And while that time wasn’t wasted, per se, watching Alice Through the Looking Glass gives the impression that it may have been mismanaged.ĭirected by James Bobin, whose strengths are in comedy (he helmed both of the terrifically funny, new Muppets movies), the new film echoes the original’s “return to Wonderland” set-up by reuniting with its heroine (a charming Mia Wasikowska) as she intrepidly sails the high seas as the captain of her father’s ship, evading adversaries with Desperaux-esque daring and a pinch of peculiarity. The bulk of the time, it seems, was spent attempting to figure out a story that could justify a return trip to Underland, one that could sustain a feature film without short-changing characters, alienating fans of the first, or revisiting all the same plot points. That’s right – Disney almost certainly had its sights set on turning Wonderland into a franchise from the second those box-office receipts came rolling in, so that half a decade has passed between the first Alice and this follow-up is enough to warrant a raised Hatter eyebrow or two. So the only real question to beg of Alice Through the Looking Glass is: what took so long? And yet… Alice in Wonderland made over a billion dollars. Burton was right to delve into the fantastical tableaus of “Underland” – but he wound up lost amid the visual wonder, with no hope of straightening out an already zig-zagging, up-in-the-air narrative. The problem with adapting Lewis Carroll’s lackadaisical, topsy-turvy stories for the big screen is that they defy storytelling convention by nature. It was, at best, a great coffee-table book, overstuffed with resplendent visuals – but calling Alice in Wonderland even a decent film would be to do it a great kindness. Disney’s first trip down the rabbit hole, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, made over a billion dollars globally six years ago, a staggering figure that has led some to surrender to the tide of popular opinion (combined, of course, with the haze of nostalgia) and start believing it was actually good.Ī supremely confusing, color-blasted concoction, Alice exposed Burton’s biggest weakness – that is, basic coherence – more thoroughly than any of his previous cinematic outings, and did so whilst failing to infuse any of the director’s Gothic imagination or endearing weirdness.
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