Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D

After reading Alice in Wonderland and having viewed the movie I realize that it would have been satisfactory to evaluate the movie based solely on the books read for class. Because the book allows for your imagination to go wild in visualizing the beloved characters I found the constraints and stereotypical portrayals of the movie didn’t allow for the story to really come alive to me. I realize it isn’t really a remake; it’s more like a sequel that gave a different view of the books characters. Tim Burton is a great director who always takes movies a little bit closer to the dark side but I’m not really sure what his intentions were with this movie since I feel that most of the time the characters end up making fun of themselves and each other. Several instances of animal cruelty appeared throughout the movie, nothing really changed much from the book.



Like in the book the Red Queen is cruel and gets joy from inflicting pain on the creatures around her. She was exactly what I expected: needy and greedy with a low self esteem that was hidden by an oppressive attitude that made those around her pretend to be her friends.



One of the most memorable scenes is that of Alice playing croquet with the Queen using hedgehogs as balls and flamingos as a club. In the book, Alice doesn’t appear to have any concern for the animals while in the movie she actually doesn’t participate in the game itself and instead helps free the hedgehog before growing and being renamed ‘Uhm’ and becoming a guest of the Queens. The Queen then uses a pig as a stool and has monkeys hold up a table top in which Alice is to sit on. I think of this as another level for the Queen, she doesn’t only mistreat animals but she also treats them as objects in her world and not as living creatures.



Another scene in the movie in which the Queen is on the balcony also shows the animals struggling to maintain the furniture’s location in fear of the Queen’s wrath. While Alice appears to be a threat to animals in the book in the movie she is portrayed almost as an activist for the rights of animals since she is constantly seems to help animals. In one scene she returns a stolen e eye to a creature that she once feared and goes against the dormouse that had it as a trophy, thinking that it is the best option.




The most interesting character was the White Queen, while appearing only a few times in the film she plays an important role in Alice’s life. Because it is necessary for the Jabberwock to be defeated, she pushes Alice to do it since she has take a vow not to hurt any living creature. However, I feel that though she isn’t the one that has caused creatures its life she has conspired against it and helped end its life. I felt that though she was portrayed as the nicer, she was very deceptive in her actions. Besides asking Alice to end the life of a creature because she herself couldn’t she also held a lot of power over all animals.



She almost seemed like a puppet master having the puppets do her work for her. These are only a few instances that I felt were important in both the book and movie. I focused on events involving animal cruelty not only because that is what the course covers but because the rest of the movie wasn’t that entertaining, I didn’t enjoy the love story developed between Alice and the Mad Hatter or the story of Alice in the real world.