Alice Through the Looking Glass: A Sequel of Familiar Squabbles
In the second installment of the blockbuster “Alice” series, the heroine finds herself observing the childhood squabbles of her old acquaintances instead of embarking on fantastical adventures.
After a three-year expedition to China, Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) returns to London to discover that her mother has sold the shares of the trading company owned by her family. As a result, Alice risks losing her ship and captaincy. However, her family problems take a backseat when Alice, passing through a mirror, finds herself once again in the magical land. She learns that her friend the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is suffering from a life-threatening depression. The only thing that can console the Hatter is the resurrection of his family. Thus, Alice sets off to the castle of Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) to convince him to let her travel into the past and save the Hatter’s family from the Jabberwocky. When Time flatly refuses to help her, Alice steals the Chronosphere, which allows for time travel, and transports herself back several years.
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James Bobin, the British director of “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” is known for directing the recent “Muppets” films and frequently collaborating with Sacha Baron Cohen. In particular, he participated in the development of the comedian’s characters such as Ali G, Borat, and Bruno.
The Shadow of Tim Burton’s Alice
“Tim Burton has filmed ‘Alice in Wonderland’!” In 2010, Disney made viewers an offer they couldn’t refuse, and it earned the studio over a billion dollars. However, commercial success did not translate into critical acclaim. Burton’s “Alice,” written by “Beauty and the Beast” screenwriter Linda Woolverton, was criticized far more than it was praised.
Perhaps its most egregious departure from the original was the fundamental reshaping of the main character. Woolverton, once brought in to write “Beauty and the Beast” as a “feminism specialist,” tried to saturate “Alice” with feminist clichés and turn Miss Kingsleigh into a symbol of resistance against the patriarchal norms of Victorian England. However, the screenwriter failed to recognize that Alice from Lewis Carroll’s book was already the perfect embodiment of the feminist ideal. What else can you call a girl full of self-esteem who does what she thinks is right, says what she thinks, and in the climactic scene shouts at a marked tribunal: “You’re just a pack of cards!”? Just imagine how this was perceived in 19th-century England by those who saw “Alice” as more than just a fun nonsense tale!
Alan Rickman voiced the Caterpillar for the English soundtrack of the film. This was his last work in cinema.
A Modern Alice?
In trying to make Alice more modern, Woolverton significantly weakened the heroine and turned her into a toy in the hands of fate and duty. Miss Kingsleigh did not reject the absurd laws of the magical world. She meticulously followed them, becoming a “errand warrior” for the White Queen and her associates. Of course, this is a necessary and noble cause. But Carroll wrote about something completely different, and his little heroine was much more radical than Mia Wasikowska’s character, even though she did not utter any feminist slogans or brandish a sword.
It would seem that a three-year round-the-world voyage as captain should have, at least by the second film, turned Alice into a heroine who does not play by other people’s rules and does not try to please her friends. Ideally, after such a dangerous adventure in a purely male company, the heroine should have reacted to the Hatter’s depression like this: “Stop whining, you rag! And you call yourself a healthy man! My father died too, but I’m not whining! Let’s have some rum for our dads and sing a pirate song, and then you sew me five colorful earflaps. I’m sailing to Russia soon, and you’ll take your mind off your snivels and get to work!”
But, of course, a heroine from a 21st-century Hollywood film cannot show such disrespect for the feelings of a man with painted nails. And so Alice, throwing all her captaincy out of her head, once again turns into a warrior on errands and goes into the past, even though she knows that she is not only committing a crime but also risking destroying space-time. The fact is that the Chronosphere usually feeds the universal Clock and ensures Time’s eternal life. Therefore, the very fact of its theft puts the universe at risk. But the desire to please a friend outweighs common sense, even though the captain of a ship should be able to soberly assess the risks.
A Lack of Novelty
The above could be considered adult nitpicking of a children’s fairy tale film if the Chronosphere had moved Alice to an amazing world full of new, vibrant characters. But the novelty of “Alice Through the Looking Glass” begins and ends when Alice enters the spectacular castle of Time and meets the owner of the Chronosphere and his serving clockwork robots. After that, the heroine’s adventures are reduced to visiting the past of people already familiar to the public, and viewers learn where the Red Queen got her huge head, why the capricious villain hates the Hatter, what quarreled the Red and White Queens in childhood, and under what circumstances Time cursed the Hatter.
Perhaps there are such ardent fans of Burton’s film that they don’t sleep at night, pondering such questions. Such viewers will be given a long-awaited sound sleep by the picture – it is possible that it will be right during the session. But everyone else is probably waiting for much more from “Alice Through the Looking Glass” than not at all magical and not surprising family sketches from the childhood of the Hatter and the queens. Lewis Carroll worked hard a century and a half ago and came up with a completely new adventure in a new entertaining world for the second book. And the creators of the $170 million blockbuster offer viewers only childish quarrels and unsuccessful falls and suggest worrying about who ate a cookie many years ago and did not sweep up the crumbs.
When it comes to the climax, Alice’s final quest is reduced to running from point A to point B in time C. Moreover, no one interferes with her in this. On the contrary, everyone helps her with their last strength. At least in the first picture, the heroine had to finish off a terrible dragon. Didn’t Woolverton teach that from series to series the obstacles in the path of the heroes should become higher and more insurmountable?
Another thing is that almost all the characters from the first series appear in the second, and they are still quite funny. Sacha Baron Cohen also adds charisma and humor, who this time does without indecent jokes. And, of course, “Alice” is still “an explosion at a surreal design factory,” although most of the visual finds of the film are borrowed from the previous film. But what can you call a successful movie that promises an original and bizarre fairy tale, but instead delves into childish and adult whims and contains surprisingly little new and interesting? I can’t bring myself to say it…
In theaters from May 26.