Alice in Wonderland

A Disney Tale: A young girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a strange land filled with bizarre characters.

Disney Heroine: Alice is an extremely likeable character who continues a tradition of female-led movies and after the much stronger Cinderella, Alice manages to continue on a positive path.  Curiosity is Alice's downfall, but her adventures in Wonderland show her to be determined, brave and no-nonsense.  Her increasing frustrations with the various characters she encounters make her very sympathetic, culminating in her almost giving up in the Tulgey Wood.  The way she stands up to the Queen of Hearts makes her unique - up to this point as none of our other Disney heroines have ever actually confronted the villain of their film - indeed an actual hero/villain confrontation is rare across all the films, although that is partly because some of the films don't have a definite villain in the way we've become used to in Disney films.

Disney Hero: If Alice is an atypical villain, then Alice in Wonderland is also atypical in that it doesn't have any sort of hero character.  There are some male characters, although these are few and far between and are, more often than not, non-human.  It puts the focus solely on Alice and it's refreshing, in a way, to have a female character who isn't looking for love, or rescued by a handsome prince at the close of the story.  Alice is a character who solves her own problems.  There is no magic character arriving to give her a hand and no hero to carry her off into the sunset.  

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Disney Villain: Alice in Wonderland gives the Disney canon one of its most enduring villains, although one who is often sidelined when other villains are around.  The Queen of Hearts is a proper scenery-chewing character with her catchphrase of 'Off with their head!' and her larger than life personality and appearance.  The comical edge to her character is what, I think, leaves her a little outside of the usual collection of villains (Malificent, Ursula, Scar, Hook, the Evil Queen, Jafar etc) and also the fact that her ambitions seem quite small scale a game of croquet where she wins. 

Interestingly, the Queen is one of the few villains who is actually a 'winner'.  She rules Wonderland with fear and at the end of the film hasn't been 'defeated' by Alice.  All Alice manages to do is to escape Wonderland and the Queen's desire for Alice to lose her head.  The Queen still rules Wonderland and is free, it would seem, to continue abusing her subjects.  In a way, though, the Queen is as 'mad' as everyone else in Wonderland and the topsy-turvy world would seem to be in constant chaos, so I'm not entirely sure we can believe the Queen of Hearts actually has any sort of control over anyone.

Disney Sidekicks: For the duration of the film, Alice doesn't really have a 'sidekick' as such.  There are recurring characters, most obviously the White Rabbit, but for the majority of the film Alice moves alone from one encounter to the next.  Dinah, Alice's cat, is the closest Alice gets to a sidekick and she appears only in the first and last scenes of the story.

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There are, however, many comedy characters such as the Mad Hatter, the Carpenter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the various playing cards (particularly the ones who are painting the roses red).  Each one is a memorable creation and that is, of course, mainly due to the talents of Lewis Carrol as a writer creating these bizarre people in the first place.  But the design of the Disney versions and the voice artistes add extra dimensions.

Disney Creatures: Many of the characters Alice meets in Wonderland are anthropomorphised characters - sometimes to the extent of wearing clothes and behaving exactly like humans (such as the March Hare, the Walrus and the Dodo); or sometimes merely being talking versions of the 'normal' animals(such as the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar).  Each and everyone is, as with the more straightforwardly human characters, a masterpiece of design and performance.  The Cheshire Cat, in particular, is actually quite unsettling as a character with his ability to disappear and reappear at will.  One of my favourite sequences is the part where his stripes unravel as he disappears from sight - it's a clever visual that uses the design of the character as an integral part of the animation.

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There are also numerous non-speaking creatures that Alice meets on her travels such as the flamingo croquet mallets and hedgehog croquet balls.  There are the clever 'play on word' character such as the 'bread-and-butterflies' the 'rocking-horse' flies and the many strange and bizarre inhabitants of the Tulgey Wood.  A couple of my favourites are the spectacle and mirror birds and the creature with a cage for a belly.  Wonderland is packed with details and rewatching the film often reveals little details of character that may have been missed before.

Disney Magic: Unlike in previous films, the magic of Alice in Wonderland is implicit rather than explicit.  Instead of characters with magical powers, the entire world seems magical - everything impossible is possible.  Doorknobs talk; flowers sing in harmony; the strangest creatures exist side by side.  Alice can consume food and drink that makes her shrink and grow.  Wonderland is a place where anything can happen and frequently does!

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Disney Land: Wonderland, itself, is as vibrant a location as the characters who live there.  On the surface, Wonderland reflects a traditional English countryside or garden but the colours and shapes are far from what we might expect (or have seen in both The Wind in the Willows and the opening and closing scenes of Alice in Wonderland itself).  It's an effective location although some parts of it can feel disconnected from the others, in particular the Queen of Hearts maze, gardens and castle seem to exist in a slightly different place to the woods and garden of the rest of the film.  I think it's partly due to the rather overcast sky which dominates these scenes and isn't really featured elsewhere in the film, aside from the dark sky scene in the Caucus race scenes.  Also, it is actually quite a 'dark' place which adds to the slightly unsettling feeling which weaves its way through the film and is prominent in scenes such as Alice's encounters with the Cheshire Cat and then in the Tulgey Wood.

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The climactic scenes actually depart somewhat from what's come before.  Aside from the room Alice finds herself in at the bottom of the rabbit hole, all of the subsequent scenes are set outside.  The final scene is an English courtroom setting (not unlike that seen in The Wind in the Willows) and is quite a contrast to what has come before.  The strange inhabitants seemed at home in their strange warped English countryside, but here seem forced into a relatively 'normal' environment.  This serves to heighten Alice's frustration and, in way, foreshadow her return to the real world.

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Disney Songs: There are, apparently, over 30 songs in Alice in Wonderland.  However, many of them are short snippets here and there.  The signficant ones include: 'All in the Golden Afternoon', sung by the flowers; 'Painting the Roses Red', sung by the playing cards; and 'Very Good Advice' sung by Alice; as well as the title song 'Alice in Wonderland' sung over the opening credits.  Of the others some are more poems - many using the original words written by Lewis Carrol - most prominent being The Walrus and the Carpenter which has its own animated sequence (and is something you can easily see being included in the recent package films).  It's not a soundtrack that necessarily sticks in the mind although certain musical phrases do tend to earworm their way into your head: 'We're painting the roses red' and 'A very merry unbirthday to you!' for example.  Of all the songs I would suggest that All in a Golden Afternoon is my overall favourite although, outside of this film, none of them trouble my top 10.

Disney Finale:  Alice in Wonderland is a hugely entertaining film, even if the plot is simply Alice meeting different characters and becoming increasingly frustrated.  The character design and voice work makes this a real pleasure and although the film itself doesn't seem to have had the reach of other releases (probably due to the lack of princess, hero or cute animals) it still manages to crop up throughout the parks, merchandise and wider Disney universe.  Alice, for me, is much more important Disney character than she is given credit for and I think it's a shame she is often forgotten because she doesn't fit into the boxes Disney have created for their various ranges.  She's not cute and cuddly; she's not a princess.  Even the film's villain, as I say, is often seen as more of a comedy figure than a force to be reckoned with.  I always get the impression that, like Wonderland's inhabitants itself, Alice in Wonderland is this slightly odd, out of place and strange film which works to it's own rules and doesn't care what 'ordinary' folk think.