The Failures of the Film Adaption of Carol's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

The inventive world of Wonderland and Alice’s journey in to her own imagination is more then merely a children s story. Looking deep at the symbols and structure of the story one can see that it becomes more complex and abstract as Alice gets deeper and deeper in her journey in Wonderland. Lewis Carol wrote the book in 1876 and Disney produced its own animated version of Alice in Wonderland no more then twenty years ago. The Disney production aimed at a younger audience, shows Wonderland as a very colorful and vibrant place, full of flowers, trees and a majestic garden of wonder and glory. Although Disney is successful at doing that, it fails in showing the hidden aspects of the story, the aspects of the novel that need to be dug into to comprehend. This is most likely because it was made a younger audience.

Alice encounters many strange characters in Wonderland, most of which are characters such as the White Rabbit, or the Caterpillar, and some who are deranged humans such as the Mad Hatter. The film was able to capture the characteristics of most characters like the White Rabbit and Caterpillar, but it didn’t well describe the Mad Hatter. It is true that the novel shows the Mad Hatter to be a very silly and illogical character. He talks about having a happy non-birthday instead of a happy birthday and reversing the meaning of many things like words and such. At one point during the tea party the Mad Hatter presents to her an illogical argument stating:

“Take some more tea,” said the Mad Hatter to Alice very earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet, so I can’t take more.”

“You mean you can’t take less, it’s very easy to take more then nothing.”

That part, which was not in the film, showed how the Mad Hatter is able to turn almos...

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...ing, including many ideas and concepts that need to be read into to understand. The film left out these ideas in order to focus it more to children, and by doing that it missed out on the whole other side of Alice of Wonderland.

The film and novel, both which deal with the mind of a young and curious girl, bring out different aspects of youth and imagination. The novel deals more with abstract concepts such as evolution, reality, and dreams, where the film deals more with Alice’s quest to return home and adventure into the paranormal world of her own imagination. Both of those issues when combined are what Alice and Wonderland is meant to be about. Because the novel deals more with abstract ideas, it would appeal more to an older audience although many younger readers can still enjoy it, whereas the film dealing with adventure appeals mainly to a younger audience.