# Is Alice in Wonderland filmable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 31, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175 "2016-05-31T17:13:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/1 "2016-05-31T17:13:03Z")
Is it possible to make a faithful screen adaptation of Carroll’s stories? No one’s really tried since Disney in 1951 – it seems like the time is ripe for something that merges modern CGI and Carroll’s wonderfully clever dialog. Tim Burton had a chance, and blew it…keeping the character names and jettisoning everything else. And the Looking Glass follow-up seems to be a complete disaster. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/2 "2016-05-31T17:20:53Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > No one’s really tried since Disney in 1951… [Hardly anyone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland#Cinema_and_television) ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/3 "2016-05-31T17:33:12Z")
Thing is, Burton could have done “Alice in Wonderland” as a straight-on adaptation. It would have worked too. So what if it doesn’t have a plot, and is just Alice wandering around encountering strange people and situations? That sounds exactly like what Tim Burton is good at. Serve up your goofy characters and set-pieces and put your patented Tim Burton stink on it, and it would be perfect. Instead we have some horrific “chosen one” plotline? You don’t need a goddam plot, you’re goddam Tim Burton and you’re making goddam Alice in Wonderland. I’m still annoyed about this, obviously. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/4 "2016-05-31T17:40:12Z")
I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t completely faithful, as long as it made a reasonably successful attempt at capturing the same sensibility, logic, and humor as the original. The mistake is to treat it as a fantasy adventure rather than a comedy. I’ve said before that I would have liked to see what the Monty Python guys could have done with it. (As an aside, I quite liked at least some of [what they did with The Wind in the Willows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxxnB5lrCQY).) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/5 "2016-05-31T17:56:36Z")
I love _Alice_, but the two books are primarily a literary delight. It’s very difficult to dramatize them. Walt Disney got it right when he explained the problem with his version: “Alice has no heart.” And it’s true. Alice is not a particularly compelling character; she shows no real emotional depth. She’s clever, but that’s it. In addition, the story structure doesn’t allow for dramatization. It’s basically: Alice finds a strange creature/object/situation, and reacts. Then she finds a strange creature/object/situation, and reacts. Then she finds a strange creature/object/situation, and reacts. Then she finds a strange creature/object/situation, and reacts…and then wakes up and discovers it’s all a dream! Not very dramatic. The second issue is that people _expect_ to see certain elements, some of which only appear in _Through the Looking Glass_: Jabberwocky, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Humpty Dumpty are the most obvious. So you immediately have to make changes. And to add them, it’s another round of “Alice finds a strange creature/object/situation, and reacts.” {Note that “Jabberwocky” appears as a poem in a book in mirror writing. Not very dramatic.) I actually liked Burton’s version of _Alice_. He knew the issues, so created his own story with the characters. It may be a standard quest story, but it _is_ a story. But the one version that managed to make it all work was the [1983 TV version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69BootOOHLk) starring Kate Burton (Richard’s daughter) as Alice. It was based on a 1932 play by Eva La Gallienne (which was also the basis for the 1933 Paramount movie, a showcase for various stars like W.C. Fields and Cary Grant). In it, Burton plays an actress who’s about to do a performance of _Alice_. The rest of the cast don’t think she’s up to the part of reciting “Jabberwocky” and expect her to fail, take them down with her. Smoking (Yes, smoking) in her dressing room before the show, she goes into Wonderland. The events all work to her learning the poem, so at the end, she goes on stage and triumphantly recites it. It’s that triumph that makes this more than “Alice finds strange…” and the events in Wonderland work toward that triumph, giving the story a real structure. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/6 "2016-05-31T18:03:56Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Instead we have some horrific “chosen one” plotline? You don’t need a goddam plot, you’re goddam Tim Burton and you’re making goddam Alice in Wonderland. > > I’m still annoyed about this, obviously. The appeal of the _Alice_ books is their whimsy and humor. Remaking _Alice in Wonderland_ as a hackneyed action film made as much sense as changing _Winnie the Pooh_ as a man-eating grizzly. I was particularly :smack: by the trite way he chose to “empower” Alice by making her into an action hero. In the original books, Alice is smart, brave, inquisitive, and sensible. She wasn’t a stereotypical girly-girl, especially by Victorian standards. Having her vanquish the Jabberwock with swordplay rather than with cleverness was extraordinarily unimaginative. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/7 "2016-05-31T18:07:57Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > _Winnie the Pooh_ as a man-eating grizzly I’d watch that movie! ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/8 "2016-05-31T18:09:30Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The appeal of the _Alice_ books is their whimsy and humor. Remaking _Alice in Wonderland_ as a hackneyed action film made as much sense as changing _Winnie the Pooh_ as a man-eating grizzly. > > I was particularly :smack: by the trite way he chose to “empower” Alice by making her into an action hero. In the original books, Alice is smart, brave, inquisitive, and sensible. She wasn’t a stereotypical girly-girl, especially by Victorian standards. Having her vanquish the Jabberwock with swordplay rather than with cleverness was extraordinarily unimaginative. Or, as the Honest Trailer puts it. Have a character (Alice) who is told a prophecy and refuses to do it by…um…fulfilling the prophecy. I would say as a tried and true representation of the books, Alice is unfilmable. The random wandering that is the “plot” of the books kinda-sorta works for literature\*, but not for a movie. You need to do SOMETHING in order to put it on film. \*As an aside, I thought Alice in Wonderland was a slow plodding read, and Through the Looking Glass bored me to all hell and never finished it. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/9 "2016-05-31T18:26:11Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The appeal of the _Alice_ books is their whimsy and humor. It is if you ignore the jokes about murder. Or someone shouting “Off with her head.” ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/10 "2016-05-31T18:50:39Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It is if you ignore the jokes about murder. Or someone shouting “Off with her head.” There’s quite a bit of what we today would call cartoon violence in the books (demonstrating to me that the appeal of cartoon violence predates the existence of animated cartoons). ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/11 "2016-05-31T19:18:15Z")
Why do you need a plot? Why can’t the movie be just a bunch of things that happened? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/12 "2016-05-31T19:33:02Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I’d watch that movie! With Leonardo DiCaprio as Christopher Robin! ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/13 "2016-05-31T19:39:55Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It is if you ignore the jokes about murder. Or someone shouting “Off with her head.” They’re about as scary as Elmer Fudd trying to kill the wabbit. And the Queen of Hearts never actually has anybody beheaded. The King pardons them behind her back, or the soldiers just ignore her. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/14 "2016-05-31T19:46:24Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > [Hardly anyone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland#Cinema_and_television) Does no one remember the animated made-for-TV version in the '60s? With Sammy Davis Jr as the voice of the Cheshire Cat? I even remember his song…What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? Or did I dream that? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/15 "2016-05-31T20:00:42Z")
Burton’s version featured implied nudity (when Alice grew too big for her clothing), which seems faithful to the source material. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/16 "2016-05-31T20:11:03Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Burton’s version featured implied nudity (when Alice grew too big for her clothing), which seems faithful to the source material. [John Tenniel didn’t seem to think so](https://medium.com/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland/sir-john-tenniel-s-classic-illustrations-of-alice-in-wonderland-2c3bbdca3a77#.qfktcm5gr) (scroll down to #5). ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/17 "2016-05-31T20:13:35Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I love _Alice_, but the two books are primarily a literary delight. It’s very difficult to dramatize them. Walt Disney got it right when he explained the problem with his version: “Alice has no heart.” I’ve always liked the Disney version, but I’ll admit that Alice herself has no particular character. But she is, after all, Carrol’s fantasy woman and people’s fantasies tend to be a bit shallow (see Mary Sue). But more importantly, she’s also just a narrative device to go around and encounter the weird happenings that occur in Wonderland. And those happenings are all allusions to the world of 19th century politics, math, and social mores. So unless you’re both smart and somewhat familiar with what the world would have been like back in the day, the events are just random nonsense, and not very amusing. For someone who is enjoys riddles, math, etc. and has a bit knowledgeable or can reverse engineer from the stories what the world must have been like, the skits are quite interesting and humorous. The problem with filming the Alice books isn’t that Alice is a dull character, it’s that most modern children probably won’t appreciate the contents and particularly not if the people writing the screenplay don’t understand the original content, and mangle it as they perform the adaptation. Really, the best way to create a modern Alice movie, and remain true to the original Alice, would be to find all the ways that the modern world is strange and scary, such that a child might fear growing up in it, and lampoon those things. I’m pretty sure that, that was Carrol’s primary intention with the original books (and math topics that went in were more for his amusement than his target audience) and that’s what made them popular back in the 19th century. He wanted to take all the strange and scary things that Alice Liddel might fear encountering as an adult, and show that they’re all harmless nonsense. The books are a put-down of the world at that time, and it makes them not-applicable to a modern audience. You could probably reuse the original characters, the Mad Hatter, the Walrus and the Carpenter, etc. but update the jokes to fit a modern discussion. And, if you did that, it probably wouldn’t be necessary to try and make Alice more interesting. Alice is just the camera, not the action. That still might not make it a smash hit, but it would at least be a proper Alice in Wonderland movie. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus\_alba](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quercus_alba/32/4061_2.png) [@Quercus\_alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus_alba)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/18 "2016-05-31T20:29:06Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I’d watch that movie! I’d pay to see the _trailer_! “Something stalks the Hundred Acre wood…” ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/19 "2016-05-31T20:34:51Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > Does no one remember the animated made-for-TV version in the '60s? With Sammy Davis Jr as the voice of the Cheshire Cat? I even remember his song…What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? > > Or did I dream that? 🙂 The X-Rated version had “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing on a Knight Like This?” [There was a reasonably accurate-to-the-book version made in 1966](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060089/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7). Alas, I have to pronounce it a failure, for lack of affect. The performances are all flat and dull and lifeless (except for Leo McKern, who hams it up.) [The 1999 Made for TV version wasn’t awful](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164993/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4). It wasn’t great, but it had some good moments. It stapled on a meta-plot – in real life, Alice is afraid of a commitment, and Wonderland is her psychological need to adapt. Shrug. No great sin. It “unifies” the plot, since all of her encounters with Wonderland personae are aimed at addressing her psych. needs. I kinda liked the 2010 version. Okay, yeah, it was really screwed up in a lot of ways, and diverged hugely from the book. Shrug. It was fun, and had some really good bits. Alice turning into the hero from Jabberwocky was really cute; I approve wholeheartedly of that little inversion. (Sigh. And some dorky bits. Futterwacken, for instance.) ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175/20 "2016-05-31T20:58:11Z")
FAILURE? The 1966 BBC-TV version is my favorite! Look at that cast list full of oddballs! Peter Cook, Michael Gough, Wilfred Brambell, Peter Sellers, Michael Redgrave, John Gielgud, Malcom Muggeridge! Directed by Jonathan Miller! Music by Ravi Shankar! You used to be able to watch the whole thing (it’s only an hour long) on YouTube, but it looks like it’s been taken down. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alice-in-wonderland-filmable/756175.md?page=2)