Clearly this has been around for awhile, and turned into numerous movies, but in my view only 4 “versions” merit serious attention (and that doesn’t include several erotic versions which buzz around my subconscious like annoying bees).
Original Book, by Lewis Carroll. This is actually two books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and (written much later) Alice Through the Looking Glass. I read an annotated version of both, by Martin Gardner, which included the original illustrations by John Tenniel. What we think of as “Alice in Wonderland”, in terms of story and plot, is the first one. TTLG features an Alice six months older who ventures through a mirror and takes various steps, analogous to chessboard moves, and winds up as a Queen – along with the White and Red Queens – after reaching the “8th row”. Most Alice movies and stories, most notably the 1951 Disney version (mentioned below) seem to use Wonderland as a basis and inject some elements, but not the plot or story, of TTLG; I haven’t seen TTLG itself adapted as a complete movie in its own right. The TTLG elements which wound up elsewhere are the White Queen (in the Burton/Depp movie), the White Knight (played by Matt Frewer)(in the Alice! Miniseries), and the talking flower garden & Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum in their storytelling mode (1951 Disney film). Note that in TTLG the White Queen and Red Queens are merely chess counterparts and get along fine with each other – and with Alice, who by the time she meets them together at the same time (she had met each of them separately earlier in the story) is a Queen herself. The Bandersnatch and Jabberwocky are mentioned in poems but not met in person.
In fact, much of both stories is poetry. This is where the annotated version comes in handy, as Gardner reproduces the “originals” of many of the poems used, some being poems Carroll himself wrote before Wonderland and simply rewrote for this book, and others are parodies of existing popular poems which Carroll adapted to his story. There are also dozens of puns, and Carroll – while a mathematician – loved word-play and logic puzzles, which he liberally injected into his stories.
Wonderland story. Alice falls asleep and chases a White Rabbit into his hole. After that she has a series of encounters: the Dodo, The Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter & March Hare, finally winding up at a trial presided over by the Red Queen. At trial, she herself is not the defendant, but the Knave of Hearts, who is portrayed as a lush (drunk). It is at the trial, when all hell breaks loose, that she wakes up.
Who was Lewis Carroll? His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics teacher in 19th century England who never married. His fixation was on prepubscent girls, though he maintained that this was a non-sexual preference. In modern times we would look askance at a man who preferred the companionship of girls over mature (post-pubescent) women – or boys, as we’re convinced (with some strong conviction, if not evidence, in the case of Michael Jackson) that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. He even took nude pictures of the girls, though with the knowledge and permission, and in the presence of, the girls’ mothers. At least, to this date, no evidence of tomfoolery has ever surfaced despite ample opportunity for such to be developed and investigated. It seems that Carroll was asexual and favored girls because they would not make advances at him or be disappointed if he made no advances at them.
I remember in high school psychology class, being shocked by Piaget and Freud suggesting latent sexuality in the minds of very young children, e.g. boys’ Oedipus complex. But I’ve noticed that young girls seem to have a latent understanding of their role as child-bearers, though they clearly do not know or conceive of the actual manner in which babies are made, much less any understanding that adults consider the process enjoyable in its own right (“recreational sex” vs. “procreational sex”, as Frasier and Lilith put it in “Cheers”). The simple proof is the abundance of baby dolls and miniature strollers, to which girls take with natural inclination. They can see and appreciate the end result without any knowledge or awareness of how to get there.
Boys, on the other hand, are nowhere close to this: their fixations is on “Action” and “violence”, being soldiers, policemen, firemen, or astronauts; their entire outlook is externally oriented. The epitome of this is Buzz Lightyear, the “Toy Story” character (marvellously voiced by Tim Allen). Not only is Buzz not domestically inclined (there is no Mrs. Lightyear, nor, for that matter, a curiously friendly male companion) he won’t even stay on the same PLANET! “To Infinity and Beyond!”
So girls work backwards from babies to sex, whereas boys are never thinking of babies at all and discover sex when their bodies change – and even then, the focus is on SEX itself (“recreational”), with the baby-making element (“procreational”) entirely absent from their consciousness. This is why “girls mature faster than boys”.
Anyhow, “Alice” was a real person, Alice Liddell, to whom Carroll would make up stories as he went along. She suggested to him that he should actually write them down for public enjoyment, as she obviously recognized his talent and believed it would best be shared as much as possible. She actually lived quite a long time – a newsreel of her in 1932 exists – but the Alice from Tenniel’s illustrations was either whole cloth imagination or a different girl, as the real Alice Liddell was a brunette who looked nothing like the Alice in Tenniel’s drawings.
Tenniel. The original illustrator. I have the window sticker Alice talking to the Caterpillar in the back hatchglass of my Formula. In 1901 another illustrator, Newell, took a stab at the venture, but his 1901 version does not appear to have been reprinted. Gardner refers to his pictures by comparison to Tenniel, but never reproduces a single one. With no reprints available, you can imagine that a 1901 original is not cheap. So I can’t comment on Newell’s pictures.
For his part, Tenniel was working closely with Carroll and they collaborated on the pictures. Alice herself is portrayed as a young blonde girl with long hair and a pretty dress. It seems the Disney illustrators updated Tenniel’s basic archetypes but remained essentially true to the Tenniel originals. Tenniel was also drawing for Punch (political cartoons).
Characters. No matter what book, movie, etc. adaptation, we can expect certain stock characters to appear in some form.
Alice. Usually, but not always, a young white blond female from England. She is fairly intelligent and full of wonder, but baffled and sometimes frightened or discouraged by the whole thing. She may even doubt her sanity or simply write it all off as “this is just a dream”, though that doesn’t work for the 2010 model Alice.
White Rabbit. Wearing a waistcoat and holding a pocket watch, he scampers about complaining that he’s “late”. I liked the Disney version best, but the 2010 model was well done. Incidentally, “White Rabbit” was done by The Great Society, Grace Slick’s pre-Jefferson Airplane band, a bit longer and more psychedelic.
The Dodo. Fussy and pompous in the Disney original, somewhat different in the others. In the “Alice” miniseries he’s turned into a humanoid played by Tim Curry.
Mad Hatter. The MC of the tea party, he has a fairly modest role in the Disney classic yet is more of a central character in the other two movies (see below). The 2010 movie gives him somewhat of a backstory, whereas he doesn’t appear mad at all in “Alice”.
March Hare. Sort of Trapper John/BJ Hunnicut to the Mad Hatter’s Hawkeye. I liked his Disney version, somewhat of a rogue relative to the White Rabbit.
Cheshire Cat. As noted below, I think the Disney original pretty much defined this spectacularly bizarre character, who wears his madness with panache and flair, more so than even the Mad Hatter himself.
Caterpillar. Surly and pompous, he sits on his mushroom puffing unknown smokables from his hookah pipe. I have the classic picture in the rear window of my Formula. As with the Dodo, in the “Alice” miniseries he’s turned into a humanoid.
Red Queen. Arrogant bitch who consistently demands “off with their heads” re: anyone evoking the least displeasure. Well played by both Kathy Bates (“Alice”) and Helena Bonham Carter (Depp/Burton).
White Queen. Absent from Wonderland, she shows up in TTLG, as a nervous, fuss-budget white counterpart to the Red Queen. In the Depp/Burton film she’s portrayed by Anne Hathaway and has a major role.
Knave of Hearts. His major original role was as defendant in the Wonderland trial, accused of stealing tarts from the Queen of Hearts. In the Depp/Burton film, played by Crispin Glover in a vaguely Aragorn-esque fashion, he acts as the Red Queen’s enforcer, which clearly takes him well outside his original role.
Having given the basics, here are the three major films. Note: “Wonderland”, with Val Kilmer as John Holmes, is NOT about Alice, it is simply a depiction of the porn actor’s “role” in a series of killings. Also, there have been many other film/TV versions of Alice in Wonderland which I know of but have not seen, and which are obscure; only the Alice in Wonderland/Lewis Carroll fanatics are aware of them and pay any attention to them. I’m focusing here on the more mainstream adaptations.
Disney Animated Film. This originally came out in 1951. I think of this as the classic standard, by which the others – animated or live action – should be judged. Alice is young and pretty, but too young to be of interest to anyone. The caterpillar is a real hoot: “who R U???” he puffs on his mushroom (predating text messaging by several decades). The flowers accuse her of being a weed (surely she bore no resemblance to cannabis sativa!), and the Cheshire Cat is fantastic. “He’s mad too,” he warns Alice, referring to the March Hare. When she objects to associating with mad people, he advises her, “oh, you can’t help that. You might have noticed, I’m not all there myself…” and proceeds to fade away. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum helpfully narrate the story of the “Walrus and the Carpenter”. The White Queen is MIA, but the Red Queen makes up for that – “who’s been painting my roses red?” she screams (“not pink! Not green! Not aquamarine!” her cardsmen say). I tend to think of this tendency to inject adult elements into children’s films as a recent phenomenon, but I can see that as far back as “Fantasia” (1940), Disney managed to be remarkably trippy and surreal even back then, yet is still charming and innocent enough for children.
“Alice”. Somewhat trippy, and very long (3 hours) this was originally a 2-night cable movie (on SyFy). It’s got an impressive cast, including Tim Curry (Dodo, looking nothing like one), Kathy Bates (the Red Queen), Matt Frewer (the White Knight), Harry Dean Stanton (the Caterpillar, looking nothing like a caterpillar), and Colm Meaney (the King of Hearts, considerably larger and more assertive than the Disney version), who I will always think of as Miles O’Brien from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Catarina Scorsone, who I haven’t seen anywhere else – and a brunette (???) – plays Alice. Unlike the other Alices, this one definitely appeals to a post-pubescent male libido; she is definitely equipped. The plot is extremely convoluted and taxed my imagination and patience. The Walrus and Carpenter are here – the Carpenter turning out to be Alice’s long lost father. Sleeping people from real life are enslaved here, sucked dry in a quasi-casino for emotions, very Matrix-y. There is a power struggle against the Red Queen, led by the Hatter (Harry-Lee Potts, fairly conventional appearance relative to Johnny Depp, bearing a strong resemblance to Jack White). And Alice is pursuing her real-life fiancé, who turns out to be the Red Queen’s son. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone with the patience to watch it (possibly spread over two nights the way it originally was) as it’s definitely on par with the next film.
Johnny Depp/Tim Burton film. This was also from Disney. Like “Alice”, this movie doesn’t attempt to re-tell the story, so much as revisit the dreamworld with Alice slightly older, giving it somewhat more of an adult plot and story line – as with “Alice”, there is a rebellion against the Red Queen, basically meaning that Alice has to slay her monster enforcer, the Jabberwocky, and by doing so effectively disarm her of the means of subjugating the dream world, liberating everyone – well that’s the plan, at least. Johnny Depp, heavily made up, is the Mad Hatter. He seems to know just how far, how over-the-top, he can push the role (similar to Jack Sparrow). Helena Bonham Carter, in big head and little body, plays the Red Queen in similar fashion to her character in “Fight Club”. The White Queen appears here, played by Anne Hathaway, as “cute but psycho”. Alice herself is played by Mia Wasikowska, a fairly plain and dull girl who appears to be pretending to be Daria or the super-low-key girl from “Roseanne”, Sara Gilbert. I was not too thrilled with the caterpillar, Absolem, voiced by Alan “Hans Gruber & Severus Snape” Rickman, more serious than trippy and grotesquely realistic unlike the original cartoon version, who was still surly but at least visually appealing. The Knave of Hearts is here: Crispin Glover, with both arms! I wasn’t too crazy about the Cheshire Cat here, who was a more cerebral than playful. Entertaining, well done, of course, but no better than the “Alice” miniseries and NOT a serious threat to the archetype of the Disney original, though to be honest, I didn’t get the impression that Burton intended to replace the original so much as do his own homage to it, and to that extent it certainly succeeds.
There is a 1933 Paramount live action movie, with Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, among other A-list stars at the time, but I’ve yet to be able to rent it on DVD. Gardner gave it poor marks. There is also an X-rated version, which although available for $33 on DVD, I haven’t seen – if a DVD is $8, I’ll say “what the hell” and buy it sight unseen, but for $33 I’d rather know it’s not crap. “Bored of the Rings”, the National Lampoon parody of Lord of the Rings, was atrocious; many spoofs or parodies are clumsily bungled by lesser lights well beneath the genius of the original author/creator, so I’m not hopeful that the X-rated version does the original justice; but as I said, I haven’t seen it.
Music. I’m not aware that anyone has turned Wonderland into a full-length concept album. Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is itself a reworking of a similar song Grace Slick wrote in her prior band, Great Society. Much of Syd Barrett’s writing has a whimsical, child-fantasy nature to it, though the album title Piper at the Gates of Dawn is taken from Wind in the Willows, not Wonderland. By extrapolation, Marc Bolan’s earlier T. Rex work, when his band was still named Tyrannosaurus Rex, is very Syd-influenced.
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