Alice in Wonderland (the original)

A few nights ago, my room mate and I watched the original Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. I haven't seen it since I was in first year university so I had forgotten some of the best parts of the movie.

After watching the original though, I think I have figured out why I didn't enjoy the Tim Burton version of the movie as much as I had originally enjoyed the cartoon classic. Tim Burton formed his movie to be a sequel to the Disney version. The Tim Burton version takes place when Alice is in her 20s and she is facing a difficult decision on whether or not to become engaged to a man she does not truly love. To escape tis reality she dives into a rabbit hole and rediscovers Wonderland.

But it's not the same as when she visited the first time. The first time she was there all of the characters seemed so light-hearted and content with their Wonderland world. The second time she goes, however, there is a dark undertone which follows Alice as she re-encounters character after character. This could be because when Alice visits the first time she is six years old and does not have much to be sad or worried about in her real life. What does a six year old have to worry about other than behaving herself and trying to do her best in school? When she visits as a twenty year old, her vision of the world has obviously become more clouded through her maturity; she is being pressured into being married without loving her fiancée, she has surely seen the darker parts of the world including poverty and war, and she has surely by the age of twenty made friends and lost them for whatever reason. Since Wonderland exists in Alice's head, it is no wonder that the happy-go-lucky place she once knew has know become dark and almost ominous.

Another thing that I didn't really realize until I watched the original was that this sequel was not a musical. I had not forgotten that Disney made a musical but I had just put it out of my mind. I guess this sort of adds to the happy and bubbly place that Alice originally encounters when she is six. Without the musical aspect, it definitely adds gloom to Alice's new idea of Wonderland.