If you missed my post last week on the horrors of Michael Bay’s Transformers, you may not know that this month is Rage Month for me here. I’m dedicating my month to all the things that I hate and make me overwhelmingly sad on this inside. Last week, I talked about how Michael Bay took a dump on my childhood, and while I could dedicate an entire month to why I can’t stand Michael Bay (Anyone else notice he only has one movie that’s above a 60 [The Rock at a mediocre 67%], and only two above a 50%? Anyone else with those scores would have been kicked out of Hollywood by now. Michael Bay is considered a good director. I hate everything), I’d rather not lose all of my brain cells rewatching his tripe while also funding his next adventure in ruining everything in my childhood I hold dear, so I’m going to focus on another director who tends to punch me in the gut for no reason: Tim Burton.
Now, even I’m not insane enough to proclaim that Tim Burton is a bad director; on the contrary, he’s directed some of my favorite films (Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice) some decent ones (Sweeney Todd, Batman Returns) and one that I would have liked a lot more had I not fallen in love with the original earlier (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
Unfortunately, since 2005, he’s been directing mostly adapted screenplays from other movies, which is NOT what his best movies did. It’s almost as if the creativity bucket has run dry on what was one of the greatest directors in the modern age, and so now he does what he can to adapt old classics to his ways. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd were like this for me; definitely good, but they were products I liked that had been Burton-ized, and I knew the entire time that only Tim Burton could have made these movies. Not necessarily a big problem, mind you, but it does detract from immersion a bit to know that I’m once again entering Burton’s head instead of the movie I’m supposed to be watching.
That being said, I never had a reason to dislike anything Burton had done, much less hate it, until his last movie, a movie so miserable that I regretted watching it on an eight hour plane ride in which my only other option would have been staring at the empty seat in front of me; yes, that would have been far more enjoyable. I am talking, of course, about Alice in Wonderland.
First of all, I love Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It’s a drug trip of an adventure about, well, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Lewis Carroll got high off his ass one day and wrote a book, and we’re all along for the ride. And you know what? That was fucking awesome. I loved every minute of that book. Sure it wasn’t thematically there, but it was an experience, and an experience unlike anything you’d ever read before. If you haven’t read it, fix that. I’ll wait. The internet will still be here, I promise. It’s worth it.
There, caught up? Wasn’t that amazing? I’m glad we agree. Moving on to the movie…
…And it seems we’ve been tripped up from the start because Alice isn’t a little girl but instead a woman in her late teens/early twenties (I don’t know what age they were going for, but I’m gonna guess 23… damn it, 19. So close) who’s getting hit on by a guy she doesn’t like but is about to be forced to marry because that’s the way relationships worked back then. Ohohoho! I hope something strange doesn’t happen that forces her on a path of self-discovery that will lead her to stand up for herself at the end of the movie and refuse to marry the man who’s so clearly evil it’s comedic.
Oh wait, there’s a rabbit, and since this is a movie about Wonderland, I guess we’re going to do exactly that. I’m so glad that Tim Burton has already missed the point of the Carroll classic by placing the character of Alice into an overwhelmingly predictable character arc we’ve seen about a million times instead of focusing on a child losing her innocence in a drug-trippy world. Otherwise, I may have accidentally been ENTERTAINED!
…Sorry about that, lost my cool a bit. I just get a little angry when directors miss the point of a classic tale that means a lot to me. I’m sure he doesn’t do anything else to veer off the course of this clearly defined novel. So Alice enters Wonderland for what is apparently the second time since everyone already knows her. She denies that she’s Alice, but we clearly know it’s her since there’s a camera following her every move and therefore important.
So as she meets her old friends that she doesn’t recognize, they all start telling her that she has to become the savior of the White Queen…and fight the Jabberwocky…after collecting the Vorpal Sword…WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?!?
Alice in Wonderland is many things, but it is not a badass action chick cliche! We’re not supposed to go on a purposeful adventure to save the Kingdom Joan of Arc style; we’re supposed to wander aimlessly through the varied landscapes and marveling at how creepy it all is. How can Tim Burton, the guy who provided movie after movie of unsettling, unusual landscapes be missing the point of this? This would be like if Michael Bay was handed a script titled “Explosions” and made it a political drama in which no actual explosions occur. If nothing else, I thought Burton would get this right, but he couldn’t miss the point harder if he was trying to hit a bullseye with a dart 30 yards away while blindfolded, facing the opposite direction, and picking his nose with his dominant hand as he threw. Seriously, what the hell, man?
No, seriously, this is what he made Alice in Wonderland: a coming of age story of a nineteen year old woman in the Victorian Age who has to defeat the evil Queen of Hearts (who is supposed to be chaotic not evil. This is the same guy that made Beetlejuice for fuck’s sake. If anyone should know the difference between evil and chaotic, it should be Burton. How he missed it, I’ll never know) and her powerful Jabberwocky in order to gain the confidence she needs to overcome the social injustices she faces. I kid you not. Hey Burton, any other cliches you’d like to add while you have the time?
Wow, I spoke too soon. In the final fight scene, he literally dons Alice in battle armor very reminiscent of Joan of Arc (what’s scary is that he honestly intended all this cliche. Seriously, you’re Tim fucking Burton, the guy who made a career out of creating some of the most original masterpieces of our age, and you decided to sell out one of the greatest acid trips ever written?!? Really? My head hurts) and defeats the Jabberwocky as the words of her dead…father…motivate her to victory…
Really? The dead father trope wasn’t overused enough, huh Burton? You just had to give the heartbraking backstory to your character that every coming of age hero and their dog has had? Really? Honestly, at this point, I’m too exhausted trying to wrap my head over the idea that Tim Burton could make this tripe to care, so let’s just end this review.
I’d be willing to let all of these criticisms go, all of them, if he at least nailed the look and feel of Wonderland, but he didn’t. Yes, it all looks very nice, but Wonderland isn’t supposed to look nice. It’s supposed to be, well, trippy. Even Disney figured that one out, but the moments of true weirdness are few and far between, and they are always in the background compared to the predicable character drama that is apparently supposed to be more important.
I know I’ve said before that art can’t make a movie, but there’s a difference between a movie that has a story with art and a story that is art. Avatar, which I’ve railed on before, was a movie that was very pretty but was supposed to have a story focus that simply didn’t hold up to any scrutiny and was more predictable than a towel drying while hanging out in the sun. Immortals, which came out today, is a movie that is sold purely on its art and stylistic violence and doesn’t try to have a story, so looking nice is all it needs to do and it does that really well.
Of course, pulling the second one off is much tougher than the first, which is where my trepidation about this movie began, but I never thought Burton wouldn’t even fucking try. Instead of a noble attempt falling just short, he used every cliche in the book and put his Alice in Wonderland in the Avatar category instead, which made it a horrible fucking movie since the story is god-awful.
I haven’t even begun talking about the side characters yet, but I’m so mad at this point that I’ll wrap it up quick. Johnny Depp does quirky well as the Mad Hatter, but the deep sadness revealed along with his overly zealot patriotism is supposed to make us sympathetic, but instead reminds me that he’s exactly what he isn’t supposed to be. The Mad Hatter is supposed to be insane and unsettling: the perfect embodiment of the world around him. Instead, he’s characterized and meant to look like a pretty weak, but still very archetypal hero. In fact, all my criticisms about side characters are like this: the actors do a good job, but the script they are given is crap and their characters aren’t what they are supposed to be, so I don’t like it.
I suppose if you could forget this was the story of Alice in Wonderland (don’t call it a re-imagining, because none of the themes are even remotely intact), then one could be happy with overwhelmingly generic slop that doesn’t have anything to add to the cinematic world as a whole, but that would still be a waste of a movie. However, I can’t forget that this is the story of Alice in Wonderland because it’s fucking called ALICE IN WONDERLAND! If you didn’t want to make an Alice movie, Burton, you could have done anything you wanted, just SAY SO!
Whew! That was exhausting. Well, at least I can trust the American public not to throw their money at this garbage.
Wait, Alice in Wonderland was Tim Burton’s highest grossing movie by far? And ninth of all time? And Avatar made over 2.5 billion worldwide? And Michael Bay has four movies, including one he openly apologized for making, in the top fifty highest grossing movies of all time?…
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I hate everything.
Next time, if I haven’t committed seppuku in front of Michael Bay’s house in protest, I’ll write about a band that let me down big time.
My head hurts…
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