Alice in Wonderland (2010 movie)

Mia Wasikowska had the biggest meh of a career. A few indie movies, a couple respectable performances and then she disappeared.

Alice in Wonderland made a Billion but I don't remember Wasikowska ever benefitting much from that. It seemed like a lot of the marketing was directed at Johnny Depp who's hardly in the movie. Even Helena Bonham Carter.

Wasikowska did have one huge flaw, she didn't have it. She was good but she felt wooden at times. Her line delivery was sometimes off.

I'm well aware "Alice in Wonderland" made money and I'm sure there are people who enjoyed the movie. So what I have to say is based on my own perspective as a fan.

Out of every project Tim Burton got involved himself with, I'd assume Alice in Wonderland would be the one project where he'd allow his full creativity to bloom. Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton? How could it ever fail?

Sadly, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland turned out to be a generic, cliched, even predictable fantasy film. Mia Wasikowska's Alice is bland and spends most of the film in what seems to be a semi-depressive state, Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter came off as a contrived hero to give Depp a lead part to get his hands on. We even get the predictable final battle which every fantasy movie needed to have (thanks a lot, The Lord of the Rings). The only time we get something genuinely Burtonesque is whenever Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen is onscreen, she and the mad visuals are the only reasons to watch "Alice in Wonderland". Everything else is filler. Why not just adapt the source instead of giving us a second sequel?

Platform(s): PC

Genre: Platform

Estimated year of release: 2010-2012

Graphics/art style: Side-scroller with character models that looked 3D, dark and gloomy atmosphere. Models weren't very stylized.

Notable characters: Alice, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat... Although you could only play as Alice.

Notable gameplay mechanics: You could eat/drink the potions that would make you bigger/smaller, you could go underground and through the inside of hollow trees.

Other details: I am 90% sure it was on the Disney website, it was a browser game. All my searches lead me to a and although the atmosphere is a bit similar I'm sure it's not the one I'm looking for. It's also not the action-adventure game released by Disney Interactive Studios.

Just finished watching new Alice in Wonderland. Loved the Disney version, performed in a school play version as a kid. Loved Adventures in Wonderland (the book) when I was young.

SO WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH? Like, when the did the story become about fucking war in wonderland and a break dancing sword fighting 'hero' Hatter? What's with the pop song in the credits? And how the hell is this one of the top ten grossing films of all time? This is probably one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Tell me I'm not alone in this? If everyone loved it then Reddit, please take my eyes and ears for they are clearly not working.

Also, on a side note: Tim Burton lost it years ago. I loved his early stuff so much, but all these bull shit adaptations and remakes; I've grown to resent the man.

I just finished Oz: The Great & Powerful, and it has all the same problems as Burton’s Alice, notably that it’s a prequel/sequel to a famous children’s story that follows many similar plot beats as the source material, except now there’s a prophecy about how the lead will save this weird fantasy world from evil monarchs, and the CGI environments look utterly atrocious. I don’t think Raimi deserves to be “spaced” for this, but it was so dire and devoid of emotion.

Stray thoughts:

*James Franco is SO BAD in this. My wild take is that, if Raimi was going to cast one of his recent actors, I think Tobey Maguire might have done a good job going full “Bully Maguire” for the first hour of this.

*The only good CGI character is China Girl, and that’s largely for the same reason that the toys in the first Toy Story looked so good while the humans looked like monsters: she isn’t supposed to look real. Meanwhile, the Zach Braff monkey looks like, in the words of The Atlantic’s film critic David Sims, a bowl of farts. (I also like that China Girl carries a knife that’s pretty much as big as she is for protection.)

*We all stan the legend that is Mila Kunis, who tricked the producers of That 70’s Show into casting her despite being too young by telling a hilariously thin technical truth, but she’s woefully miscast here. She wasn’t made for the river of ham. (Those leather pants, tho…)

*Then again, I’m not quite sure anyone could make the Wicked Witch of the West work as she’s written here.

*It’s truly astounding how much better a movie made in 1939 looks than this movie. And I’m not talking about effect; the editing of the Munchkins’ gymnastics, for example, feels so choppy.

*Speaking of better-looking movies, a few shots made me think of Avatar, and how much better that movie, released 4 years earlier, looked. Will studios ever learn that they can’t cheap out on CGI if they want it to look anything more than “passable”? Probably not.

*I did enjoy most of the signature Raimi camera movements, notably when the fence post came toward the balloon during the tornado sequence.

*I also liked the requisite torturing of Bruce Campbell.

*Seriously, why were we as a culture so obsessed with prophecies??