Alice in Wonderland
Tim Burton has achieved cult status in many moviegoers’ minds. With a career that began at The Walt Disney Company in 1979, he has been involved in classics such as Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton’s latest project saw him directing the epic 3D fantasy adventure Alice in Wonderland, in which 19-year-old Alice returns to the fantasy world she first visited as a child.
Q: What appeals to you about this story?
TB: In any fairy tale land there is good and bad. What I liked about Underland (according to the film version, when Alice visited as a child, she misheard the name and called it Wonderland), is that everything is slightly off, even the good people. That, to me, is something different. It’s so much a part of the culture. So whether you’ve read the story or not, you’ll know certain images or have certain ideas about it. It’s such a popular story. The reason we did something with it is that it’s captured the imagination of people for a very long time.
Q: Why do you think Alice in Wonderland is still popular, more than 140 years after its publication?
TB: It somehow taps a subconscious thing. That’s why all those great stories stay around, because they tap into the things that people probably aren’t even aware of on a conscious level. There’s definitely something about those images. That’s why there have been so many versions of it. As a movie, it’s always been about a passive little girl wandering around a series of adventures with weird characters. There’s never any kind of gravity to it. The attempt with this was to take the idea of those stories and shape them into something that’s not literally from the book, but keeps the spirit of it.
Q: When you were first approached to direct, what was your reaction?
TB: They gave me a script and they said 3D. And even before I read it, I thought, that’s intriguing. What I liked about Linda Woolverton’s script was she made it a story, gave it a shape for a movie that’s not necessarily the book. So all those elements seemed exciting to me. What I liked about this take on the story is Alice is at an age where you’re between a kid and an adult, when you’re crossing over as a person. A lot of young people with old souls aren’t so popular in their own culture and their own time. Alice is somebody who doesn’t quite fit into that Victorian structure and society. She’s more internal.
Q: Which characters in Alice appealed to you more?
TB: I like them all. I think this material suffered in the past because all of the characters are just weird. Okay, Hatter’s weird. Cat’s weird. Rabbit’s weird. We tried to give each one their own particular quirks, so that they each have their own character.
Q: Growing up, did you have a favourite children’s book?
TB: I was a Dr. Seuss fan. It was easy to read. I liked his drawings. But the reason I wanted to do Alice is that it was a really interesting challenge. I didn’t feel personally, like I might on another project, like, oh, there is one great version out there, so to try and do another one might be a problem. With Alice, there are some interesting ones, but I don’t know if any are completely successful.
Q: What was your approach to the film?
TB: I was much more fascinated by the iconic images. I think people are always surprised when they go back and read the stories, because they don’t have that Lord of the Rings sweeping narrative. They’re absurdist. Surreal. But those characters are in our dreams, our tales. Those things that stay in your brain. Why do all these musicians write songs about it? Illustrators are recalling it all the time. You see it in other imagery. It was key to try to make that world. The things that I felt were unique to Alice they’re unique because they’re so different. Like the bizarre size changes. And where you have some animals that talk and some that don’t. It seems quite random in what Carroll did. But at the same time, it’s not. There’s something very deep. Things that seem random maybe aren’t? The goal is just to try and capture that.
Q: What is Johnny Depp’s approach to playing such a vivid character as The Mad Hatter?
TB: It is an iconic character and it’s been portrayed in animation, in live-action. I think Johnny tried to find grounding with the character, something you can feel, as opposed to him just being “mad”. With a lot of versions, it’s just a one-note character, and his goal was to bring out a human side to the strangeness of the character. I’ve worked with him for many years, and he always tries to do something like that, and this time was no exception.
Q: Can you talk about why you chose Mia Wasikowska for Alice?
TB: She has both a young quality and an old quality. Very grounded – some people are just all over the place. But some people, they have that old soul quality. And that’s what we felt was important for this Alice. But at the same time, to be young – there are people with old souls who are also naïve at the same time. There’s a certain slight passiveness to Alice that’s always in the material. So we wanted to give her more of a quiet strength, which Mia has herself. I just liked her quality. I always like it when I sense people have that old-soul quality to them. Because you’re witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that.
Q: Is it Underland or Wonderland? What does it look like in this film?
TB: It is Underland and has always been Underland, but according to the film version, when Alice visited as a child, she misheard the name and called it Wonderland. Everybody’s got an image of Underland. I think in people’s minds, it’s always a very bright, cartoony place. We thought if Alice had had this adventure as a little girl and now she’s going back, perhaps it’s been a little bit depressed since she’s left. It’s got a slightly haunted quality to it.
Q: Are you taking a unique approach to technology with this film?
TB: Well, [senior visual effects supervisor] Ken Ralston’s done this. I haven’t done this before. It’s a puzzle, and the movie doesn’t materialise until the end. What’s been the most difficult thing is, after production ends, you usually have a movie – you see the shots and then you spend six months to a year cutting it. This doesn’t work that way. It’s a very Alice in Wonderland-like process. It’s a little backwards.
Q: How did you incorporate available technology into this film?
TB: Our approach to this was a bit more organic, in the sense that Ken Ralston and I discussed what we liked and didn’t like about animation, live-action and other technologies. We had that conversation. We decided on a mix – we’d have real people, but also animate characters, and then manipulate them. So, we just tried to pick and choose what we used with each situation. That’s the thing about technology. There are so many ways to use it.
Q: Why did you choose to make the film in 3D?
TB: Well, 3D is not a fad. It’s here to stay. It doesn’t mean that every movie’s going to be made in 3D. But at the same time, Alice in 3D, just because of the material, it seemed to fit. So, instead of it just being a given, we tried to treat it as though it was a part of Wonderland. Matching the medium with the material.
Q: Where do you see the future of movies going, now that you have this mixture of 3D and live-action?
TB: I was in animation several years ago. It was pronounced dead, and then they stopped doing hand drawn. So, the good news is that there are more forms for everything, which is great. There should be 3D, drawn animation, computer animation, stop-motion. It’s all valid. It’s all great. And it’s better now than it’s ever been. I was struggling for 10 years to get a stop-motion movie made. Now, you can do it – no problem.
Alice in Wonderland premieres this month in cinemas across South Africa.
Story & Pix © Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures
