Al­ice in Won­der­land Live Ac­tion vs An­i­mated: We’re All Mad Here

WARN­ING: This ar­ti­cle will con­tain spoil­ers for both the live ac­tion and an­i­mated films. 

In­tro

I re­al­ized dur­ing my an­i­mated Al­ice in Won­der­land watch that while I thought I had seen the film, I must not have – there were so many scenes that I had ab­solutely no rec­ol­lec­tion of. In fact (even though I’m a fan of the weird and creepy Tim Bur­ton films), I had not seen any film from the Al­ice in Won­der­land fran­chise. I as­sumed that (like all the other films we’ve looked through) the an­i­mated Al­ice in Won­der­land would sim­ply be a more mod­ern­ized retelling of the an­i­mated film. So, you can imag­ine my shock when I turned on the live-ac­tion Al­ice in Won­der­land and found that it’s sim­ply a con­tin­u­a­tion of the story. 

This fact makes my job in com­par­ing the two films dif­fi­cult, so this will be more of a film re­view (par­tic­u­larly on my thoughts about Al­ice’s char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment).  

Al­ice’s Cos­tume

But first, let’s talk cos­tumes. As you can see, the live-ac­tion film tried to em­u­late the iconic an­i­mated blue dress. All things con­sid­ered, I think it was done fairly well – af­ter all, the blue dress could­n’t be done per­fectly be­cause live ac­tion Al­ice wore her blue dress to a fancy party. I also like live ac­tion Al­ice’s “ugly” dress.

See, in the an­i­mated film when Al­ice grows/​shrinks her dress changes with her. How­ever, live-ac­tion Al­ice’s clothes do not change with her, so she has to im­pro­vise with clothes. 

Plot

It is very in­ter­est­ing to me how sim­i­lar the plot is even though this is a se­quel. See, in both films these things take place in the same chrono­log­i­cal or­der: Al­ice finds her­self falling through a mag­i­cal rab­bit hole, she is in a room with a small door so she must shrink to fit but for­gets her key so she has to grow then shrink again, then she runs into the Cheshire Cat who di­rects her to the hat­ter, she runs into the Mad Hat­ter and the March Hare and joins them for a tea party, then she needs to find the Red Queen, then the Red Queen tries to kill her so Al­ice needs to es­cape. 

The Red Queen

Speak­ing of the Red Queen… her de­sign is very dif­fer­ent. There are many ref­er­ences to the queen’s large head, with the White Queen (who is the Red Queen’s sis­ter) spec­u­lat­ing that there is a growth in the Red Queen’s head that makes her like cut­ting peo­ple’s heads off. Her char­ac­ter is the same, though, just made a bit darker (af­ter all, the an­i­mated film was made for chil­dren).  

The White Queen

A new char­ac­ter, the White Queen, was also added to the film. The White Queen is a very ob­vi­ous jux­ta­po­si­tion to the Red Queen. She does­n’t kill any­thing, but for some rea­son is en­tirely fine with hav­ing Al­ice slay a mon­ster on her be­half (which very much con­fused me… Al­ice does not want to kill this crea­ture, she just does so be­cause the White Queen wants her to). 

The Mad Hat­ter’s De­vel­op­ment

With the White Queen comes a back­story for the Mad Hat­ter – as well as a lot of trauma. Ac­cord­ing to the Hat­ter, he comes from a long fam­ily of hat­ters who serve the royal fam­ily. He was pre­sent when a bunch of peo­ple were mas­sa­cred by the Red Queen – and was aban­doned by the White Queen. Se­ri­ously, this woman took an oath to do no harm to any­thing but is just leav­ing her peo­ple to be killed? 

The Hat­ter is part of the rea­son that Al­ice’s char­ac­ter de­vel­ops into the per­son she needs to be for Won­der­land. He fre­quently tells her that she lost her “much­ness” and that she is­n’t the “same Al­ice” she was when she was a child. He pushes her to re­gain her “much­ness” (which does ben­e­fit her when she re­turns to her world) and when she does Hat­ter is Al­ice’s biggest cheer­leader. When Al­ice is fight­ing the “evil” mon­ster, Al­ice says “this is im­pos­si­ble.” Hat­ter just looks at her and says “only if you be­lieve it is”. This gives Al­ice the courage to fight the beast – and win. 

Al­ice’s Char­ac­ter

This brings me to Al­ice’s char­ac­ter change from the an­i­mated film (when she was a child) to the live ac­tion film (when she was a young adult). Young Al­ice is stub­born, prone to tem­per tantrums, and over­all just frus­trated by any­thing that does­n’t make sense to her. I would say that none of these traits ap­ply to live ac­tion Al­ice. Live ac­tion Al­ice is your stereo­typ­i­cal crazy per­son. In fact, I would say that her per­son­al­ity very closely re­sem­bles that of Luna Love­g­ood from the Harry Pot­ter fran­chise. She does­n’t un­der­stand many things in the world, makes “funny” com­ments, and fre­quently re­peats back things peo­ple have said to her, par­tic­u­larly her fa­ther. Hon­estly, I don’t see how young Al­ice could have de­vel­oped to young adult Al­ice. Yes, Al­ice does lose her fa­ther, fre­quently hal­lu­ci­nates, and has dreams of Won­der­land every night but I can­not imag­ine that Al­ice’s per­son­al­ity would take such a 180 de­gree turn. Even when Al­ice re­gains her “much­ness” she is­n’t act­ing like young Al­ice, but rather just be­comes a more bold ver­sion of her­self. 

Con­clu­sion

This is not to say that the new film is a bad film. I ac­tu­ally quite like the dark turn on the clas­sic, which has def­i­nitely been some­thing au­di­ences have been de­mand­ing in re­cent years (I first think of the Nut­cracker film). How­ever, I don’t like that it is sup­posed to be a se­quel to the an­i­mated film be­cause I sim­ply feel that Al­ice is too dif­fer­ent in char­ac­ter. 

What do you think? Have you seen the sec­ond live-ac­tion Al­ice in Won­der­land film? (I haven’t, maybe that would change my per­cep­tion!). Did any­one else get weirdly ro­man­tic vibes be­tween Hat­ter and Al­ice? I will ad­mit that I did and it made me very un­com­fort­able. 

That’s all for this ar­ti­cle, folks! We’ve got one more to go then you are no longer ex­pected to read through my Dis­ney film re­views.