Eowyn in Wonderland

The new film version of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, starts out very like Alice in Wonderland, but after she chases a white rabbit, falls down a rabbit hole and drinks something labeled, "drink me," and eats something labeled, "eat me," not so much. As time goes on, the film is less like Alice in Wonderland and more like a film with a bunch of characters named Alice, Red Queen, White Queen etc etc in a very derivative sequel that reminds one of Lord of the Rings and The Golden Compass. Oh yes, there is a Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), a Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry's voice), a caterpillar (Alan Rickman's voice), a Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, well mostly her head), a White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and an Alice (Mia Wasikowska), of course. 

And it all looks very Wonderland (in 3D!) but I guess the original story wasn't, hmmm, derivative enough. So Tim Burton thought to himself, let's have a dragon (Jabberwock) and a famous sword wielded by a young woman in armor (Lord of the Rings) and have her ride around on a Bandersnatch that looks a lot like a polar bear (The Golden Compass). And since Johnny Depp is playing the Mad Hatter, he can't be a minor character who isn't in the story much, so now he's the main character. Maybe Tim could have called the movie, "The Mad Hatter in Wonderland."

To be fair, even though the Jabberwock and the Bandersnatch are not characters in the Alice books, they were contained in a famous poem that appeared in Through the Looking Glass,

 "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

And, of course, it was never meant to be Alice fighting the Jabberwock. But the scene actually works quite well in the movie. I think that all these extraneous action scenes were added for the 3D because most of Alice in Wonderland works just fine in 2D. 

There are three kinds of characters in Alice in Wonderland, those who are completely or mostly a real actor (Depp, Wasikowska, Hathaway), those who have their head attached to a CGI body (Bonham Carter, Tweedledee and Tweedledum), and those that are completely CGI. Some of the characters are really great, especially the CGI characters like the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar. Depp is always good but his Mad Hatter is a bit too Willy Wonka. Bonham Carter as the Red Queen is less than one dimensional, yelling her iconic, "off with their heads" over and over and over. I thought Wasikowska was very good as Alice. She is only 20 and I haven't seen her before except a bit of In Treatment. She was also in Amelia, and Defiance but I still haven't seen them. 

Tim Burton, what can I say? He's great. I'm not sure what he was thinking with this movie. With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he put his imprint on it, but stuck mainly to the story. His version of Alice in Wonderland brings First Knight to mind. This was a film with Sean Connery, Richard Gere and Julia Ormond playing characters called King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, which was almost but not entirely unlike the story of King Arthur. All this being said, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a very entertaining movie. And the scene with Alice as Eowyn was definitely a nice "girl power" moment. So what the hell, go see it. You'll probably like it better if you've never read the books. But who cares. As the poem says, Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.