People always say that the book isn't as good as the movie. I actually completely agree with this, and usually let the movie stand alone from the book, plot-wise. However, I feel that if you are going to make a book into a movie, and use the character names and snippets of the plot, you should still have some of the same messages the book conveys.
Is this a ridiculous expectation? Nope. I don't think so. If you're using the title, at least send a FEW of the messages the author intended to send.
Apparently, though, the creators of these books-turned-movies do not feel the same way. Perhaps the most upsetting case of this, for me, was the adaptation of Ella Enchanted, the book that taught me to love reading and sparked my obsession with fairy tale adaptations. They had the right actress: Anne Hathaway proved in the Princes Diaries that she could play the endearing klutz with sheer perfection. They had an amazing story, one that I didn't think it was possible for them to mess up. But alas, they did. Of course they did. Idiots.
http://www.impawards.com/2004/posters/ella_enchanted.jpg
Anyhow, so I went into the most recent Alice in Wonderland movie with this expectation that at least a few of the messages Carroll conveyed in his children's masterpiece would be made known in the film as well, especially since this movie was to be aimed at older audiences, many of whom would have realized the deeper meaning behind Wonderland and be looking for references the these ideas. I knew from the previews the plot was a lost cause, but I was sure that something of Carroll's message on animal treatment would survive.
Well... first of all, at the end of the movie Alice ends up killing the Jabberwock. Granted, the Jabberwock was out to get her, and he was working for the Red Queen, who was quite the conniving evil character and was not exactly pleasant to animals herself, ordering the head be cut off a frog for eating one of her tarts, something he only did, apparently, out of starvation. However, there was a certain bloodthirstiness throughout the entire movie, centering around a sort of prophecy about Alice, that was completely out of character with the original story. There were, of course, instances where I saw some of Carroll's original ideas. This came mostly from the white queen, actually (ironically, also played by Anne Hathaway... maybe she just likes to be in bad book adaptaion movies?). She was a polar opposite to the Red Queen, loved by all species, airy, light, perfect, etc. There were also a few instances where animals would apologize to each other or help each other out, such as when the other frogs didn't reveal that the eventually beheaded frog was the tart-stealing culprit, or when the flamingo being used in the Red Queens game of croquet apologizes to the hedgehog it's about to blast into. But on the whole there was this air of desperation not for Alice to find herself but for Wonderland to be saved. In fact, in the end, when Alice kills the Jabberwock, I felt like she was not only going against Carrolls original idea for her, which was supposed to make her sympathetic to all animals, but also against her original convictions in the movie, where she keeps repeating that she will not kill anything. I really, honestly did not think that she was going to go through with it: I thought that there would be some revelation that would save her from having to commit this act. But, alas, the Jabberwock died at her hand. And because of this, I was not only disappointed with the movie (although there were other instances, such as the Mad Hatters random break into dance at the end, that also contributed to my low opinion of the movie) but also less sympathetic to Alice as a character, and less impressed by the way she stood up to societies expectation of her by not marrying the obviously ill-suited man chosen for her and instead taking over the family business.
Anne Hathaway as the kind, white queen.
http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/7100000/The-White-Queen-alice-in-wonderland-2009-7116862-581-691.jpg
Basically, I was looking for something in this movie, some snippet of the things that I loved about Alice in Wonderland, and mostly, I was disappointed. The Mad Hatter was the closest thing I saw in the movie to how I sort of imagined him in the book, and in this case I may be blinded by my love for Johnny Depp.
http://iconsoffright.com/news/AIW_DeppHatter.jpg
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