Special Post

So I realize that I have already made a post on a version of Alice in Wonderland, but I have to do another one. Over the break I went to see the new version of Alice In Wonderland. And I must say, It was amazing. But as I watched I thought “Hey I could do my special post on this! There is A LOT of animation”. I have to warn you…if you have not seen this film and care about spoilers…this post may upset you. If not, please keep reading! 🙂

When Tim Burton took on the task to re create this fantasy the world knew that it would be different than all the other versions of the tale. It is known that he stated  that this is not a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, or an adaptation of the original story, but something completly different and new…which I dont really believe. A lot of the same characters are in this film that appeared in either one or both of Carrolls original books, and he films previously made. There is more of an in-depth look at these characters, and explanations of why they are the way they are, which IMO is pretty great to see. The world that Lewis Carroll created in his books have always fascinated me. They are whimsical and dream like with characters that can be different depending on ones imagination. In the popular animated version of this film that Disney originally released, all of the characters were animated, and given life like qualities to the best of the animators ablilty at the time. As more time went on and other non-annimated versions of this story were released the made up characters were portrayed in many different ways. I have seen every version (I think) of these storys made so far, and each has a different take on certain charaters. The clip below, which is not one of my favorite versions, shows the different characters and the lack of animation used. These characters, like tweedle dee, are played by real people with great makeup.

Tim Burton did not use this technique and instead chose to use a lot of CGI and Motion Capture Technology. The majority of the film was shot on green screen. There were live actors in the few beginning scenes when Alice was not in “Underworld” and some characters while in the fantasy world that were real. The live actors in Underworld, such as Johnny Depp’s character The Mad Hatter (who was AMAZING by the way), were almost always enhanced with Motion Capture technology. IMDB states that Motion Capture Technology is “Motion capture technology is a type of CGI, that utilizes the ability to read a performer’s physical performance and create a fluid life-like wire frame and eventually a textured character”.  There were many different aspects of animation in this film that I noticed. I had thought that the real live characters that were ehnanced for theatrical purposes would look very…unreal. But I was pleasantly surprised that when I saw the Red Queens head, that was enlarged to be three times the size of a normal head, that it looked almost real and after watching for a while, it became almost normal to me. This was not the case however with the characters that were not played by real actors. The caterpillar, the march hare, tweedle dee and tweetle dumb for instance looked very unreal, unlike the hallmark version of this film above. I thought to myself, did Tim Burton do this on purpose? This land that Alice returned to was one of fantasy for us. It was a real place for her however. The characters that need to be created had fluid motions and all, but they looked obviously fake. In a time where films like Avatar and The Polar Express come out with AMAZING animations, why do some of the characters in Burton’s film seem lackluster to me? The detail on the characters were amazing, but as a while…they just seemed fake. I believe that the White Rabbit and the twins stood out to me. Others however, like the Jabberwokey were great and believable.   I was not able to find any information online that could explain this, but I figured that it has to do with the Fantasy part of the film. Underworld, as Alice finds, is a real place and not a dream. But to us it is something that is out of a story. In our world there are not magical talking and smoking caterpillars or monkeys that hold up tables and act as furniture. These things can exist in our mind, but they will never be as real as in real life. I was not overly upset with the animation. If my theory is correct, I would love the film even more. This story was never intended to be real, and if the animation were such that the differences between real and make believe were blurred, the amazing story may not have gotten across to the audience.

I really believe that Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass are timeless stories that are meant to evoke the imagination in everyone. The characters and emotions that manifest from this story are different for everyone, and that is the appealing part to me. The characters can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person reading, or watching the story in this case. Tim Burton’s way of keeping some very real and some fake aspects of the film was a focal point of why I liked it so much. And while I don’t believe it when he states it is not a sequel to the original story, he does take this new part of the story and make it his own with these techniques. And to leave you…just one more clip…mainly because I love it so much!