Alice in Wonderland: Tim Burton Style

This is really just a rant for a blog post I read by someone who attempted to beta read Witch Tourniquet but found him/herself too busy with college.

This person ranted about how Tim Burton's destroying what Alice in Wonderland is supposed to be about. He claims it's really a depressing story because of the monotonous routine of The Mad Hatter, the fact that Alice sees herself as the only sane one, and that madness may not really be madness, or that we are really all are mad in our own way.

What this person failed to realize is that Alice in Wonderland is targeted at children, not young adults or adults, though we all really enjoyed it. A child would not be able to dissect those messages from the novel let alone understand what the messages are talking about. What did this person think Disney's cartoon version was? Disney's cartoon version created Alice in Wonderland in the way a child would see it, something colorful, innocent, and fun. This is exactly what Tim Burton is doing. Since Disney is also representing this new Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton put himself in the viewpoint of the child and is creating it the way a child would see it. A child would not see all the underlying messages, themes, symbolisms, ect... So, if he claims Tim Burton is a hack director because of this, he needs to think again.

This isn't to say that Lewis Carroll did not create Alice in Wonderland with the intentions of conveying something bigger. This is what is so great about literature: we are allowed to see it in more than one way. But a child would not be able to see it at the depth this person proposes.

Also, knowing Tim Burton's dark sense of humor, I have a feeling the movie will try and correspond with the madness present in the book.