Alice in Wonderland

Last night, I actually made it out to a movie theater and saw a movie before it came out on DVD. This is unusual for me since I haven't been to the movies since last summer. Alice in Wonderland was a very well done movie production to say the least. Tim Burton really managed to capture the spirit of the story without it being all about Johnny Depp. Before seeing the film, the reports that I had heard were that it was "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe meets The Nightmare Before Christmas meets Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" but to me it seemed more like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz than any other Tim Burton movie.

Alice in Wonderland appeals to our sense of intrigue and fantasy. It is intriguing as children that there is a whole other world on the other side of the rabbit hole, or wardrobe, or train platform, or rainbow that is connected to our world but one does not know the existence of the other. That is what separated fantasy from other genres of fiction. All fiction relies on some degree of "What if?" but the "what" and the the "if" and the "?" are all much more inflated in fantasy than they are in more traditional realistic or historical fiction. Some may ask if there is any difference between science fiction and fantasy and at one time I read a pretty solid explanation. I cannot remember who it was that said it (it was either Arthur C. Clarke in a preface to a C.S. Lewis book or C.S. Lewis in a preface to an Arthur C. Clarke book) but the difference to them was that fantasy is something you wish could happen but cannot, and science fiction is something that could plausibly happen but we wish would not. In that case I am not sure where Star Wars fits because I would love to live in that galaxy but it is usually classified as sci-fi, but that is another discussion for another day.

If you like Tim Burton movies, go see this one. If you do not like Tim Burton movies, see it anyway. It is different from the others. If you like Johnny Depp, see this movie. If you do not like Johnny Depp, see it anyway. Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover and Anne Hathaway are really good, too. If you like fantasy or if you ever liked fantasy, see this movie. The worst case scenario is that you get to complain that they don't make them like they used to and you will be more motivated to contribute to the blogosphere on this subject.