Tim Burton doesn't understand ALICE

Speaking with Jim Hill Media, Tim Burton spoke in a little more detail about his plans to remake Alice in Wonderland with Alice as a warrior in armor going up against the dreaded Jabberwock with the Mad Hatter at her side.

“In all of the other versions of Alice in Wonderland that I’ve ever seen, I’ve never felt an emotional connection to the material,” Burton explained. “Alice was always this passive little girl who wandered from place to place, meeting one crazy character after another. What Linda and I have tried to do is give this story some sort of emotional grounding.”

And with that, I have officially lost hope for Burton's Alice. Sure, it will look great. But it's clear that Burton just doesn't understand how the original Alice works, and why it's been popular for so long. Alice is a surreal masterpiece in which Alice finds herself in a confusing, nonsensical world and struggles to find her way through it. Alice isn't passive. She spends Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass exploring her surroundings, asking questions and getting into arguments with mad people.

I'm similarly discouraged by Burton's comments about Johnny Depp's performance as the Mad Hatter.

“(The Mad Hatter has) been portrayed in animation and in live action before. But in most of those versions, the Hatter is just this one note character,” Burton continued. “And Johnny – just as he always does – dug deeper. He tried to find a grounding for this character, something that you feel, as opposed to just having the Hatter be mad. (Johnny’s) goal was to try and bring out a human side to the strangeness of this character.”

The reason people have always been fascinated by the Mad Hatter is that he's so hard to figure out. He speaks in riddles without answers. Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tried to spell out all of Wonka's psychological issues, and as a result Depp's character, while strange in an interesting way, had nothing like the power of Gene Wilder's performance in the original film. Wilder's Wonka was a mysterious and dangerously moody trickster, playful one moment and inexplicably malevolent the next. We didn't need to know about his daddy the evil dentist, and we don't need to know about whatever tragic happenings made the Mad Hatter such a wacky guy.

Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.