonsense world.
I feel like Alice shouldn't be old enough to have any kind of romantic relationship, anyway. The sense of childlike perception seems really integral to the essence of the story.
I don't get why people want to ship an old man with a teen anyway. If anything, I'd be fine if Alice had a passing smile with someone who's being kind to her, because that could mean anything, but anything more would be an unneeded addition to the original story.
Totally agree. It also kills the entire appeal of the character. Maybe it's just me, but the Mad Hatter I read was a raving lunatic, not a brooding YA protagonist.
Honestly, a story about a person who is seen as an outcast because of an abnormal appearance that spirals into mania and only allows people who understand her struggle benallowed in the upper class, only to find out all those people where faking it, and her sister whom she has always rivaled with who is seen as good turns out to be worse than her, is a far more compelling story than any film adaptation of Alice in wonderland
My theory about the caterpillar is that when people try to rewrite and adapt the caterpillar they identify too much with the original character and deem him "tough leader" instead of an uncaring asshole who just likes to lecture people on why he is right
@@aaljustaal1890 You didn't say everyone, but you were generalizing anyway. Or perhaps I was mad at another commenter who said the same as you but was more agressive.
Honestly, I was really disappointed that when the White Queen regained the crown, she didn't drop the facade of being a wacky but nice woman and instead is more terrifying and cold than the Red Queen ever was. I know twist villains are overdone now, but that to me would have been an interesting take on how Alice has been misled this whole time to believe the established order is the correct one. Alice could then free the Red Queen from her chains as they take on the White Queen together. And as another nod to the books, Alice would end up on the chessboard square that "kings" a pawn and gain the crown herself. All the other characters insist that Queen Alice remain to rule over Wonderland, but Alice tells them they don't need to be ruled by queens, they need to follow their own paths and make Wonderland a better place on their own.
thirteenfury or they could have made the white queen good in intentions but unable to rule because she is unable to apply pressure and is too childish and innocent in her decisions. This is much better then painting her as the „real“ villain and doesn’t undo her previous actions as a mere act
One of the only good things about the Cinema Sins video on it was him calling it out and adding 100 sins. He might not be the best formulaic TH-camr that lives solely on that one idea their channel is based on, but he had my respect for that.
Thats right because all the best people are mad only applies to me, a gorgeous teenage girl. I'm the best person and I'm mad society doesn't bend to shape my desires.
@@mystii8134 Oo yes, as someone experiencing mental illness I get so mad when perfectly normal and healthy people try to get 'interesting' points by claiming their outgoingness is some sort of quirky insanity. And they will shame you for every symptom of mental illness you've got but will pretend that they are united with you in mutual insanity sticking it up to the Man.
@@demo2823 Same! I'm slowly recovering from anxiety and depression, so it annoys me so much when people shame me for getting so worried about getting trouble or whatever I'm anxious about, but then they'll act like they totally understand. Like Alice doesn't seem to suffer from anything (As far as we can tell), all she really has is case of "I don't want to do my duty and help my family as a teenage protagonist in a period/fantasy story"
ghoast Yeah, the thing about Space Jam is that it's like one of those movies that's got a strong ' so bad it's good ' feel. Sure, the acting is awkward (( sometimes the scripting is oddly questionable at times **cough cough** _touch the ball_ **cough** ) but it's still so oddly entertaining and especially a good pick for nostalgia. Alice in wonderland was just an honest bore to me, there was no feel of any spirit to it. And usually I really enjoy watching Tim Burton's movies but this is one of the only few films I've seen that nearly put me to sleep. Probably would've also forgotten it had anything to do with the original Alice in wonderland if it weren't for the names of the characters.
Perhaps the blue caterpillar is consistently adapted as the wise mentor because the (usually male) directors see him as trying to educate a young girl on the ways of the world, like themselves, basically.
can't believe you didnt mention the red queens lover hitting on alice lmao that really was a weird as hell moment for no reason except his apparent tall women fetish
Wait, they made the Mad Hatter front and center on the movie poster? For a movie called *Alice* in Wonderland? Why, because he's played by Johnny Depp?
It was one of many movie posters at the time, iirc. Like they had one for the red queen, one for the Cheshire cat, one for Alice, etc., mostly a way to show how they were being represented in this adaptation, I guess? But I don't remember if there were any typical posters for the movie, and not just the individual character ones, though. I also am probably wrong here, so.
You know in the Alice in Wonderland inspired ya fantasy novel Splintered, the blue caterpillar is turned into a sexy guy with blue hair that is part of the main characters love triangle. So I mean, it could have been worse.
"He kisses her at last." Okay, I thought I was going nuts (joke not intended) whenever I watched this movie because it was clearly setting up some romantic tension between them. That's not to say that I _wanted_ them to hook up nor that they _should_ have, but that all the usual/traditional cinematic trappings were there and I was worried I was somehow imagining them for some strange reason.
And after all is said and done, the "empowering" ending scene in a movie that beats as over the head with the truncated moral of "the best people are a little insane"... culminates in a joke in which Alice calls out a sad lonely aunt by saying she is mad and needs help. ôÕ So the best people are a little crazy, unless they are old spinsters, in that case they are sick. That's messed up.
@@nekomissy595 I don't think Imogen's character is meant to be taken so literally, to the point of giving her an armchair diagnosis. She serves a purpose. I think it's summed up well here - muchnessandlight.typepad.com/muchness-and-light/2010/12/there-is-no-prince-aunt-imogene.html
@@nekomissy595 but Hatter's insanity is obviously mental illness, one that is completely untreated and is allowed to continue and exist. He is abusive, ready to leave Alice to die because she didn't agree to his whims, and acting out violently just before that iconic line in the same scene. His madness isn't just about sticking it to the system either, he is harmful to those around him unlike the old lady who only was harmful to herself.
@@nekomissy595 Alice in Wonderland was never about feminism, originally. Lewis Carroll was no feminist. Feminists like Alice in Wonderland, because it isn't a story about princesses, princes, etc. Its about "figuring things out" about the world and how it works, at its core. It should then appeal to more sensitive, somewhat socially withdrawn types, etc., such as myself. Unfortunately, it also appeals to certain sorts of women who want to turn it into something it was never meant to be...
It doesn't help that the Looking Glass film sequel had the whole forehead thing being White Queen's fault. So it makes White Queen's actions insensitive.
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@@nekomissy595, the White Queen is bad, and it's evident... But then what's the moral, in the first film, when Alice does exactly as she says and doesn't question her? The second movie may work to fix some of these plot points, but on its own it's very confusing.
@ I never saw Through the Looking Glass. Does the theme have more internal consistency than the first film (doesn't contradict its own message at the end)?
Honestly, the real kicker for me was to see Johnny Depp being portrayed on front of every promotional media for the film that is supposedly about Alice
@@spuilloh2637 He co-direcred Nightmare Before Christmas. The real creator behind it is Henry Selick, who was inspired by Burton's poem. TIM BURTON gets the credit as the one behind "Jack" The Pumpkin King but he did not work on that movie-he did write a poem & a drafted story.
You know what the funny thing is, though? Caving to external social pressure, while framing it as your own initiative through romantic overtures about freewill, is basically what the dominant ideology of today tells young people to do.
You made a point on how the red queen is selfconscious, so she makes her aristocratic underlings wear things to exaggerate their features. This is inaccurate. They wear things to exaggerate their features so that they can dupe the red queen into liking them. This is proven by the fact that she takes a liking to Alice (as Um) because she's so large and that she's upset when the hatter is laughing at the fakeness of her underlings when she's being duped by them. She becomes very angry that they tricked her.
I thought the White Queen would be evil after I saw that scene pre-fall of Hamish's mother dressed in white. The house, the people there, the roses, everything was white and it seemed like a direct connection to the White Queen
I know this is an older comment, but I noticed the same thing. It's not just the shots that are the same between the White Queen's court and Hamish's family. It's the color scheme as well. But, looking at Tim Burton's other work, I think it's just his artistic preference of depicting the dreary "normal" world as being colorless (Corpse Bride is probably the strongest example of this)
>feminist movie >crazy old spinster trope played as an unironic negative outcome pick a lane know what would have actually been powerful? Using the spinster character to show Alice that she doesn't have to fit into the status quo and be herself, even if it means being a bit of a social pariah
Romantic Outlaw honestly kinda shocked it didn’t end with her going up to her and like holding up her hand and like both of them dancing around or smth......like it would’ve been so easy Tim, come on Tim
Paris Debatable. You can be an overall feminist movie while still having hypocritical bits or flawed feminism. I think it's naive to say it either can or can't be, it's both, it has messages and themes of female empowerment and freedom and it also has negative connotations and stereotypes that restrict women to certain roles. Any feminist effort that's flawed or mediocre isn't automatically dismissed as Not True Feminism, or at least it shouldn't be; it only hurts the feminist movement that every single sect of feminists dismisses others and believes and upholds their feminism as The One True Feminism, instead of accepting that feminism is a complicated subject with many pitfalls it's hard to avoid and that every form of feminism is flawed in one way or another. No two women view feminism through the same lens and things that seemed feminist a decade or two ago are now seen as naive or outright problematic, but they still got us where we are now. It can't be an all or nothing situation.
@@KaiInMotion I think the issue is that even though they vocally espouse feminist ideas, the actions undermine then almost constantly. Which, in turn, makes the ideals espoused just look like they were thrown in to score points and aren't backed up by the movie's actions or character framing
I feel like if the grand finale twist was Alice dropping her weapons and befriending the dragon, showing that there isn’t a clear black-white way of thinking (either slay the dragon or don’t), it would have wrapped up nicely. The white and red queen could end up working together, letting it be known that it’s okay to continue a tradition, as long as you forge your own path. Alice could’ve united the rebellion and the red queen’s army, then when she goes back to the real world and chooses the “third” option, instead of marriage or staying home with mom, it would make a lot more sense. She ties her family tradition with her own path.
@@Shockguey Rian Johnson ending is 'fuck the past let it die'. This ending is instead 'Acknowledge the past, use it to build a better future that satisfies everyone, old or new'. I much prefer this one.
@@matthewbadger8685 'Acknowledge the past, specifically past failures, and use what you learn to build a better future' is EXACTLY what the message of the Last Jedi was. You did watch the movie right?
@Matthew; what I like the most is simply enjoying a movie, for it's creative ingenuity and originality, as well as well-played acting. The need to over-think every 'motivation' or scene - nope. Sometimes, it's just fun to enjoy the show.
Hot take: Tim Burton is the very definition of style over substance. He's on point when it comes to looks and art direction, but he leans completely on said art direction and can't craft a compelling narrative to save his life.
Not to mention that the Red Queen barely hesitates to invite Alice to her court and got her subjects to make her clothes (even if they had to use curtains). RQ might have made her subjects wear fake body parts, but she accepts those who get ridiculed based on their looks like her.
Actually, she doesn’t even make her subjects wear prosthetics, that part was a mistake Jack made, if you watch the movie it’s actually shown that the subjects chose to wear prosthetics to fool her into thinking they’re disabled/deformed like her, and into liking/sympathizing with them more. There’s even a scene where the Red Queen realizes they’ve been lying to her all along, and gets angry, and is put down more for it.
I could never put a pin on why the ending of this movie felt so wrong. She slayed the dragon, decided to be a "free girl," and went off to run her father's business instead of selling it- it hit all the "yay, happy end!" beats, but it felt OFF. You finally put it into words! The narrative parallels were inverted. Thank you!
I wanted her to befriend the jabberwocky. It would parallel her befriending the earlier monster. It would really show her going against what everyone said and finding her own solution to the problem. She could then make haymitch/his dad her business partner, but not through marriage like everyone wanted.
Let's see: Normal person who follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and goes an a strange adventure with a lot of wacky characters and goes up against a fat ruthless tyrant? Definitely Alice in Wonderland!
@@CJCroen1393 The Wizard of Oz movie (with Judy Garland vs. other versions) is also an Alice in Wonderland adaption. With more male character following the main female character around and having her do like a thing. (I.E. facing and killing witches) Did get a bit more absurd. (Kinda sad that the movies never got into the Tin Woodman being an ex-human who discarded his human body piece-by-piece that was eventually remade in a Frankstien-style monster and eventually stole his wife.)
That's genius. Her turning down the marriage only to take the reins of the family business is actually paralleled with her attempt to break the prophecy in wonderland. Her attempt to break from society actually results in her reinforcing it!!
@@nicola7021 the red queen's boy-toy who had been pretending to love her confronted alice in the hallway, holding her against the wall saying that he was attracted to big (or odd? i dont remember) women. he tried to force himself onto her by way of fear, basically.
@TheStarsLookSoNice 15 That wasn't really all that common. We know about those because they were photographed and famous, but most women wore corsets like women today wear bras. Yes a few were into tight-lacing, but only upper class women could afford to wear corsets that tight and then not all did.
TheStarsLookSoNice 15 There are actually a lot of videos and articles talking about how the stereotype of Victorian women suffering in corsets is almost completely false and made up by Hollywood for gags/“woke” feminism. I’m not going to try to explain it cause I honestly think I’d mess up the explanation. I think one of the best videos on the subject would be from the youtuber Bernaddette Banner “I grew up in a corset. Time to bust some myths.”
TheStarsLookSoNice 15 definitely not. Only the rich vain ladies tight laced. The working class even wore corsets. I’m sure in a hundred years or so, bras will be talked of the same way
Alternate ending: -Alice refuses to fight the dragon last-minute, instead realising that she had to get home - White queen absolutely goes off, secretly the bad guy - Alice and her friends defeat the white queen, realise the red queen is misunderstood - Alice gets back to the proposal and says no - Ends with her walking away from the party The End. You wouldn't even need to reshoot the whole thing.
Did anyone else feel like they tried to make Wonderland and these characters LOOK mad, but despite the visuals, they were just... not? They had a normal hierarchy and when you strip the characters down their eccentric clothing and one or two visual quirkiness, they were just bland characters who led a relatively normal life. They can be reasoned with logic and understand it. The same logic, customs and society rules that apply in the normal world apply to Wonderland. That while Wonderland is supposed to be this lawless place where everything is possible for everyone. I feel like Alice, as a lead and as a character, suffered the worst. She is supposed to be this dreamy girl that questions everything with a wide imagination, but here she convinces herself 3/4 of the movie that this can't be real and that she's not who they're looking for. She's horridly close-minded and let's herself be dragged from place to place with little to no change in expression. It's a soulless performance. The presence of Alice alone should be felt throughout Wonderland and be the gears puts turn the story in motion, but making her role part of a prophecy feels cheap. She feels like a side character that just happens to be dragged into saving everyone reluctantly, while the main cast fights for screen time. The only aged up Alice in Wonderland story I honestly really enjoy is Alice; Madness Returns. For reasons I could write an entire essay on, but I've ranted enough.
Heartless by Marissa Meyer is genuinely one of my favorite books, set in the universe but not the story of Alice. It made me cry and has excellent atmosphere: 10/10
Honestly, this Alice is so damn boring. She looks half dead through the whole movie. Idk if it's the actress or directing, but she sucks big time and there's 0 charisma to her.
this is an idea im still mulling over, and i really dont want this to come across as a defense of the movie (bc its pretty dull) but i kinda saw it, when i watched for a second time, as if the movie wanted to show the madness not in the lack of order, but in the hierarchical structure and absurd power the red queen has. the white queen never really seems like the best option though (shes just more subdued than the outright cruelty of red) but i guess she does seem like the lesser evil. and i saw alice, the more i thought of her, as kind of a kafkian "hero" -this powerless pawn that just wanders around following orders, never understanding the systems that rules them. this theory is completely destroyed by many counterpoints, most strongly that this is a disney movie and it doesnt want children to come out feeling they are powerless against an uncaring system (the whole prophecy thing is like a power fantasy, after all) but i do like to see, at least alice's portrayal, as such. a bit delusional maybe but hey, this movie isnt really inviting a lot of analysis in many other fronts. also i really recommend the czech jan svankmajer adaptation of alice in wonderland. its plenty creepy, gritty, handmade and while not thematically faithful it feels less corporate mandated than this movie.
Disney's relationship with this film is mostly rumors. Alice in Wonderland was a commercial and critical failure. Walt -- like Steven Spielberg says when his own films don't go over -- didn't blame the audience, he blamed the movie and said the character of Alice lacked heart. He was trying to figure out why it didn't work, settled on the fact there wasn't a compelling emotional journey for Alice, it was a string of sequences. The closest you get is Alice breaking down in the Tulgey Wood. Anyway, it was a bomb, and coming off the heels of Cinderella, a painful one, especially since so much creativity and work (and money) went into it. It wasn't re-released to theaters in Walt's lifetime not because he hated the thing, he just wasn't going to throw more money at it -- so he aired it on his TV show, Disneyland, instead of theatrical distribution. He did not dislike the movie, he analyzed it to find out why it didn't work at the time. I *might* be wrong on this, but I think Alice in Wonderland was the second (?) episode of Disneyland. Right after he passed away, in the wake of Duning's Yellow Submarine, Fantasia had a re-release and the 60's generation went nuts for it. Fantasia suddenly became a box office smash. The next thing closest to it in the catalog was Alice in Wonderland, so they re-released that theatrically also, with psychedelic poster art in style with the times, and it did well, and Disney re-released it yet again, and also re-issued The Three Caballeros, although in a truncated form. Loaning prints to universities before the age of home video was common practice for all the studios, Disney took note of the attention Alice and Caballeros were receiving, they both were given theatrical re-issue, and they made money (not a lot of money in the case of Caballeros). At the advent of home video, Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, The Three Caballeros, the Winnie-the-Pooh shorts collection, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and Fun and Fancy Free were made available for purchase, followed by Pinocchio. Alice in Wonderland has been a consistent home video staple for Disney ever since, and seems to do better and better with each passing generation. Walt would be proud. As for him "not liking the film", sure he wasn't totally satisfied with it, but he wasn't satisfied with anything he made, especially after the war. One of my favorite Stories is when he released Cinderella, a film that saved him from 4 million dollars in debt, and was the most acclaimed/successful since Dumbo, Walt has admitted several times that he thought Cinderella wasn't as good as Snow White. I like that story because not only is that shady as f-, but also it says a lot about Walt's character. He was self-deprecating, a perfectionist, and again, never satisfied with anything. He felt the same way about Peter Pan as he did with Alice, I don't know of any real evidence that he forbade anyone from mentioning Alice, I mean it had 2 theme park rides. I can't think of a single film he made that he was either completely satisfied with and/or he took really seriously. That has nothing really to do with the quality of the film and everything to do with Walt's Personality. Yes Alice did fail because it lacked heart, but that's not a bad thing. Alice in Wonderland isn't supposed to have heart (or not in the way that Snow White does; not to imply that I/anyone else think Alice is a COLD movie per-say, there is a difference). It' the fairy tale for those who like to use their brain, anything resembling heavy emotion would have been self defeating to the tone/aesthetic. Especially when you consider what they had to work with, and coming from a studio that has since become an image obsessed studio that cranks out the same thing every time, making Alice a film that could never be made today. This is one of the studio's greatest achievements.
With modern output's obsession over meeting the dreaded hero's formula, that's the first time anyone's ever said "couldn't be made today" that I can actually agree with.
I can name Barbie films that portray the message "little girls, go against the system/ be adventurous/ be yourself!" Or the entire motto of "be who you wanna be", better than this film. Three Musketeers stands out initially. It consistently amazes me when large budget, star studded films, with established crew, do a poorer job at storytelling than low budget (but still awesome) Barbie films, which have no right to be anything like as good as they are!
The sequel realises it was to harsh on the red queen but Alice through the looking glass is my favourite book and I can’t forgive them for basically chucking out that plot to focus on the mad hatters tea party time bs.
isnt the first film already a mix of the two books? because it featured a valley of black and red checkerboards and the white queen, and alice "advancing" to become more powerful. when i first heard of the presence of this sequal i first wondered why in the world is there a sequel when the first film has alredy merged it all
The Hatter really isn't a very important character, to be honest. It's all about the Cheshire Cat, Alice, and to a lesser extent, foes like the Red Queen and the Jabberwocky (in a physical, life-threatening sense). But Alice and the Cheshire Cat make Alice in Wonderland "work", the White Rabbit is just a plot device, really. Of course, it's all about how you treat the character of the Cheshire Cat... You can't be too obvious with him, and if you're too emotionally poker-faced behind the wide grin, etc., he'll just be a tease, unless something more notable happens story-arc wise with Cheshire (instead of just shooting the bull with Alice) and the attention will go to other characters... It would be interesting if there was a kind of magical/botanical, etc. "weirdness"/sickness in Wonderland that Alice and Cheshire tried to investigate. I'd be up for a movie like that. I've seen LOR, the Hobbit, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, etc. Dragons and swords are pretty familiar concepts to me... :-/
Yeah, this really does put it into words. Alice as a protagonist is so bland and unrelatable, the story plays out so strangely and wrong, I hate watching it because it literally makes me feel stressed and empty. It's genuinely not a good viewing experience. Strange a movie managed to do that without being outwardly depressing.
I think you mean “ Hercules, except it isn’t the story of Hercules whatsoever and has nothing to do with the original myth at all. Disney just took his name and slapped it onto another buff dude.”
"He kisses her at last"....... DUDE I thought the whole thing that the Hatter was her father that disappeared years ago and Wonderland was real. WTF EDIT; Can I just apologise for not responding to anyone's comments? Out of everything THIS is the one thing TH-cam doesn't notify me about. And thank you for the 700+ likes ! EDIT 2: For anyone wondering the original script mentions the kiss at 38:00 and thank you for the 1.5 thousand likes!
My greatest frustration with Alice's "not like other girls" characterization is that it places legitimate societal criticisms on the same level as "oh here's a weird thought I had". Rather than having her dislike of corsets and stockings be due to actual critiques of restrictive victorian clothing and the actual harmful effects of corsets, she dislikes them for...????? reasons???? and equates them with wearing a fish on your head because you were told to. Rather than any meaningful motivation, she's just kinda "weird" and "quirky" and ends up reinforcing some of the worst parts of the victorian era. Because, like you wonderfully pointed out, the system is framed as correct. This video was great in many ways, but as a lifelong Carrollian, (and as someone who's been working on a project on Alice adaptations)I really appreciated the way you discussed some of the background of the original work and the challenges in adapting it, as well as your clear knowledge of and/or research on the Alice books and their legacy. #teamredqueen
funny you'd say that about victorian corsetry, it was pretty much harmless actually. lots of gauze dress related deaths back then however, very inflammable stuff.
@@fionatastic0.070 yeah but here's the thing ; tightlacing wasn't a common practice at all, and in turn there wasn't a widespread movement forcing women to do so.
@@fionatastic0.070 Okay, I'm not going to say corsets weren't restrictive because they can be, but there's a serious stigma around them being dangerous that was literally made up by Victorian men and has stuck around ever since. Women were routinely mocked for tight lacing because it was viewed as an extreme and unhealthy fad even at the time. It was not all men forcing all women to tight lace, most men didn't have a clue about women's underwear. Most women didn't tight lace, and corset boning always gave way before your ribs did. Ask anyone who regularly wears a properly broken in corset, it doesn't hurt, you just can't slump comfortably. For working women, they were actually helpful as back braces for lifting heavy loads, but a lot of working women didn't wear them at all because they were expensive. Some modern women also use well fitted corsets in lieu of expensive medical braces, and a lot of people wear them because they feel empowering and they look good. I apologise for ranting, you just get a lot of corporate "girl power!" scenes in media that love to take shots at corsetry and it's really cheap to me, like you can't have a female character who's concerned with women's rights if she doesn't wake up every morning whinging about her underwear. Oftentimes they don't even bother going past "corset bad" to establish she's a progressive feminist or "not like other girls" in Alice's case. It's a horribly overused trope. As for Victorian clothing that really was terrible? Airy cage crinolines with layers of flammable petticoats as mentioned above were responsible for several deaths when ladies accidentally swished too close to an open flame, and the infamous lime green arsenic dye that they exuberantly used everywhere: the wallpaper, their clothes, even their food.
Ms Inkypunk thanks for the info! I didn’t know that tightlacing wasn’t nearly as common as I thought and that there were/are certain people who wear them as a sort of medical support
What I think is the weirdest about this movie is, that they have good and evil characters. The book was all about the confusing world of adults and society and everyone tries to manipulate Alice and cares only about themselves.
The entire first segment about the Mad Hatter was really interesting, but...is that... ...is that really an Otamatone cover of Pirates of the Carribean I hear in the background? Excellent choice of music, 11/10
That explains why the one time I watched this movie, the theme felt a bit inscrutable. Turns out it was because the theme was utterly incoherent. I am bad at subtext.
What makes this even worse is that one of the Red Queen’s most “villainous” traits is the classically DEADLY sin of daring to emasculate and undermine the Red King/Knave. And that it’s even implied at the end that his is OWED HIS OWN REVENGE FOR THIS INJUSTICE. Amazing. They could not have got it more wrong.
When you watch Alice Through the Looking Glass and realize that the Red Queen (Iracebeth) is only the way she is because of her sister.The whole thing is that the crumbs from the cookie are on Red Queen's (Iracebeth) side of the room. Why would Mirana (White Queen) eat them there unless she planned on blaming her sister. Even in that movie it seems that the White Queen (Mirana) got preferential treatment compared to the hot tempered Red Queen(Iracebeth). Their mother believed Mirana over Iracebeth and due to the fact that Iracebeth ran from the room I doubt that the favoritism was a one time thing. Later in the film when you see Iracebeth (Red Queen) getting crowned, the crown breaks because her head is too large and some people laughs. Iracebeth gave a warning "The next person who laughs will never laugh again" to which her mother actually raises her voice at her as if Iracebeth is in the wrong. Then a commoner (Mad Hatter) laughs again which makes everyone else in the room start laughing. How traumatic would that be and when she gets justifiably angry (let's face it in most real world kingdoms you would have been executed/severly punished for such a thing). He father actually yells at her and says that "I always hoped that you would show the necessary qualities to become the Queen you were born to be. I realize now that day will never come." Her own father basically gave up on her because she got angry that everyone laughed at her for something that was in no way her fault (her head). I was honestly rooting for the Red Queen in the first movie since the White Queen seemed so manipulative. Either the White Queen can really act, she is just an oblivious fool or maybe she felt so guilty for what she did to Iracebeth (Red Queen) that she just let her get the point of no return so that she could justify killing her to everyone without seeming like the "bad guy". Feel free to comment I love talking about this. If you have any more info or saw something that I missed be it for the Red Queen or the White Queen please don't hesitate to correct any inaccurate statements. Thank you to anyone that read.
yess absolutely agree and also i have been in similar situations to hers so i always come to pity her thought the whole movie and she was painted as the bad guy while she was only was reacting out of anger due to her feelings being seen as inferior or simply not cared about and her parents didn't even try to understand her as THEIR daughter it really saddens me and also what happened to the queen and the king they just seemed to disappear and what exactly happened to them makes me so curious
My main beef with this movie is that my favorite character, the White Knight (who is also Carroll's self-insert) is killed off in like the first 30 seconds. Which is kinda appropriate, considering what they do to his work afterwards.
Feminism according to this film: "Rebel by doing exactly what we need you to do!" Oh wait, is this a meta-commentary on how manufactured outrage (like the commoditization and marketing of punk aesthetic and punk culture) actually serves to embolden, strengthen, and cement the status quo that it supposedly hates even further?
"commoditization and marketing of punk aesthetic and punk culture actually serves to embolden, strengthen, and cement the status quo" this is a really good take. I imagine most real punks however will say that they aren't punks and will distance themselves from this, the punk aesthetic has changed I think, anything underground or subversive is punk.
I don't know if it upholds that exact message, but Fight Club likely intended to portray how rebellious institutions can become just as bad as what they hate the most. Here's where I learned about it. th-cam.com/video/Td88z08a_4c/w-d-xo.html
Burton tried to force the “Alice in Wonderland” plot into the the typical Hollywood “in a time of war, a hero will come…” trope…and that just wasn’t going to end well. Like putting cupcake icing on steak.
this co-opting of free-thinking ephemera to promote the status quo is present in most of tim burton's films. an example that comes to mind is edward scissorhands. he lives in his own little segregated weirdo house at the end of the film, allowed to be himself, but only in private where no "normal people" have to deal with him. i wonder, if ol' ed had been a woman, would his story have been more like alice's? would he have been expected to conform, rather than segregate?
You've explained why Burton films have always made me uncomfortable (aside from nightmare before Christmas, which I believe represents the issue of cultural appropriation properly) in one paragraph. I couldn't really put it into words.
@@xinamoira274 Of course, Nightmare kinda... also does this. At the end, the message is "don't try to do anything you're bad at, just keep doing what you know you're good at". I mean, yes, it's also a pretty solid cultural appropriation story, and I think it's a way more defensible status quo to champion than aristocratic misogyny, but it's still a story that promotes the status quo.
I’m a weirdo and I don’t want to be around other people anyway. Asking them to adapt to my weirdness would be asking too much. Like asking me to adapt to their normal ness.
@@xinamoira274 I think it’s different cause Tim didn’t have all that much to do with the movie and it was Caroline Thompson and Danny Elfman who wrote it. In Tim’s original poem, Jack didn’t even fix his mistakes when he messed up, Santa Claus did.
i remember being so confused as a kid when she decided to fight the dragon, it made no sense to where the story was going and even as a kid it confused me... but I still liked it lmao
I also wish the movie did go where he suggested near the end if the video. Alice becomes a protege for the Red Queen and realizes a lot is exaggerated or just made-up, and that hey maybe bullying someone for a physical deformity is a bit fucked up.
It confused me that I read the context of Jabberwocky and it's about a boy who hunted down a dragon when in the illustrations, it's actually a girl holding sword (or maybe it's just a boy with a long hair, I don't know). Crazy, but still
Here's what happening when you take a piece about children and more specifically woman and put it in the hands of an unaware detached man: everything becomes a hollow tale about acceptance with "take control, take the action, do your duty" action movie style
@@Bluarlequinnohonestly I think that Tim Burton wouldn't even get the point of the petit prince and commentary it makes about the world. Like it's very evident that this guy is reluctant to change the lens he sees things through, especially if it's a perspective of child or a woman.
14:30 Shocking how all the self-absorbed directors/producers of those versions that take themselves too serious and think they are making Alice in Wonderland "deeper than ever before" "for some reason" see the smarmy caterpillar who thinks it is smarter than anyone else and is so full of itself as being right in these assumptions? Oh, wait... it kind of makes sense, actually. lol
That might have something to do with the bit that really got up my nose, when (and I don't remember the details, because I saw this trash fire once, and that was more than enough) I think Alice refers to the place as Wonderland and someone else says, "Oh no, it's really called Underland!", i.e. "This isn't a silly kid's story! This is dark, man, and, and DEEP!"
The really sad thing is that the original books are actually already pretty deep. I mean half the characters are based on mats jokes and in Looking Glass the Tweedles are legitimate political satire. There's some real room for modernizing by just updating the political references and creating a disturbing dreamlike world based on the weird parts of the world today... and a bunch of weird maths jokes everyone will think are just about drugs.
I feel like the moral they intended was you can't avoid responsibility forever, eventually you have to stop running and make a decision, and that decision should be what you think is right, and in the end if you do, things will then work out for you BECAUSE you made your decision and did what you thought was right..... But no one really saw the deeper meaning and implications of what they were writing because the most they thought about it was "White Queen Pretty And Good, Red Queen Ugly And Bad, Alice Slays Dragon And Becomes Business-Woman! Girl PowerTMCR!".
See this is what I thought too when I first watched it but then I was surprised when all the critics hated this movie for the reason you mentioned. Yes, the Red Queen and White Queen are both caricatures who turn out to be exactly what they look like and that's... fine? Sometimes the people who look like assholes on the outside are assholes and sometimes people aren't 'too good to be true' type. The main focus of this movie, I felt, was to talk about facing your fears and taking a stance. Yes, the stances she took in her dream and in real life were contradictory so what? Point is she took it.
@@hittingyouoverthehead Mate "ugly" doesn't equal "bad person" and "pretty" doesn't equal "good person". The queens aren't "exactly what they look like" because good and evil don't have a look. Yes, pretty people can be good and non-conventionally attractive people can be assholes. However that's a super overplayed uninteresting shallow trope that pervaded media for most of history until very recently and is still a thing today, which has influenced how we treat non-conventionally attractive people in society. Also the whole thing was a fair bit shottily written and oversimplified despite certain convoluted story elements, and while I can't speak to the ideological consistency of Alice as I haven't watched the movie in quite a long time, it is an element that would be important to the moral, the story, and the viewer.
@@Lanoira13 I'm not talking about their physical appearance (alone). I'm talking specifically about this one thing that he talked about in the video- about how the Red Queen is actually the rebel and anti establishment that Alice is supposed to be and the White Queen is a representation of maintaining the status quo. Not all anti-establishmentarians are good. Sometimes the people who are fighting for change are indeed bad people.
@@Lanoira13 Another thing- maybe I'm the only one who felt this but I don't think this movie was about feminism necessarily. People seem to think any movie with a female protagonist has to be about feminism.
fun fact: the original text was kind of a commentary on the world of stigmatised mental illness. Caroll himself had an avid interest in psychology and studied it extensively. the tea party in fact was a sort of way for those set up in asylums to associate with the outside world and people even visited asylums kind of like alice did, except in a dream. dreams were also commonly associated with madness and from that lens, the story is a dream-the symbol of the mad world. (i may not be 100% correct though, just a late off-handed comment)
There’s this dumb YA novel I read some time ago that was like an edgy book about alices granddaughter or something. In that, the caterpillar was a hot guy that could shape shift into a moth and served as a leg of a dumb love triangle so take that as you will
@@meghan______669 I do believe you that with 13 this is probably pretty fun though. It's always jarring to find out how bad the stuff was we used to love. But that's why I really appreciate any show or movie that I liked then and still do now. They are kinda rare imo, but like, Avatar is a good example. I loved it with 12 and every time I rewatch it I am again impressed with how deep the characters really are. And now that I don't take cartoons being somewhat decent for granted I appreciate it even more.
omg this is an old comment but i read that book!!! i remember being kinda underwhelmed by it even at like 13; i can’t even remember how it ends. it was like edgy mc girl goes back and for the one time in any YA novel she chooses hot guy instead of friend guy maybe??? the only, and i mean THE ONLY good part is that there’s cellist representation. i think it’s somewhere in my bookshelf, so i’m... i was gonna say i would reread it, but it was such a trash book that i don’t really want to. if you remember the ending, please tell me, i’m curious yet lazy.
OMG I REMEMBER THAT BOOK a girl from middle school gave me the first 2 books all like " this is the best thing that you will ever read" I was cringing so much in the first book that I gave them back (its a 4 books series wtf)
Alice in Wonderland is a story of nonsensical and magical events because it is from the imagination of a child, and like a child, we stumble along with her from one unexplainable happening to the next much like a child does in real life. When you age Alice up from 9 to 19, you remove the logic behind the lack of logic and Alice needs to be on neuroleptics. Like, NOW.
Exactly! I would love a remake of the original animated film (or just, ya know, a film actually following the book) featuring an actual child because the story loses practically all of it's themes when Alice is aged up.
The way the story in the movie was rewritten had me wanting to unsee it. The way it ended, with Alice showing 0 character growth, but then going around and telling people how to live their life, just made me SO ANGRY.
My little cousin got nightmares and would run into his parents bedroom crying because he was afraid and would say "Johnny is gonna get me". At first I laughed but it was a problem that lasted for years. Poor little guy.
thinBillyBoy lmao I have a Mad Hatter poster in my room from when I was younger. One time my aunt came to stay for the weekend and slept in my room, the next morning she woke up screaming because Johnny Depp was looking at her. Good times
The lesson that I'm getting from Walt Disney not liking Alice in Wonderland, coupled with Ralph Bahkshi having trouble making Lord of the Rings, is "Don't adapt your favorite book unless you want to disappoint yourself."
All of Tim Burton's movies seem to be about being an outsider that eventually becomes accepted by the status quo and then the outsider becomes homogenized and an intricate part of the status quo and oftentimes celebrate the established order instead of changing it. Edward Scissorhands was not about questioning the cultural wasteland of the suburbs and consumerism, it was a celebration of it. Nightmare Before Christmas' main message for me was to know your place and to not deviate from the expectations others place on you. There are other examples I could go into to illustrate that Tim Burton's films are all about wanting to conform and not challenge anything about the world but it gets very repetitive and almost all of his films say the same thing in the same way. His films are dull and uninspired. He also seems to really be "weird" about the female characters in his films. Beetlejuice is an example of a film of his with some pretty questionable messages about women. Dark Shadows, Sleepy Hollow... etc....
Yeah, it’s very much the “i cant be Xist, I have X friends!!” of movies. “I’m not against rebellious behavior and changing the status quo! I love Time Burton movies!”
I see Nightmare Before Christmas as “Loving something isn’t the same as understanding it” what with Jack clearly being into Christmas but lacking a fundamental understanding of what it’s even about. Sally is also the only one who understands there’s a part of him that craves wholesomeness, and is equally non conforming, but also realizes his eagerness to celebrate the holiday doesn’t translate to responsibility, which leads to things going wrong.
As a fan of the original soap opera, Dark Shadows is so disappointing, especially since it's a series that needs a good adaptation with it being unwatchable to most people in its original format and while the female characters weren't bad it was still the 60s. At least Mrs. Stoddard was good?
As a child, I actually preferred Tim Burton's film over the animated version. Not saying that I was necessarily right, in fact, tiny me was an idiot. I just didn't like how structureless the original movie was. There was no plot, no grounded cast, just lost with an average character in a nonsense world. It made me bored, uncomfortable, anxious, and oddly lonely? Did anyone else have even a similar opinion as a child?
I don't exactly remember my opinion of the movie when I was little, but I do think I felt the same way. IIRC then it made me feel either really bored or really uneasy.
Lonely definitely. No friends, only scary strangers. I think most kids want to connect with others, but the characters in Wonderland are just there to be observed. For me, it was a scary film in the sense that Alice was lost, confused, and everyone around her only wanted to ridicule/shame her for her ignorance while only confusing her more. When I was a kid, I think I did like to explore and discover new things. But it's only fun if I was able to figure out the new thing and it becomes a known thing. But that might be a generalization. All kids are a bit different. As a kid, I think I tended to stay on the safer side.
YESYESYESYESYES "Made me feel anxious and lonely" bro that hit me _hard._ The original stressed me out as a kid and it gave me this awful lonely sinking feeling and I hated it. I really liked the Tim Burton one though because I loved Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and the Cheshire cat. I liked that it had a more put together storyline and it didn't freak me out as much
It sucks because I really like this actress as Alice, but the movie itself doesn't do her, the character, or Wonderland justice, so I kind of just want to see a remake of this reboot of a retelling that's actually good, with the same actress and atmosphere (and everything besides the plot, basically; also, no Johnny Depp just because he steals too much focus from the protagonist (no offense to him; I'd say it's not his fault he's so famous, but...)). Or just a sequel by a different director, but given the last one actually lost money, that's unlikely (and probably for the best).
The first time I mustered the courage to ask a girl out, I was in middle School. I suggested we see a movie, but all that was out during the time was the first Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. A week later, my mom drove us to the theater, and because she didn't know what to do in her free time, she got an extra ticket and sat a few rows behind us. No, there wasn't anything close to a second date.
I would say the caterpillar does actually hold more importance than you place on him. He isn't particularly pompous and dismissive he is annoyed she will not answer a very important question. The "who are you" question is the most important question of the entire book as it is basically her growing up and finding out about herself who actually is she, as she grows up into an independent (for the time) women.
that's a very good point, huh. it's been a while since i read the book(s) but i'm gonna keep that in mind when i do! I would say that some of jack's point still stands though: the caterpillar is no wise old guide who mentors alice. he asks a crucial question that could've established a different theme than the tim burton film tried for here, but he's no wise old mentor.
The story is garbage but I loved the visuals It's a shame burton casts the same people and borrows generic plot lines When his characters and visuals are the modern equivalent of German expressionism
I do think the script was the issue, it needed a better script. I'm not sure if Burton wrote the script or not, but if he did he really just needs to stick to directing and not writing, or at least writing his own stuff.
oh great, I always thought that aging up Alice in combination with making an uncannily attractive version of the mad hatter was a really suspicious choice, and boy howdy I sure hate being proven right
I always felt this movie felt for the trope: "im good looking so i am not the villain. Any other character that looks hideous deserves death and hate :) "
I almost thought this video was perfect, but I really need at least 5 minutes dedicated to cringing at the dancing at the end. God that plot and visual ruined any love I had for the aesthetic of the movie. You can't think it's beautiful after seeing Johnny Depp like that.
The ending baffled me even back then as a child. I mean, even if the entire wonderland plot narratively basically worked against the end message I still understood that what Alice is "preaching" then back in the real world was SUPPOSED to be the learned personal development of her adventure and yet even kid me couldn't help her from asking "Wait, where the fluffy unicorn cloud did she learn this?"
Well done! I always felt a vague distaste for this movie that went beyond "the merch will sell well at hot topic" and I think you put words and visuals to it in a very effective way. Thanks!
I remember going to the cinema in middle school and kinda liking it but it's mostly because i quickly developed a crush on alice in armour and the white queen
I really don’t think the makers of this movie would be able to understand how true this interpretation of their movie is, because how many people realize that the adventure of saving a world, which is so often written for a man, is more often than not about doing what society expects of you?
It's the male fantasy. And I don't mean it in rude way. We long to do a job and feel needed. That's why the ratio to say male gamers to female might favor the men more.
@@lastmanstanding7155 I don't think it's that simple. If it was Lara Croft wouldn't be that popular, male RPG platers wouldn't chose female characters and the difference between amount of male and female gamers would be much bigger
I've always thought of the Tim Burton films as a sort of half-sequels to the original tale. (either the original novel or the Disney film) That the events of the actual original Alice in Wonderland story did occur to the Alice we see in these films, but off screen back when she was a little girl, thus causing her to talk to her Dad about all the strange visions and such; and that the older her has tried to bury those memories after her father dies as she has to deal with her mother and everyone else always telling her it was all nonsense. This also helps to explain how she is "not the Alice they needed" in Wonderland, in that they all remember her as the young naive girl ready and eager to help them with their problems, while the Alice they got has grown older and more jaded thanks to life in the "real world," and has repressed all her memories related to Wonderland.
This is exactly how I took it, and how my companion took it. I was kind of surprised when I watched this analysis and the presumption was that this was Alice’s first trip to wonderland. I thought the sequel nature of it was well-understood.
Tim Burton's works are visually gorgeous, everything looks amazing, but he also has a specific style and his stories fall flat in some way and i dont think his style fit alice in wonderland
Quick FYI: Killmonger wanted to bring ruin to the outside world and Wakanda as revenge. It was Nakia who first proposed helping the world (in the introductory scenes of Wakanda, too). Killmonger was just a psycho - a psycho with a somewhat understandable/sympathetic backstory, but a psycho nonetheless. Don't be fooled by Michael B Jordan's abs
The worst part about the White Queen mocking her sister's "facial deformity", is that in the sequel, you find out it's HER FAULT her sister has that deformity. Imagine being deformed for the rest of your life because your sister got you into a tragic accident, and then she spends the rest of her life talking shit about you for it and using it against you. No wonder the Red Queen wanted to take her down.
Sorry what? The SEQUEL??
@@PopBunny8899 Alice through the looking glass.
@@PopBunny8899 I know it's a months old comment now but yeah it come out 3/4 of a decade ago
It's weird how the white queen was almost perfectly set up to be the hidden big bad. Even when i first saw her, something about her made it hard for me to fully trust her.
Haven’t you seen Whatever happened to baby jane? 😂
Honestly, the film really felt like it was building up to a reveal that the white queen was even worse than the red queen, and then it just... didn’t.
It really should have, that would have made it a way better movie
I feel like whatever that Nutcracker movie was did what this movie failed to do.
@@applecoreeater yea but tbh it didn't do it that well
@@applecoreeater and it still sucked
@@applecoreeater i feel like the nutcracker movie could have been good if it wasn’t marketed as the nutcracker bc the ballet is nothing like that
I think the worst thing about the red queen being villified for her big head is that in Through the looking glass, we find out that she wasnt even born with it. Her head swelled due to blunt force trauma. and because of that, of an accident where she got seriously injured, she lost her throne, and was ridiculed and ostracized by everyone around her. But yeah, she's just a villian >:(
Lewis Carroll never wrote it; that whole concept is rubbish.
@@spencerfrankclayton4348 very true, though i was just talking abt what happened in the films, which was all rubbish as an adaptation of the books
@@spencerfrankclayton4348Lewis Carroll legit described the red queen as being "Formal and strict, but not unkindly. Pedantic to the 10th degree. The concentrated essence of all governesses"
Hardly what *I'd* call a villain
@@DrCandyStriper TBF the movie Red Queen is heavily conflated/combined with the Queen of Hearts, as is incredibly common with Alice in Wonderland adaptations from what I've seen.
It’s 3 years later ik but i gotta add; she still executed, ridiculed, tortured, imprisoned and blackmailed hundreds on impulse.
The Tim Burton effect: having the aesthetic of going against society’s expectations but actually reinforcing the status quo
Bingo!
Seems more like the Disney effect, looking at Dumbo etc.
I used to say this about counter-cultures like scene/emo/etc.. It seems that it's a counter-culture to rebel against the 'norm', and yet, within that counter-culture there is a list of criteria you have to meet to be consider (X-style) enough to participate. Hold the aesthetics of going against society, but reinforcing the same system you rebel against. Probably why "Nightmare Before Christmas" was their Holy Grail of works ... Tim Burton's same brand.
Sorry, not sorry. When I first watched that film to try to fit into the counter-culture scene .. I was incredibly underwhelmed and couldn't even pretend to like it. It is incredibly bland. The antagonist children are irritating, spooky boogie was not a missed opportunity, and Sally ... poor Sally. Everything in that film was a miss-step. I did enjoy the Corpse Bride for the piano, but it held the same "fitting into the status quo" narrative over-arching again. At least it was a little more vibrant and entertaining. Unfortunately, that film was never considered by any modicum of mainstream as noteworthy ... It completely bewilders me as to why it doesn't.
Mister Mangoat I was a very small child during the emo scene but did Nightmare Before Christmas even have the aesthetic of counter-culture?, it just seemed to just be cute macabre, typical Halloween stuff
@@jonnysac77 I'd argue yes. Simply because that description alone 'cute macabre' is definitely the Emo/Scene aesthetic. Not only that, but the love of stripes is also something found in the counter-culture. Plus, if you consider that it is very 'Addam's Family' in the attitude of 'everything nasty is good, and everything good is nasty', it's definitely a statement against the 'norm' and therefor a counter-culture.
"Oooh normies hate bugs, so we, the crazy outcast emo/scene/goth/punk kids like bugs". Very counter-culture. :P
New theory: aside from the disney cartoon, every single adaption of the book was written by the caterpillar.
Burnt Toast was he wise and looked to for support in that one?
There’s even a book series where the adult butterfly-person version of him is one of the main love interests??? And he’s a bit of an arsehole as well. It’s a lot like twilight lmao
Moist Polenta Are you talking about Splintered by A.G Howard?
Too bad the caterpillar smokes opium instead of crack or meth.
@@nuclearcatbaby1131 he smokes all three in a potpourri
I still remember that Tim Burton said he hated Alice as a character. Directors shouldn't direct a movie if they hate the main character.
I think, the only time that would be okay, is if the point of the narrative is that the main character is a shitty person and you're supposed to hate them. But if that's not the case, then I agree with you.
@@dananyb9857 And even with that, I love some shitty characters because of the complexity of their characteristics. Not to say I forget what they did, but become obsessed with how they did it and how their mind functions.
The fact he hated the character was just so weird to me as well, because Alice doesn’t really have a slate of a personality. She’s just a little girl 😭
@@venusinvoyage the joker effect
@@venusinvoyage
Tim burton seems the 'hates children for no fucking reason' type to be honest
why would anyone HATE alice?
"...he kisses her, at last." T H A T ' S A Y I K E S F R O M M E B O Y S .
Yea I cringed at that bit when I just remembered his part in "Into the Woods"
Didn't the hatter meet her when she was a kid, like 8? Y I K E S
Also, according to many people whose analysis I've read, he's kinda supposed to represent her dad... (especially with the "All the best people..." scene)
Electra through the looking glass!
im sorry he what now
KOT EBANA ROT 37:58 on the original script my dood.
I wanna point out that the reason the caterpillar is continually warped into a wise, beloved leader is because the people responsible for that interpretation are, y'know, the exact sort of people the caterpillar originally represented. They read him in the original text as being _correct_ because they empathize with him over Alice.
YIKES.
@jackie just really condescending and arrogant
UNDERRATED COMMENT
What do you think of the Splintered series, where he's portrayed as a Hot Topic version of Jareth from _Labyrinth_ ? That was weird...
I thought it was because they associate his hookah smoking with some kind of enlightenment or something like that. But yeah you have a point.
When I first watched the movie, I was expecting the white queen to become the villain. The way she acted resembled the people Alice was protesting against in her world. It was strange how she was supposed to be seen as a good person, yet got away with mocking her sister. The red queen was made into the cruel nightmarish being that the world hated, even the people around her wanted her dead. To me, it didn't feel like the red queen was an actual character, but more of what society would stereotype as what would happen if a "misfit" were to be in charge. The movie felt like it was society trying to make it seem as if the problem would only come from the people that didn't fit properly in any acceptable category, and that they were evil because of that.
And in Tim Burton's 'Through The Looking Glass', we can further agree with what you say here as it turned out, the White Queen was really the "villain". Can't help but to feel really really sorry for "the bloody big head". So unfair!!
I think Anne Hathaway even talked about how the White Queen’s wardrobe was meant to show she has her own darkness in her. (Eg. Her nail polish and lipstick) Wish the actual story bothered to be that thoughtful.
Nurul Aisyah She was 6 when she lied. The red queen hit her head because she was upset. She grew bitter and angry as she was constantly teased by the mad hatter. But her resentment canine from herself. She hated her big head. Her jelousy of her sister replaced any love she had in her heart. The crown that was supposed to be hers was taken away because of HER OWN ACTIONS.
Why do u guys feel such an intense need to make the bad characters good?
And she turned out to be not so horrible in the second movie, and ppl still criticized the shit out of it. Get over yourselves, man.
@@lemonadelemon1960 Exactly, they call a child a villain for lying to their mother and inadvertently causing her sister to have a deformed head. But all the actions outside of lying aren’t the White Queen’s fault. By that logic you should say their mother was also a villain by not believing the Red Queen.
"Is there any good in the Red Queen?"
"No."
*Releases a sequel with backstory to try and redeem her and make her seem not so bad*
IKKK
You know who defended this crap???
Yes, even Bobsheaux can sometimes defend films that are not at all good. Like, the live-action Alice in Wonderland duology.
All she did was slide into a statue....A STATUE
but the second movie had a different director, which is one reason why it was uh
very very bad
That really makes the White Queen’s actions in this movie and all the head shaming seem even WORSE! If everyone knows it was an accident, how dare they humiliate her so? That’s one of the things I disliked about the sequel.
Tim Burton may have been married to Helena Bohnam-Carter, but it's pretty obvious he's in love with Johnny Depp.
@Rabea Halim Tinny or Deppton?
*22 hundredth*
No wonder they divorced, eh?
Otherwise, maybe Tim Burton IS more bisexual than the vast majority could think.
Kieran Stark Or it could be all the cheating lol.
That’s his son
I mean you're not wrong
This wasn't even a story about Alice, this was a story about how Alice fell into Wonderland and then met the REAL main character: Johnny Depp
They even put him front and center in the artwork. Like... what the fucK?
Eh. There were artworks with most of the main characters front and center, that isn't so unusual.
But yeah, making his part so large was rather heavily leaning on starpower of a friend. The plot focus is the big thing.
Sadly, you’re not wrong.
Alice went too Depp
@@TheSeptet I Agreed
changing it to 'the red queen vs the white queen' instead of the queen of hearts vs alice draws a weird parallel to the Russian revolution that I don't know if they were going for or not
Mind: blown
My thoughts watching this
MOSCOW MOSCOW
bryan diaz varela what does that have to do with the Russian revolution
@@kristen8052 only because nobody said that in this thread yet: white guard vs red army was a thing in russian revolution
Further proof of your theory: they keep calling her the Red Queen instead of the Queen of Hearts. Those are two different characters from two different books. The Red Queen is a really helpful, if somewhat gruff, character. She's the one who helps Alice navigate the weird chess scape world of Through the Looking Glass. Whereas the White Queen... other than being a bumbling idiot, her main thing is jailing people for crimes they haven't committed yet. Including the Mad Hatter btw. Like.
After watching the video I believe The White Queen should have been the villain, who plan is to oppress Wonderland into a land of Law and Order
Lewis Carroll intended the Red Queen to be the condensed essence of all governesses
Or make her a tragic villain, works too.Or have alice have declaring democracy. The white queen would have been a good other villain. Alice between both sides or just say fuck the system, neither of you will rule.democracy at the end.
But she also becomes somewhat a villain by the end of the tale with Alice shaking her.
My god, yes! Red was the sensible one of the two queens, for crying out loud! ... Well, as sensible as the setting could be lol
This movie is corporate feminism in it's purest form, maintaining all of the aesthetics of feminism while keeping none of the actual messages
Exactly. They really thought they did something with "cOrSeT bAd" didn't they
Good and bad don't matter, only self furtherance.
White (Queen) feminism, we might say?
So, your saying it's Legend Of Korra the movie?
"White Queen Feminism" really, *really* needs to become a part of our collective vocabulary; it fits perfectly as a nutshell-name of the aesthetics-only feminism we see so much of in media.
The goddamn mad hatter is the central focus of a poster with Alice’s name on it
excuse me JANE i think you just lack the IQ points to see how feminist and progressive this movie is
And not to mention that Johnny Depp’s name is the one on display
Jane that always annoyed me
It's painfully obvious that this movie was just another love letter from Burton to his one true love. Nothing more, nothing less.
Paula Abella probably because he had top billing
Honestly I am *so tired* of adaptations shipping Alice with the Mad Hatter, while retconning him into an actually helpful character. I get that he's the only character who everyone's heard of who's human, male, and not an obese twin, and therefore the only character who *can* be shipped with Alice by mainstream conventions, but... I don't *want* romance in my Alice in Wonderland adaptations. Romantic subplots are boring. I just want a romp through a zany nonsense world.
I feel like Alice shouldn't be old enough to have any kind of romantic relationship, anyway. The sense of childlike perception seems really integral to the essence of the story.
Exactlyyyy. She's only supposed to be a child anyways
In this I thought her and the hatter where very much a best friend relationship not a romantic one
I don't get why people want to ship an old man with a teen anyway. If anything, I'd be fine if Alice had a passing smile with someone who's being kind to her, because that could mean anything, but anything more would be an unneeded addition to the original story.
Totally agree. It also kills the entire appeal of the character. Maybe it's just me, but the Mad Hatter I read was a raving lunatic, not a brooding YA protagonist.
Honestly, a story about a person who is seen as an outcast because of an abnormal appearance that spirals into mania and only allows people who understand her struggle benallowed in the upper class, only to find out all those people where faking it, and her sister whom she has always rivaled with who is seen as good turns out to be worse than her, is a far more compelling story than any film adaptation of Alice in wonderland
My theory about the caterpillar is that when people try to rewrite and adapt the caterpillar they identify too much with the original character and deem him "tough leader" instead of an uncaring asshole who just likes to lecture people on why he is right
"The catepillar is a badass just like me fr fr"
Don't know mate. Saying everyone who does that is an asshole as well, is a little excessive if you ask me.
@@Agustin_Leal Just because a statement doesn't say "some" or "most", doesn't mean it's saying "everyone"
@@aaljustaal1890 You didn't say everyone, but you were generalizing anyway. Or perhaps I was mad at another commenter who said the same as you but was more agressive.
@@Agustin_Leal Idk, dude, but people often generalize as it saves time. Reading between the lines is built into almost every interaction
Honestly, I was really disappointed that when the White Queen regained the crown, she didn't drop the facade of being a wacky but nice woman and instead is more terrifying and cold than the Red Queen ever was. I know twist villains are overdone now, but that to me would have been an interesting take on how Alice has been misled this whole time to believe the established order is the correct one. Alice could then free the Red Queen from her chains as they take on the White Queen together. And as another nod to the books, Alice would end up on the chessboard square that "kings" a pawn and gain the crown herself. All the other characters insist that Queen Alice remain to rule over Wonderland, but Alice tells them they don't need to be ruled by queens, they need to follow their own paths and make Wonderland a better place on their own.
you're hired
thirteenfury that sounds really great but they wanted a sequel that most people didn't see
Something very similar to this happens in the recent Nutcracker and the Four Realms movie that Disney put out!
thirteenfury or they could have made the white queen good in intentions but unable to rule because she is unable to apply pressure and is too childish and innocent in her decisions. This is much better then painting her as the „real“ villain and doesn’t undo her previous actions as a mere act
@@DuchessRococoPuff I was going to say that!
Also, after all that 'all the best people are mad' stuff-
it ends with her publicly shaming the old delusional aunt.
S L O W C L A P
wow you're right
One of the only good things about the Cinema Sins video on it was him calling it out and adding 100 sins. He might not be the best formulaic TH-camr that lives solely on that one idea their channel is based on, but he had my respect for that.
Thats right because all the best people are mad only applies to me, a gorgeous teenage girl. I'm the best person and I'm mad society doesn't bend to shape my desires.
@@mystii8134 Oo yes, as someone experiencing mental illness I get so mad when perfectly normal and healthy people try to get 'interesting' points by claiming their outgoingness is some sort of quirky insanity. And they will shame you for every symptom of mental illness you've got but will pretend that they are united with you in mutual insanity sticking it up to the Man.
@@demo2823 Same! I'm slowly recovering from anxiety and depression, so it annoys me so much when people shame me for getting so worried about getting trouble or whatever I'm anxious about, but then they'll act like they totally understand. Like Alice doesn't seem to suffer from anything (As far as we can tell), all she really has is case of "I don't want to do my duty and help my family as a teenage protagonist in a period/fantasy story"
the difference between tim burtons alice in wonderland and space jam is that i enjoy watching space jam
hey guys I found the criminally underrated comment
haha thank you that made my morning :) as did reading up on the upcoming space jam 2.
ghoast Yeah, the thing about Space Jam is that it's like one of those movies that's got a strong ' so bad it's good ' feel. Sure, the acting is awkward (( sometimes the scripting is oddly questionable at times **cough cough** _touch the ball_ **cough** ) but it's still so oddly entertaining and especially a good pick for nostalgia.
Alice in wonderland was just an honest bore to me, there was no feel of any spirit to it. And usually I really enjoy watching Tim Burton's movies but this is one of the only few films I've seen that nearly put me to sleep. Probably would've also forgotten it had anything to do with the original Alice in wonderland if it weren't for the names of the characters.
Perhaps the blue caterpillar is consistently adapted as the wise mentor because the (usually male) directors see him as trying to educate a young girl on the ways of the world, like themselves, basically.
DING DING DING! CORRECT!
I think it’s more likely that he just has the aesthetic of a wise mysterious oracle
can't believe you didnt mention the red queens lover hitting on alice lmao that really was a weird as hell moment for no reason except his apparent tall women fetish
u just unlocked a deep memory for me lmao
@@GlitterUnicornEater Same lol
I thought he liked big headed women?? Didn't he say that point blank??
@@carnuatusWhat he said was specifically was "I like you, Umm. I like laaargenesssss"
Wait, they made the Mad Hatter front and center on the movie poster? For a movie called *Alice* in Wonderland? Why, because he's played by Johnny Depp?
Exactly
You know actors pay a lot of money to have their character in the center of a movie posters?
yeah
It was one of many movie posters at the time, iirc. Like they had one for the red queen, one for the Cheshire cat, one for Alice, etc., mostly a way to show how they were being represented in this adaptation, I guess? But I don't remember if there were any typical posters for the movie, and not just the individual character ones, though. I also am probably wrong here, so.
yup
Tritone's Personal TH-cam Channel The poster with the Mad Hatter front center is the DVD poster
You know in the Alice in Wonderland inspired ya fantasy novel Splintered, the blue caterpillar is turned into a sexy guy with blue hair that is part of the main characters love triangle. So I mean, it could have been worse.
FrostySparkles oh god. I need to read that. I need that suffering.
@@7KDSP lol yeah they're actually pretty fun books to read, in a sort of campy, twilight-ey way
@@FrostySparkles Twilight is creepy misogynistic trash
That book series is amazing
O hell yeah give me that cheesy YA shit
"He kisses her at last." Okay, I thought I was going nuts (joke not intended) whenever I watched this movie because it was clearly setting up some romantic tension between them. That's not to say that I _wanted_ them to hook up nor that they _should_ have, but that all the usual/traditional cinematic trappings were there and I was worried I was somehow imagining them for some strange reason.
what time in this vid where I can find he say "he kisses her at last"?
@@delinawasikowska6945 38:00
And after all is said and done, the "empowering" ending scene in a movie that beats as over the head with the truncated moral of "the best people are a little insane"... culminates in a joke in which Alice calls out a sad lonely aunt by saying she is mad and needs help. ôÕ
So the best people are a little crazy, unless they are old spinsters, in that case they are sick.
That's messed up.
@@nekomissy595 I don't think Imogen's character is meant to be taken so literally, to the point of giving her an armchair diagnosis. She serves a purpose. I think it's summed up well here - muchnessandlight.typepad.com/muchness-and-light/2010/12/there-is-no-prince-aunt-imogene.html
@@nekomissy595 but Hatter's insanity is obviously mental illness, one that is completely untreated and is allowed to continue and exist. He is abusive, ready to leave Alice to die because she didn't agree to his whims, and acting out violently just before that iconic line in the same scene. His madness isn't just about sticking it to the system either, he is harmful to those around him unlike the old lady who only was harmful to herself.
That moment deserved the 10 sins CinemaSins gave it.
Its flippant and cheap, 100% agreed... :-(
@@nekomissy595 Alice in Wonderland was never about feminism, originally. Lewis Carroll was no feminist. Feminists like Alice in Wonderland, because it isn't a story about princesses, princes, etc. Its about "figuring things out" about the world and how it works, at its core. It should then appeal to more sensitive, somewhat socially withdrawn types, etc., such as myself. Unfortunately, it also appeals to certain sorts of women who want to turn it into something it was never meant to be...
It doesn't help that the Looking Glass film sequel had the whole forehead thing being White Queen's fault. So it makes White Queen's actions insensitive.
@@nekomissy595, the White Queen is bad, and it's evident... But then what's the moral, in the first film, when Alice does exactly as she says and doesn't question her? The second movie may work to fix some of these plot points, but on its own it's very confusing.
I like the first but not the second
True, at least the second movie acknowledges that the White Queen is really a bitch underneath her nicey-nice facade.
@ I never saw Through the Looking Glass. Does the theme have more internal consistency than the first film (doesn't contradict its own message at the end)?
Doesn't help that the 2ed film had a different director either. That actually made it worse.
No lie the whole time I watched this as a kid I thought the white Queen was supposed to be a twist villain, and I was so confused when she wasn’t
It would have been an amazing twist, given the Anne Hathaway casting.
Honestly, the real kicker for me was to see Johnny Depp being portrayed on front of every promotional media for the film that is supposedly about Alice
to get men to watch the movie, and Pirates of the Caribbean fans, and so people see how mystical it is, instead of a random blonde girl
@@growingupwithdisney What the hell do you mean "random blonde girl", she's literally the titular character lmao
I like Tim Burton on a purely artistic level. His stories usually fall flat in some way.
Yeah...his vision was original the first 20 times. But with no story to carry it, it's not good.
@Vintage Honey Edward Scissorhands was amazing fight me.
the mesage of his movies is always rejecting that astectic looking at it with distaint as a teenage mistake you grow out of
Big Fish was pretty interesting, in my opinion.
@@spuilloh2637 He co-direcred Nightmare Before Christmas. The real creator behind it is Henry Selick, who was inspired by Burton's poem. TIM BURTON gets the credit as the one behind "Jack" The Pumpkin King but he did not work on that movie-he did write a poem & a drafted story.
You know what the funny thing is, though?
Caving to external social pressure, while framing it as your own initiative through romantic overtures about freewill, is basically what the dominant ideology of today tells young people to do.
Yeah the whole movie feels eerily like propaganda for that kind of thing :/
You made a point on how the red queen is selfconscious, so she makes her aristocratic underlings wear things to exaggerate their features. This is inaccurate. They wear things to exaggerate their features so that they can dupe the red queen into liking them. This is proven by the fact that she takes a liking to Alice (as Um) because she's so large and that she's upset when the hatter is laughing at the fakeness of her underlings when she's being duped by them. She becomes very angry that they tricked her.
yeah I noticed that slip up too.
True, but that doesn't change the point tbh. The reason she likes people with exaggerated features is because of her insecurity anyway.
As a girl with an enormous forehead, I totally feel this.
Shari Welch lovely profile picture!
Paul Smith r/unexpectedlywholesome (:
From what I can see of your pic you do NOT have an "enormous" forhead neither does the guy doing this video in fact Tim Burton has a bigger one lol
@@AkasaurusRex That's not a picture of me, that's a picture of a lady from the 1920's.
Shari Welch me too, girl
I thought the White Queen would be evil after I saw that scene pre-fall of Hamish's mother dressed in white. The house, the people there, the roses, everything was white and it seemed like a direct connection to the White Queen
I know this is an older comment, but I noticed the same thing. It's not just the shots that are the same between the White Queen's court and Hamish's family. It's the color scheme as well. But, looking at Tim Burton's other work, I think it's just his artistic preference of depicting the dreary "normal" world as being colorless (Corpse Bride is probably the strongest example of this)
>feminist movie
>crazy old spinster trope played as an unironic negative outcome
pick a lane
know what would have actually been powerful? Using the spinster character to show Alice that she doesn't have to fit into the status quo and be herself, even if it means being a bit of a social pariah
Romantic Outlaw honestly kinda shocked it didn’t end with her going up to her and like holding up her hand and like both of them dancing around or smth......like it would’ve been so easy Tim, come on Tim
Nothing wrong with it being a feminist movie tho
@@skiddlydiddlydoo4893 the point is that it's not a feminist movie despite pretending to be
Paris Debatable. You can be an overall feminist movie while still having hypocritical bits or flawed feminism. I think it's naive to say it either can or can't be, it's both, it has messages and themes of female empowerment and freedom and it also has negative connotations and stereotypes that restrict women to certain roles. Any feminist effort that's flawed or mediocre isn't automatically dismissed as Not True Feminism, or at least it shouldn't be; it only hurts the feminist movement that every single sect of feminists dismisses others and believes and upholds their feminism as The One True Feminism, instead of accepting that feminism is a complicated subject with many pitfalls it's hard to avoid and that every form of feminism is flawed in one way or another. No two women view feminism through the same lens and things that seemed feminist a decade or two ago are now seen as naive or outright problematic, but they still got us where we are now. It can't be an all or nothing situation.
@@KaiInMotion I think the issue is that even though they vocally espouse feminist ideas, the actions undermine then almost constantly. Which, in turn, makes the ideals espoused just look like they were thrown in to score points and aren't backed up by the movie's actions or character framing
I feel like if the grand finale twist was Alice dropping her weapons and befriending the dragon, showing that there isn’t a clear black-white way of thinking (either slay the dragon or don’t), it would have wrapped up nicely. The white and red queen could end up working together, letting it be known that it’s okay to continue a tradition, as long as you forge your own path. Alice could’ve united the rebellion and the red queen’s army, then when she goes back to the real world and chooses the “third” option, instead of marriage or staying home with mom, it would make a lot more sense. She ties her family tradition with her own path.
I like this the most
I love you
@@Shockguey Rian Johnson ending is 'fuck the past let it die'. This ending is instead 'Acknowledge the past, use it to build a better future that satisfies everyone, old or new'.
I much prefer this one.
@@matthewbadger8685 'Acknowledge the past, specifically past failures, and use what you learn to build a better future' is EXACTLY what the message of the Last Jedi was. You did watch the movie right?
@Matthew; what I like the most is simply enjoying a movie, for it's creative ingenuity and originality, as well as well-played acting. The need to over-think every 'motivation' or scene - nope. Sometimes, it's just fun to enjoy the show.
Hot take: Tim Burton is the very definition of style over substance. He's on point when it comes to looks and art direction, but he leans completely on said art direction and can't craft a compelling narrative to save his life.
He said it himself you know: "I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face."
your forehead looks normal to me man, people are very weird in what they judge
those people have small forehead fetishes
People, and their impossible to satisfy beauty standards 🙄
A big forehead is just the result of a high hairline.
Not to mention that the Red Queen barely hesitates to invite Alice to her court and got her subjects to make her clothes (even if they had to use curtains). RQ might have made her subjects wear fake body parts, but she accepts those who get ridiculed based on their looks like her.
Actually, she doesn’t even make her subjects wear prosthetics, that part was a mistake Jack made, if you watch the movie it’s actually shown that the subjects chose to wear prosthetics to fool her into thinking they’re disabled/deformed like her, and into liking/sympathizing with them more. There’s even a scene where the Red Queen realizes they’ve been lying to her all along, and gets angry, and is put down more for it.
I could never put a pin on why the ending of this movie felt so wrong. She slayed the dragon, decided to be a "free girl," and went off to run her father's business instead of selling it- it hit all the "yay, happy end!" beats, but it felt OFF. You finally put it into words! The narrative parallels were inverted. Thank you!
I wanted her to befriend the jabberwocky. It would parallel her befriending the earlier monster. It would really show her going against what everyone said and finding her own solution to the problem. She could then make haymitch/his dad her business partner, but not through marriage like everyone wanted.
"A nineteen-year-old gothy rebel who doesn't want to wear stockings MOM!" got me xD
So what you're saying is, Space Jam is an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland?
yes
Let's see: Normal person who follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and goes an a strange adventure with a lot of wacky characters and goes up against a fat ruthless tyrant? Definitely Alice in Wonderland!
CJCroen1393 As Rich Evans once said “OH MY GAAAAWWD!!”
But funnier
@@CJCroen1393
The Wizard of Oz movie (with Judy Garland vs. other versions) is also an Alice in Wonderland adaption.
With more male character following the main female character around and having her do like a thing. (I.E. facing and killing witches)
Did get a bit more absurd.
(Kinda sad that the movies never got into the Tin Woodman being an ex-human who discarded his human body piece-by-piece that was eventually remade in a Frankstien-style monster and eventually stole his wife.)
That's genius. Her turning down the marriage only to take the reins of the family business is actually paralleled with her attempt to break the prophecy in wonderland. Her attempt to break from society actually results in her reinforcing it!!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the creepy scene with Alice and the Red queen's knight. It was very N O P E.
Magnolia Magpie I don’t remember that, Can u tell me what happened?
@@nicola7021 the red queen's boy-toy who had been pretending to love her confronted alice in the hallway, holding her against the wall saying that he was attracted to big (or odd? i dont remember) women. he tried to force himself onto her by way of fear, basically.
@@Snoozl YIKES. ty!
he likes LARGENESS, which is why he was with the queen (large head) but alice was LARGE all over
@@iheartjackieyes L A R G E N E S S you say?
alice will wear a corset but not socks
ok
Edit: both are p comfortable if they fit you, but it was funny how ignorant the writers were
Corsets are actually quite comfortable. Most people just don't know how to wear them correctly and that's why it hurts
@TheStarsLookSoNice 15 That wasn't really all that common. We know about those because they were photographed and famous, but most women wore corsets like women today wear bras. Yes a few were into tight-lacing, but only upper class women could afford to wear corsets that tight and then not all did.
Radhaun yep!
TheStarsLookSoNice 15 There are actually a lot of videos and articles talking about how the stereotype of Victorian women suffering in corsets is almost completely false and made up by Hollywood for gags/“woke” feminism. I’m not going to try to explain it cause I honestly think I’d mess up the explanation. I think one of the best videos on the subject would be from the youtuber Bernaddette Banner “I grew up in a corset. Time to bust some myths.”
TheStarsLookSoNice 15 definitely not. Only the rich vain ladies tight laced. The working class even wore corsets. I’m sure in a hundred years or so, bras will be talked of the same way
Alternate ending:
-Alice refuses to fight the dragon last-minute, instead realising that she had to get home
- White queen absolutely goes off, secretly the bad guy
- Alice and her friends defeat the white queen, realise the red queen is misunderstood
- Alice gets back to the proposal and says no
- Ends with her walking away from the party
The End. You wouldn't even need to reshoot the whole thing.
Did anyone else feel like they tried to make Wonderland and these characters LOOK mad, but despite the visuals, they were just... not? They had a normal hierarchy and when you strip the characters down their eccentric clothing and one or two visual quirkiness, they were just bland characters who led a relatively normal life. They can be reasoned with logic and understand it. The same logic, customs and society rules that apply in the normal world apply to Wonderland. That while Wonderland is supposed to be this lawless place where everything is possible for everyone.
I feel like Alice, as a lead and as a character, suffered the worst. She is supposed to be this dreamy girl that questions everything with a wide imagination, but here she convinces herself 3/4 of the movie that this can't be real and that she's not who they're looking for. She's horridly close-minded and let's herself be dragged from place to place with little to no change in expression. It's a soulless performance. The presence of Alice alone should be felt throughout Wonderland and be the gears puts turn the story in motion, but making her role part of a prophecy feels cheap. She feels like a side character that just happens to be dragged into saving everyone reluctantly, while the main cast fights for screen time.
The only aged up Alice in Wonderland story I honestly really enjoy is Alice; Madness Returns. For reasons I could write an entire essay on, but I've ranted enough.
Heartless by Marissa Meyer is genuinely one of my favorite books, set in the universe but not the story of Alice. It made me cry and has excellent atmosphere: 10/10
@@user-xb5bz4fu9o Thank you for the recommendation! That sounds so interesting!
Honestly, this Alice is so damn boring. She looks half dead through the whole movie. Idk if it's the actress or directing, but she sucks big time and there's 0 charisma to her.
I loved that game and yeah same
this is an idea im still mulling over, and i really dont want this to come across as a defense of the movie (bc its pretty dull) but i kinda saw it, when i watched for a second time, as if the movie wanted to show the madness not in the lack of order, but in the hierarchical structure and absurd power the red queen has. the white queen never really seems like the best option though (shes just more subdued than the outright cruelty of red) but i guess she does seem like the lesser evil. and i saw alice, the more i thought of her, as kind of a kafkian "hero" -this powerless pawn that just wanders around following orders, never understanding the systems that rules them. this theory is completely destroyed by many counterpoints, most strongly that this is a disney movie and it doesnt want children to come out feeling they are powerless against an uncaring system (the whole prophecy thing is like a power fantasy, after all) but i do like to see, at least alice's portrayal, as such. a bit delusional maybe but hey, this movie isnt really inviting a lot of analysis in many other fronts.
also i really recommend the czech jan svankmajer adaptation of alice in wonderland. its plenty creepy, gritty, handmade and while not thematically faithful it feels less corporate mandated than this movie.
Disney's relationship with this film is mostly rumors. Alice in Wonderland was a commercial and critical failure. Walt -- like Steven Spielberg says when his own films don't go over -- didn't blame the audience, he blamed the movie and said the character of Alice lacked heart. He was trying to figure out why it didn't work, settled on the fact there wasn't a compelling emotional journey for Alice, it was a string of sequences. The closest you get is Alice breaking down in the Tulgey Wood. Anyway, it was a bomb, and coming off the heels of Cinderella, a painful one, especially since so much creativity and work (and money) went into it. It wasn't re-released to theaters in Walt's lifetime not because he hated the thing, he just wasn't going to throw more money at it -- so he aired it on his TV show, Disneyland, instead of theatrical distribution. He did not dislike the movie, he analyzed it to find out why it didn't work at the time. I *might* be wrong on this, but I think Alice in Wonderland was the second (?) episode of Disneyland.
Right after he passed away, in the wake of Duning's Yellow Submarine, Fantasia had a re-release and the 60's generation went nuts for it. Fantasia suddenly became a box office smash. The next thing closest to it in the catalog was Alice in Wonderland, so they re-released that theatrically also, with psychedelic poster art in style with the times, and it did well, and Disney re-released it yet again, and also re-issued The Three Caballeros, although in a truncated form. Loaning prints to universities before the age of home video was common practice for all the studios, Disney took note of the attention Alice and Caballeros were receiving, they both were given theatrical re-issue, and they made money (not a lot of money in the case of Caballeros).
At the advent of home video, Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, The Three Caballeros, the Winnie-the-Pooh shorts collection, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and Fun and Fancy Free were made available for purchase, followed by Pinocchio. Alice in Wonderland has been a consistent home video staple for Disney ever since, and seems to do better and better with each passing generation. Walt would be proud.
As for him "not liking the film", sure he wasn't totally satisfied with it, but he wasn't satisfied with anything he made, especially after the war. One of my favorite Stories is when he released Cinderella, a film that saved him from 4 million dollars in debt, and was the most acclaimed/successful since Dumbo, Walt has admitted several times that he thought Cinderella wasn't as good as Snow White. I like that story because not only is that shady as f-, but also it says a lot about Walt's character. He was self-deprecating, a perfectionist, and again, never satisfied with anything. He felt the same way about Peter Pan as he did with Alice, I don't know of any real evidence that he forbade anyone from mentioning Alice, I mean it had 2 theme park rides. I can't think of a single film he made that he was either completely satisfied with and/or he took really seriously. That has nothing really to do with the quality of the film and everything to do with Walt's Personality.
Yes Alice did fail because it lacked heart, but that's not a bad thing. Alice in Wonderland isn't supposed to have heart (or not in the way that Snow White does; not to imply that I/anyone else think Alice is a COLD movie per-say, there is a difference). It' the fairy tale for those who like to use their brain, anything resembling heavy emotion would have been self defeating to the tone/aesthetic. Especially when you consider what they had to work with, and coming from a studio that has since become an image obsessed studio that cranks out the same thing every time, making Alice a film that could never be made today. This is one of the studio's greatest achievements.
This is absolutely fascinating. Thanks so much for your comment.
@@LackingSaint Thanks! I didn't earn a film major for nothing! :D
Wallabe Beetles Numbuh 4? Wow, didn't know you were such a Disney fan!
With modern output's obsession over meeting the dreaded hero's formula, that's the first time anyone's ever said "couldn't be made today" that I can actually agree with.
I wish more creators were like Disney instead of calling people who dont like it buzzwords
I can name Barbie films that portray the message "little girls, go against the system/ be adventurous/ be yourself!" Or the entire motto of "be who you wanna be", better than this film. Three Musketeers stands out initially. It consistently amazes me when large budget, star studded films, with established crew, do a poorer job at storytelling than low budget (but still awesome) Barbie films, which have no right to be anything like as good as they are!
The sequel realises it was to harsh on the red queen but Alice through the looking glass is my favourite book and I can’t forgive them for basically chucking out that plot to focus on the mad hatters tea party time bs.
Dragoneta Slayer but the hatter is SAAAD
This movies bad but Alice through the looking glass by Tim Burton is so much worse.
isnt the first film already a mix of the two books? because it featured a valley of black and red checkerboards and the white queen, and alice "advancing" to become more powerful. when i first heard of the presence of this sequal i first wondered why in the world is there a sequel when the first film has alredy merged it all
The Hatter really isn't a very important character, to be honest. It's all about the Cheshire Cat, Alice, and to a lesser extent, foes like the Red Queen and the Jabberwocky (in a physical, life-threatening sense). But Alice and the Cheshire Cat make Alice in Wonderland "work", the White Rabbit is just a plot device, really.
Of course, it's all about how you treat the character of the Cheshire Cat... You can't be too obvious with him, and if you're too emotionally poker-faced behind the wide grin, etc., he'll just be a tease, unless something more notable happens story-arc wise with Cheshire (instead of just shooting the bull with Alice) and the attention will go to other characters...
It would be interesting if there was a kind of magical/botanical, etc. "weirdness"/sickness in Wonderland that Alice and Cheshire tried to investigate. I'd be up for a movie like that. I've seen LOR, the Hobbit, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, etc. Dragons and swords are pretty familiar concepts to me... :-/
But how else is Johnny Depp supposed to pay for his condo?
so thats why the film made me feel empty
thank you
This! Thank you for putting it into words!
Yeah, this really does put it into words. Alice as a protagonist is so bland and unrelatable, the story plays out so strangely and wrong, I hate watching it because it literally makes me feel stressed and empty. It's genuinely not a good viewing experience. Strange a movie managed to do that without being outwardly depressing.
I think you mean “ Hercules, except it isn’t the story of Hercules whatsoever and has nothing to do with the original myth at all. Disney just took his name and slapped it onto another buff dude.”
Madame Moth plus, they're going with the Greek version. Hercules' name is actually Heracules in Greek.
The Oncelers Nemesis yessssssss
The Oncelers Nemesis are you sure about that? Because now I feel pretty stupid since we’ve been talking about Heracles for a while in Latin...🤦🏻♀️
Nameless Heracles is his original Greek name, if your taking Latin they will probably refer to him as Hercules
The original story was about a rapist.
"He kisses her at last"....... DUDE I thought the whole thing that the Hatter was her father that disappeared years ago and Wonderland was real. WTF
EDIT; Can I just apologise for not responding to anyone's comments?
Out of everything THIS is the one thing TH-cam doesn't notify me about. And thank you for the 700+ likes !
EDIT 2: For anyone wondering the original script mentions the kiss at 38:00
and thank you for the 1.5 thousand likes!
Death Kitty Oml SAMEEEE
I didn’t think that when I first watched the movie but It would have been cool if they had went in that direction
now THAT would've been worth seeing...
Congrats, you just wrote a better movie
Alabama intensifies
My greatest frustration with Alice's "not like other girls" characterization is that it places legitimate societal criticisms on the same level as "oh here's a weird thought I had". Rather than having her dislike of corsets and stockings be due to actual critiques of restrictive victorian clothing and the actual harmful effects of corsets, she dislikes them for...????? reasons???? and equates them with wearing a fish on your head because you were told to. Rather than any meaningful motivation, she's just kinda "weird" and "quirky" and ends up reinforcing some of the worst parts of the victorian era. Because, like you wonderfully pointed out, the system is framed as correct.
This video was great in many ways, but as a lifelong Carrollian, (and as someone who's been working on a project on Alice adaptations)I really appreciated the way you discussed some of the background of the original work and the challenges in adapting it, as well as your clear knowledge of and/or research on the Alice books and their legacy.
#teamredqueen
LonerRavenclaw excellently said 😭
funny you'd say that about victorian corsetry, it was pretty much harmless actually. lots of gauze dress related deaths back then however, very inflammable stuff.
@@fionatastic0.070 yeah but here's the thing ; tightlacing wasn't a common practice at all, and in turn there wasn't a widespread movement forcing women to do so.
@@fionatastic0.070 Okay, I'm not going to say corsets weren't restrictive because they can be, but there's a serious stigma around them being dangerous that was literally made up by Victorian men and has stuck around ever since.
Women were routinely mocked for tight lacing because it was viewed as an extreme and unhealthy fad even at the time. It was not all men forcing all women to tight lace, most men didn't have a clue about women's underwear. Most women didn't tight lace, and corset boning always gave way before your ribs did.
Ask anyone who regularly wears a properly broken in corset, it doesn't hurt, you just can't slump comfortably. For working women, they were actually helpful as back braces for lifting heavy loads, but a lot of working women didn't wear them at all because they were expensive. Some modern women also use well fitted corsets in lieu of expensive medical braces, and a lot of people wear them because they feel empowering and they look good.
I apologise for ranting, you just get a lot of corporate "girl power!" scenes in media that love to take shots at corsetry and it's really cheap to me, like you can't have a female character who's concerned with women's rights if she doesn't wake up every morning whinging about her underwear. Oftentimes they don't even bother going past "corset bad" to establish she's a progressive feminist or "not like other girls" in Alice's case. It's a horribly overused trope.
As for Victorian clothing that really was terrible? Airy cage crinolines with layers of flammable petticoats as mentioned above were responsible for several deaths when ladies accidentally swished too close to an open flame, and the infamous lime green arsenic dye that they exuberantly used everywhere: the wallpaper, their clothes, even their food.
Ms Inkypunk thanks for the info! I didn’t know that tightlacing wasn’t nearly as common as I thought and that there were/are certain people who wear them as a sort of medical support
What I think is the weirdest about this movie is, that they have good and evil characters. The book was all about the confusing world of adults and society and everyone tries to manipulate Alice and cares only about themselves.
The entire first segment about the Mad Hatter was really interesting, but...is that...
...is that really an Otamatone cover of Pirates of the Carribean I hear in the background?
Excellent choice of music, 11/10
Your ears do not fail you, my cultural friend
That explains why the one time I watched this movie, the theme felt a bit inscrutable. Turns out it was because the theme was utterly incoherent. I am bad at subtext.
What makes this even worse is that one of the Red Queen’s most “villainous” traits is the classically DEADLY sin of daring to emasculate and undermine the Red King/Knave. And that it’s even implied at the end that his is OWED HIS OWN REVENGE FOR THIS INJUSTICE.
Amazing. They could not have got it more wrong.
It’s Tim Burton he has some pretty questionable ideas about women
And that blue caterpillar's name?
*Morpheus*
Alice should've been played by Keanu Reeves.
Honestly the matrix is more faithful to the text of Alice in wonderland than this film
Alice would have known kung fu
There’s a book adaptation of Alice where the blue caterpillars name actually is Morpheus ;;
I thought it was Absalom
I think Keanu Reeves could pull off a pretty cool Alice.
The foot thing she did at the end made me cringe when I first saw it.
It made me cringe a lot when I was a kid. Still makes me cringe nowadays. Kinda nostalgic :)
@@Zelena_1446 you had that ratatouille cringe haha, awesome
You mean the Futterwacken?
I was waiting for her head to start spinning like a cartoon owl who just got smacked in the face by a rubber chicken.
When I was a child and saw her little dance, I thought it was a nice conclusion to her character arc. Oh, how wrong I was.
When you watch Alice Through the Looking Glass and realize that the Red Queen (Iracebeth) is only the way she is because of her sister.The whole thing is that the crumbs from the cookie are on Red Queen's (Iracebeth) side of the room. Why would Mirana (White Queen) eat them there unless she planned on blaming her sister. Even in that movie it seems that the White Queen (Mirana) got preferential treatment compared to the hot tempered Red Queen(Iracebeth). Their mother believed Mirana over Iracebeth and due to the fact that Iracebeth ran from the room I doubt that the favoritism was a one time thing.
Later in the film when you see Iracebeth (Red Queen) getting crowned, the crown breaks because her head is too large and some people laughs. Iracebeth gave a warning "The next person who laughs will never laugh again" to which her mother actually raises her voice at her as if Iracebeth is in the wrong. Then a commoner (Mad Hatter) laughs again which makes everyone else in the room start laughing. How traumatic would that be and when she gets justifiably angry (let's face it in most real world kingdoms you would have been executed/severly punished for such a thing). He father actually yells at her and says that "I always hoped that you would show the necessary qualities to become the Queen you were born to be. I realize now that day will never come." Her own father basically gave up on her because she got angry that everyone laughed at her for something that was in no way her fault (her head). I was honestly rooting for the Red Queen in the first movie since the White Queen seemed so manipulative. Either the White Queen can really act, she is just an oblivious fool or maybe she felt so guilty for what she did to Iracebeth (Red Queen) that she just let her get the point of no return so that she could justify killing her to everyone without seeming like the "bad guy".
Feel free to comment I love talking about this. If you have any more info or saw something that I missed be it for the Red Queen or the White Queen please don't hesitate to correct any inaccurate statements. Thank you to anyone that read.
I love your take.
yess absolutely agree and also i have been in similar situations to hers so i always come to pity her thought the whole movie and she was painted as the bad guy while she was only was reacting out of anger due to her feelings being seen as inferior or simply not cared about and her parents didn't even try to understand her as THEIR daughter it really saddens me and also what happened to the queen and the king they just seemed to disappear and what exactly happened to them makes me so curious
My main beef with this movie is that my favorite character, the White Knight (who is also Carroll's self-insert) is killed off in like the first 30 seconds. Which is kinda appropriate, considering what they do to his work afterwards.
Feminism according to this film: "Rebel by doing exactly what we need you to do!"
Oh wait, is this a meta-commentary on how manufactured outrage (like the commoditization and marketing of punk aesthetic and punk culture) actually serves to embolden, strengthen, and cement the status quo that it supposedly hates even further?
"commoditization and marketing of punk aesthetic and punk culture actually serves to embolden, strengthen, and cement the status quo" this is a really good take. I imagine most real punks however will say that they aren't punks and will distance themselves from this, the punk aesthetic has changed I think, anything underground or subversive is punk.
@@Slabfish The best and possibly only way to be punk is to follow your heart?
I don't know if it upholds that exact message, but Fight Club likely intended to portray how rebellious institutions can become just as bad as what they hate the most. Here's where I learned about it. th-cam.com/video/Td88z08a_4c/w-d-xo.html
Juan Pablo Robayo Basically, yeah.
They really didn’t think that message through at all.
Burton tried to force the “Alice in Wonderland” plot into the the typical Hollywood “in a time of war, a hero will come…” trope…and that just wasn’t going to end well. Like putting cupcake icing on steak.
this co-opting of free-thinking ephemera to promote the status quo is present in most of tim burton's films. an example that comes to mind is edward scissorhands. he lives in his own little segregated weirdo house at the end of the film, allowed to be himself, but only in private where no "normal people" have to deal with him. i wonder, if ol' ed had been a woman, would his story have been more like alice's? would he have been expected to conform, rather than segregate?
You've explained why Burton films have always made me uncomfortable (aside from nightmare before Christmas, which I believe represents the issue of cultural appropriation properly) in one paragraph. I couldn't really put it into words.
@@xinamoira274 Of course, Nightmare kinda... also does this. At the end, the message is "don't try to do anything you're bad at, just keep doing what you know you're good at". I mean, yes, it's also a pretty solid cultural appropriation story, and I think it's a way more defensible status quo to champion than aristocratic misogyny, but it's still a story that promotes the status quo.
The burtonness on youtube made me hate burton. He is very conservative andpromotes that behind his gothic fassade.
I’m a weirdo and I don’t want to be around other people anyway. Asking them to adapt to my weirdness would be asking too much. Like asking me to adapt to their normal ness.
@@xinamoira274 I think it’s different cause Tim didn’t have all that much to do with the movie and it was Caroline Thompson and Danny Elfman who wrote it. In Tim’s original poem, Jack didn’t even fix his mistakes when he messed up, Santa Claus did.
i remember being so confused as a kid when she decided to fight the dragon, it made no sense to where the story was going and even as a kid it confused me... but I still liked it lmao
Honestly same XD
It felt so out of no where.... “I don’t want to fight a dragon” “Too bad here’s your sword” “Oh okay”
I also wish the movie did go where he suggested near the end if the video. Alice becomes a protege for the Red Queen and realizes a lot is exaggerated or just made-up, and that hey maybe bullying someone for a physical deformity is a bit fucked up.
It confused me that I read the context of Jabberwocky and it's about a boy who hunted down a dragon when in the illustrations, it's actually a girl holding sword (or maybe it's just a boy with a long hair, I don't know). Crazy, but still
Here's what happening when you take a piece about children and more specifically woman and put it in the hands of an unaware detached man: everything becomes a hollow tale about acceptance with "take control, take the action, do your duty" action movie style
So so true, the fact he said he hated that Alice was a boring child character just shows how small comprehension he has for the source material
@@Bluarlequinnohonestly I think that Tim Burton wouldn't even get the point of the petit prince and commentary it makes about the world. Like it's very evident that this guy is reluctant to change the lens he sees things through, especially if it's a perspective of child or a woman.
14:30 Shocking how all the self-absorbed directors/producers of those versions that take themselves too serious and think they are making Alice in Wonderland "deeper than ever before" "for some reason" see the smarmy caterpillar who thinks it is smarter than anyone else and is so full of itself as being right in these assumptions?
Oh, wait... it kind of makes sense, actually. lol
G o o d take. yes.
That might have something to do with the bit that really got up my nose, when (and I don't remember the details, because I saw this trash fire once, and that was more than enough) I think Alice refers to the place as Wonderland and someone else says, "Oh no, it's really called Underland!", i.e. "This isn't a silly kid's story! This is dark, man, and, and DEEP!"
The really sad thing is that the original books are actually already pretty deep. I mean half the characters are based on mats jokes and in Looking Glass the Tweedles are legitimate political satire. There's some real room for modernizing by just updating the political references and creating a disturbing dreamlike world based on the weird parts of the world today... and a bunch of weird maths jokes everyone will think are just about drugs.
I feel like the moral they intended was you can't avoid responsibility forever, eventually you have to stop running and make a decision, and that decision should be what you think is right, and in the end if you do, things will then work out for you BECAUSE you made your decision and did what you thought was right..... But no one really saw the deeper meaning and implications of what they were writing because the most they thought about it was "White Queen Pretty And Good, Red Queen Ugly And Bad, Alice Slays Dragon And Becomes Business-Woman! Girl PowerTMCR!".
See this is what I thought too when I first watched it but then I was surprised when all the critics hated this movie for the reason you mentioned. Yes, the Red Queen and White Queen are both caricatures who turn out to be exactly what they look like and that's... fine? Sometimes the people who look like assholes on the outside are assholes and sometimes people aren't 'too good to be true' type.
The main focus of this movie, I felt, was to talk about facing your fears and taking a stance. Yes, the stances she took in her dream and in real life were contradictory so what? Point is she took it.
@@hittingyouoverthehead Mate "ugly" doesn't equal "bad person" and "pretty" doesn't equal "good person". The queens aren't "exactly what they look like" because good and evil don't have a look. Yes, pretty people can be good and non-conventionally attractive people can be assholes. However that's a super overplayed uninteresting shallow trope that pervaded media for most of history until very recently and is still a thing today, which has influenced how we treat non-conventionally attractive people in society.
Also the whole thing was a fair bit shottily written and oversimplified despite certain convoluted story elements, and while I can't speak to the ideological consistency of Alice as I haven't watched the movie in quite a long time, it is an element that would be important to the moral, the story, and the viewer.
@@Lanoira13 I'm not talking about their physical appearance (alone). I'm talking specifically about this one thing that he talked about in the video- about how the Red Queen is actually the rebel and anti establishment that Alice is supposed to be and the White Queen is a representation of maintaining the status quo. Not all anti-establishmentarians are good. Sometimes the people who are fighting for change are indeed bad people.
@@Lanoira13 Another thing- maybe I'm the only one who felt this but I don't think this movie was about feminism necessarily. People seem to think any movie with a female protagonist has to be about feminism.
fun fact: the original text was kind of a commentary on the world of stigmatised mental illness. Caroll himself had an avid interest in psychology and studied it extensively. the tea party in fact was a sort of way for those set up in asylums to associate with the outside world and people even visited asylums kind of like alice did, except in a dream. dreams were also commonly associated with madness and from that lens, the story is a dream-the symbol of the mad world.
(i may not be 100% correct though, just a late off-handed comment)
There’s this dumb YA novel I read some time ago that was like an edgy book about alices granddaughter or something. In that, the caterpillar was a hot guy that could shape shift into a moth and served as a leg of a dumb love triangle so take that as you will
Omg that sounds terrible
Elsa Frost I was 13 when I read it, so I thought it was great, but then I read it again at 17 and was upset by how bad it was
@@meghan______669 I do believe you that with 13 this is probably pretty fun though.
It's always jarring to find out how bad the stuff was we used to love. But that's why I really appreciate any show or movie that I liked then and still do now. They are kinda rare imo, but like, Avatar is a good example. I loved it with 12 and every time I rewatch it I am again impressed with how deep the characters really are. And now that I don't take cartoons being somewhat decent for granted I appreciate it even more.
omg this is an old comment but i read that book!!! i remember being kinda underwhelmed by it even at like 13; i can’t even remember how it ends. it was like edgy mc girl goes back and for the one time in any YA novel she chooses hot guy instead of friend guy maybe??? the only, and i mean THE ONLY good part is that there’s cellist representation. i think it’s somewhere in my bookshelf, so i’m... i was gonna say i would reread it, but it was such a trash book that i don’t really want to. if you remember the ending, please tell me, i’m curious yet lazy.
OMG I REMEMBER THAT BOOK a girl from middle school gave me the first 2 books all like " this is the best thing that you will ever read" I was cringing so much in the first book that I gave them back (its a 4 books series wtf)
Alice in Wonderland is a story of nonsensical and magical events because it is from the imagination of a child, and like a child, we stumble along with her from one unexplainable happening to the next much like a child does in real life. When you age Alice up from 9 to 19, you remove the logic behind the lack of logic and Alice needs to be on neuroleptics. Like, NOW.
Exactly! I would love a remake of the original animated film (or just, ya know, a film actually following the book) featuring an actual child because the story loses practically all of it's themes when Alice is aged up.
I guess I need to be on neuroleptics then.
like Peter pan and the robin williams remake?
Basically American McGee's Alice
@@hairglowingkyle4572 I'm honestly surprised no one mentioned American McGee's Alice. It's my favourite take on it
Perfect example of when hollywood writes in a "girl power" message in a way that makes no real sense.
thank you for the big forehead propaganda, man. Keep fighting for the cause!
Hallelujah!
The juxtaposition of Burton!Alice frantically clawing at protruding roots and Disney!Alice chilling, reading a book just killed me.
Homestuck.
The way the story in the movie was rewritten had me wanting to unsee it. The way it ended, with Alice showing 0 character growth, but then going around and telling people how to live their life, just made me SO ANGRY.
My little cousin got nightmares and would run into his parents bedroom crying because he was afraid and would say "Johnny is gonna get me". At first I laughed but it was a problem that lasted for years. Poor little guy.
thinBillyBoy lmao I have a Mad Hatter poster in my room from when I was younger. One time my aunt came to stay for the weekend and slept in my room, the next morning she woke up screaming because Johnny Depp was looking at her. Good times
Hahahaha. :^D
...
I feel for the kid. :^(
I love Tim Burton's style and aesthetic, but the problem here was the script. It was simply awful.
same I love the gothic stuff but there are so many flaws with how it's put together
He should be just an art director
Eh
The story had so many of his usual staples that I wouldn't give him a pass on that.
He didn't write the script
The lesson that I'm getting from Walt Disney not liking Alice in Wonderland, coupled with Ralph Bahkshi having trouble making Lord of the Rings, is "Don't adapt your favorite book unless you want to disappoint yourself."
All of Tim Burton's movies seem to be about being an outsider that eventually becomes accepted by the status quo and then the outsider becomes homogenized and an intricate part of the status quo and oftentimes celebrate the established order instead of changing it. Edward Scissorhands was not about questioning the cultural wasteland of the suburbs and consumerism, it was a celebration of it. Nightmare Before Christmas' main message for me was to know your place and to not deviate from the expectations others place on you. There are other examples I could go into to illustrate that Tim Burton's films are all about wanting to conform and not challenge anything about the world but it gets very repetitive and almost all of his films say the same thing in the same way. His films are dull and uninspired.
He also seems to really be "weird" about the female characters in his films. Beetlejuice is an example of a film of his with some pretty questionable messages about women. Dark Shadows, Sleepy Hollow... etc....
Yeah, it’s very much the “i cant be Xist, I have X friends!!” of movies. “I’m not against rebellious behavior and changing the status quo! I love Time Burton movies!”
I see Nightmare Before Christmas as “Loving something isn’t the same as understanding it” what with Jack clearly being into Christmas but lacking a fundamental understanding of what it’s even about.
Sally is also the only one who understands there’s a part of him that craves wholesomeness, and is equally non conforming, but also realizes his eagerness to celebrate the holiday doesn’t translate to responsibility, which leads to things going wrong.
I love him as an artist, but he’s sucks as a storyteller majority of the time.
As a fan of the original soap opera, Dark Shadows is so disappointing, especially since it's a series that needs a good adaptation with it being unwatchable to most people in its original format and while the female characters weren't bad it was still the 60s. At least Mrs. Stoddard was good?
I think that formula only worked with his two Batman movies
As a child, I actually preferred Tim Burton's film over the animated version. Not saying that I was necessarily right, in fact, tiny me was an idiot. I just didn't like how structureless the original movie was. There was no plot, no grounded cast, just lost with an average character in a nonsense world. It made me bored, uncomfortable, anxious, and oddly lonely? Did anyone else have even a similar opinion as a child?
I don't exactly remember my opinion of the movie when I was little, but I do think I felt the same way. IIRC then it made me feel either really bored or really uneasy.
yea same, the Tim Burton movie was a huge part of my childhood and I couldn't stop watching it. I had no interest in even watching the original.
Lonely definitely. No friends, only scary strangers. I think most kids want to connect with others, but the characters in Wonderland are just there to be observed.
For me, it was a scary film in the sense that Alice was lost, confused, and everyone around her only wanted to ridicule/shame her for her ignorance while only confusing her more.
When I was a kid, I think I did like to explore and discover new things. But it's only fun if I was able to figure out the new thing and it becomes a known thing. But that might be a generalization. All kids are a bit different. As a kid, I think I tended to stay on the safer side.
YESYESYESYESYES
"Made me feel anxious and lonely" bro that hit me _hard._ The original stressed me out as a kid and it gave me this awful lonely sinking feeling and I hated it. I really liked the Tim Burton one though because I loved Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and the Cheshire cat. I liked that it had a more put together storyline and it didn't freak me out as much
OMG as a ChILD!!? how old are you people? Tim Burton's version came out just ten years ago... what are you talking about I'm not old!!
Am I the only person that thought the whole “big head” thing referred to her literal gigantic head, not her forehead specifically.
This doesn't stop Alice from being my first crush on a girl.
It sucks because I really like this actress as Alice, but the movie itself doesn't do her, the character, or Wonderland justice, so I kind of just want to see a remake of this reboot of a retelling that's actually good, with the same actress and atmosphere (and everything besides the plot, basically; also, no Johnny Depp just because he steals too much focus from the protagonist (no offense to him; I'd say it's not his fault he's so famous, but...)). Or just a sequel by a different director, but given the last one actually lost money, that's unlikely (and probably for the best).
Naur smth was up with kid me cause one of my kid crushes was fucking Johnny Depp Mad Hatter
How is it going now?
The first time I mustered the courage to ask a girl out, I was in middle School. I suggested we see a movie, but all that was out during the time was the first Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland.
A week later, my mom drove us to the theater, and because she didn't know what to do in her free time, she got an extra ticket and sat a few rows behind us.
No, there wasn't anything close to a second date.
Bruuhh idk what to react lol
Oof
alice: “all the best people are :)”
hatter: 🧿👄🧿
Lmfaoooooo😭
I would say the caterpillar does actually hold more importance than you place on him. He isn't particularly pompous and dismissive he is annoyed she will not answer a very important question. The "who are you" question is the most important question of the entire book as it is basically her growing up and finding out about herself who actually is she, as she grows up into an independent (for the time) women.
Even in the book, Alice struggled with her identity. She goes around thinking that perhaps she woke up as one of her classmates.
that's a very good point, huh. it's been a while since i read the book(s) but i'm gonna keep that in mind when i do! I would say that some of jack's point still stands though: the caterpillar is no wise old guide who mentors alice. he asks a crucial question that could've established a different theme than the tim burton film tried for here, but he's no wise old mentor.
@@aud7593 who said he was a wise old mentor? He's just a bored old catapillar that is there to ask her the most important question of the book.
@@Alex-cw3rz sorry but i do not remember the particulars of this video i watched apparently 2 years ago. have a good day tho!
The story is garbage but I loved the visuals
It's a shame burton casts the same people and borrows generic plot lines
When his characters and visuals are the modern equivalent of German expressionism
I do think the script was the issue, it needed a better script. I'm not sure if Burton wrote the script or not, but if he did he really just needs to stick to directing and not writing, or at least writing his own stuff.
@@ThePhantomSafetyPin I think Linda Woolverton stands behind the script, he was only directing.
@Róisín Grant The script needed some work but I really really liked the visuals, the background and the way every single character looked.
Mia Wasikowska is a fantastic actress and deserved better.
Eh Burton's visuals are better when he has more contrast in it like Edward Scissorhands. alice is kinda a bore to look at in comparison.
oh great, I always thought that aging up Alice in combination with making an uncannily attractive version of the mad hatter was a really suspicious choice, and boy howdy I sure hate being proven right
I always felt this movie felt for the trope: "im good looking so i am not the villain. Any other character that looks hideous deserves death and hate :) "
I almost thought this video was perfect, but I really need at least 5 minutes dedicated to cringing at the dancing at the end. God that plot and visual ruined any love I had for the aesthetic of the movie. You can't think it's beautiful after seeing Johnny Depp like that.
The ending baffled me even back then as a child. I mean, even if the entire wonderland plot narratively basically worked against the end message I still understood that what Alice is "preaching" then back in the real world was SUPPOSED to be the learned personal development of her adventure and yet even kid me couldn't help her from asking "Wait, where the fluffy unicorn cloud did she learn this?"
Well done! I always felt a vague distaste for this movie that went beyond "the merch will sell well at hot topic" and I think you put words and visuals to it in a very effective way. Thanks!
I remember going to the cinema in middle school and kinda liking it but it's mostly because i quickly developed a crush on alice in armour and the white queen
same, I was an edgy scene kid with almost no media literacy skills when this came out lmao
I get it tbh
As an owner of a large forehead, I approve this message.
I really don’t think the makers of this movie would be able to understand how true this interpretation of their movie is, because how many people realize that the adventure of saving a world, which is so often written for a man, is more often than not about doing what society expects of you?
It's a pretty generic "hero's journey" story where the only real twist is casting a woman in that role.
It's the male fantasy. And I don't mean it in rude way. We long to do a job and feel needed. That's why the ratio to say male gamers to female might favor the men more.
@@lastmanstanding7155 I don't think it's that simple. If it was Lara Croft wouldn't be that popular, male RPG platers wouldn't chose female characters and the difference between amount of male and female gamers would be much bigger
+Last Man Standing Dude, that's called being a person. Also, if you include mobile games, women play video games a great deal.
I've always thought of the Tim Burton films as a sort of half-sequels to the original tale. (either the original novel or the Disney film)
That the events of the actual original Alice in Wonderland story did occur to the Alice we see in these films, but off screen back when she was a little girl, thus causing her to talk to her Dad about all the strange visions and such; and that the older her has tried to bury those memories after her father dies as she has to deal with her mother and everyone else always telling her it was all nonsense.
This also helps to explain how she is "not the Alice they needed" in Wonderland, in that they all remember her as the young naive girl ready and eager to help them with their problems, while the Alice they got has grown older and more jaded thanks to life in the "real world," and has repressed all her memories related to Wonderland.
This is exactly how I took it, and how my companion took it. I was kind of surprised when I watched this analysis and the presumption was that this was Alice’s first trip to wonderland. I thought the sequel nature of it was well-understood.
They literally have a whole scene showing she was there as child Alice as well and she remembers them and the adventures by the end.
Tim Burton's works are visually gorgeous, everything looks amazing, but he also has a specific style and his stories fall flat in some way and i dont think his style fit alice in wonderland
Quick FYI: Killmonger wanted to bring ruin to the outside world and Wakanda as revenge. It was Nakia who first proposed helping the world (in the introductory scenes of Wakanda, too). Killmonger was just a psycho - a psycho with a somewhat understandable/sympathetic backstory, but a psycho nonetheless. Don't be fooled by Michael B Jordan's abs
They're very easy to be hypnotised by
They're just about as brainwashing as Josh Brolin's pecs, aye aye aye.
But....he's hot
Killmonger lost any and all sympathy I could've had for him when he murdered his fucking girlfriend
@@KOTEBANAROT YES! Thank you!