Alice Through the Looking Glass
01/06/16 Filed in: Cinema
We saw this film on the day of its release, after returning from holiday. I hadn't seen Tim Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland, so I can't make comparisons, but it seems that the critics feel that the earlier film was far better. Perhaps not having seen the 'better' film allowed me more latitude but I didn't find this latest Alice film at all bad. I've never read the book, but understand that the film bears absolutely no similarity to it.
The story revolves around time, personified quite brilliantly in my view by Sacha Baron Cohen. The Mad Hatter, played once again by Johnny Depp, is in terminal decline following the discovery of his first hat, which he made as a child for his father, and which he thought had perished along with his family at the hands of the Red Queen, Iracebeth, played by Helena Bonham Carter. The fact that the hat survived has convinced him that his family did not perish, but nobody will believe him, not even Alice. Alice, the White Queen and the creatures of Wonderland hatch a plot to help him.
The White Queen (Anne Hathaway) tells Alice that there is a way, but it is dangerous. She must go back in time to try to change the events that led to the Hatter's family's demise. In this quest she encounters Time, and steals his Chronosphere, a time machine that will allow her to try to alter past events, but which unfortunately is also needed to keep universal time, and thus everything dependant upon it ticking along hunky dory. Time, the embodiment that is, pursues her.
Alice soon finds that affecting past events is less easy than she may have thought, and in the end it is the Red Queen who, having stolen the Chronosphere, actually changes the past - with disastrous consequences.
The story revolves around time, personified quite brilliantly in my view by Sacha Baron Cohen. The Mad Hatter, played once again by Johnny Depp, is in terminal decline following the discovery of his first hat, which he made as a child for his father, and which he thought had perished along with his family at the hands of the Red Queen, Iracebeth, played by Helena Bonham Carter. The fact that the hat survived has convinced him that his family did not perish, but nobody will believe him, not even Alice. Alice, the White Queen and the creatures of Wonderland hatch a plot to help him.
The White Queen (Anne Hathaway) tells Alice that there is a way, but it is dangerous. She must go back in time to try to change the events that led to the Hatter's family's demise. In this quest she encounters Time, and steals his Chronosphere, a time machine that will allow her to try to alter past events, but which unfortunately is also needed to keep universal time, and thus everything dependant upon it ticking along hunky dory. Time, the embodiment that is, pursues her.
Alice soon finds that affecting past events is less easy than she may have thought, and in the end it is the Red Queen who, having stolen the Chronosphere, actually changes the past - with disastrous consequences.
I'm not sure why the film has been so heavily criticised. Obviously, if you were expecting the story from the book you would be disappointed. For me the plot was reasonable enough. In Wonderland anything goes, and perhaps the only thing that was a bit questionable was Alice's role as a ship's captain when she was in the real world, a very unlikely scenario in those times.
The animation effects in these modern films are really quite astounding. It's easy to sit back and watch without taking in just how realistic Wonderland appears. If you could transplant a film like this back to the dawn of cinema, people would surely find it hard to believe that Wonderland did not exist. Such is the sophistication of modern cinema and today's audiences.
The animation effects in these modern films are really quite astounding. It's easy to sit back and watch without taking in just how realistic Wonderland appears. If you could transplant a film like this back to the dawn of cinema, people would surely find it hard to believe that Wonderland did not exist. Such is the sophistication of modern cinema and today's audiences.