The books > How can you compare the book with the film adaption of Tim

[valerie]

Hi,
im looking for ideas for my ib extended essay. One day my teacher asked me about what i like ... i told her "movies". My subject is English, so i started looking movies based on books and i thought about Alice in wonderland. i still havent decided yet my research question, so i would appreciate any sugestion about my idea.

thaaaan yoou

[We'reAllMadHere]

If you're comparing the books with Mr Burton's "adaptation", then it's good to mention that it deviates highly from the source material and has an actual plot (although not a very original one) whereas the whole attraction of the books is the fact that they are relatively plotless and free from literary conventions. Also point out that the film's story is a big fat rip off of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Alice has to defeat the big bad villain in a big bad battle at the end with a magical sword to fulfill an ancient prophecy. You could also compare the portrayal of the characters: the Hatter in the books is wonderfully eccentric, and Johnny Depp's Hatter was a bit on the limp side who performs cringeworthy dances to unfitting music. Oh, and say it didn't get a very good reception with fans either, as you can probably tell.

Good luck with the essay, why does everyone here get set such interesting things to write about in their essays? Mine were all really boring and crappy.

EDIT: also just noticed you're doing the IB!! My sister did the IB, she hated doing that extended essay.

[Grimley Fieendish]

Hi,
im looking for ideas for my ib extended essay. One day my teacher asked me about what i like ... i told her "movies". My subject is English, so i started looking movies based on books and i thought about Alice in wonderland. i still havent decided yet my research question, so i would appreciate any sugestion about my idea.

thaaaan yoou

You might wish to "compare & contrast" the Tim Burton adapatation of AiW, with other director's interpretations of the above, such as the Jonathan Miller 1966 T.V version, or the 1972 version starring Fiona Fullerton as Alice, or even the 1951 Disney movie.
If you wish to go down the "Adaptation Bloat/Adaptation Decay" route as the T.V Trope Wiki site names these tropes, compare the American McGee computer game with the above...
If you want to look at the many tropes mentioned above, including those in in Burton's adaptation, this is the link to T.V Trope's Alice In Wonderland page...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... Wonderland

[jack in wonderland]

i like the whole idea of alice in wonderland altogether...

[Simbabbad]

Disney's/Burton's movie isn't even an adaptation, it's a sequel.

[Jess]

Also point out that the film's story is a big fat rip off of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Alice has to defeat the big bad villain in a big bad battle at the end with a magical sword to fulfill an ancient prophecy.

I disagree - that's not LWW's plot at all. There's a prophecy (two, in fact: one of Aslan's return and one about the Pevensies becoming kings and queens, neither of which mention killing anything), and a minor villain gets killed by a non-magical sword, but that's as close as that description gets. Unless it's something that happens in the film but not the book... I haven't seen it since it was out in the cinemas, but I don't remember any major alterations to the plot. Prince Caspian, on the other hand... how did they manage to make SUCH a mess of it? >_<

[We'reAllMadHere]

Maybe I worded it wrong...maybe not in plot terms, but it FELT like a rip-off of LWW. The story is a bit different, but the battle scene at the end just made it feel like it was trying to be something it obviously wasn't. Don't get me wrong, I love the Narnia books and films.

[Azure Caterpillar]

You've probably already written it now but...

You can't really compare it to the book anyway as its meant to be a sequel in that respect. I guess you could point out all the changes they made to the world and characters in the movie.

It might be easier to compare the book with another film adaptation.

[3rdpoliceman]

The books are nonsense-books, full of dream logic. In the film Wonderland is more logical. The books are Victorian, while Tim Burton depicts it as a medieval, Tolkienesque world.
The books have many themes, such as identity and time. The film totally ignores these.
The biggest difference is that the books are good and the film is rubbish.
I have actually written about this in my blog, if you'd care to read it.

[Guest]

Comparing any movie to it's respective novel is a heavy order, more so in this case as there have been more movie adaptations for Alice in Wonderland than any other novel-to-movie adaptation of anything in the history of Hollywood. For now, the two biggest film adaptations have been from Disney, the older animated version, and the new live-action 2010 remake.

Disney (an avid fan of Alice in Wonderland himself) combined both AIW and TTLG, either with characters, setting, or both. Regardless, the form of the film follows the same structure as the first book does, making it an accurate translation from fiction to film, to Disney's credit.

The 2010 remake isn't a sequel. Maybe. It's not clear in the movie, and not even the screenwriter, Linda Woolverton, makes this clear. However, Linda has said that her screenplay is a fictional story of the Jabberwocky poem, insofar as the general plot or conflict of the film does what it can (poorly in this case) to match the "story" of the Jabberwocky poem. She heavily and constantly borrows imagery from the books while simultaneously trying to create an original piece of fiction that remains separate from the original novel. The result is a place called "Underland" instead of Wonderland, and characters to have actual names instead of their familiar references (such as McTwisp, formally known as the White Rabbit, even though by all counts he is the White Rabbit).

Something similar that both movies do share is a dark setting. The setting in the films is very dark and brooding; juxtaposed against 'loveable' characters such as seen in the films creates a feeling of terror in the viewer. The books also have a similar, but reversed effect, in that the setting is rather pleasant and comforting, but the characters seem to be hiding something sinister behind already intimidating guises of insanity.

If you have to compare books to their film counterparts, I'd honestly pick a different book! There's way too many Alice in Wonderland adaptations to give any good, clear comparison. Besides, I know by the time I write this the paper in question has been written already. But let this serve any future essays (I say)!

[Guest]

The books are nonsense-books, full of dream logic. In the film Wonderland is more logical.

An interesting thought, by the by. The films do certainly follow a more traditional plot in comparison to other movies, but the books themselves, and all the arguments and logic therein, are completely logically sound! Meaning here that by following standard rules of reasoning and logic, the arguments, conversations, and one-liners in the stories are all logically and linguistically sound. Dodgson himself loved word games and was a rather smart man of logic; he even wrote a few pieces on logic himself!

I'm not attempting to correct you, since you're not wrong, but a great many people think Wonderland is full of "dream logic", which is actually actual logic! I find it fascinating to the nth degree.

[3rdpoliceman]

The books are nonsense-books, full of dream logic. In the film Wonderland is more logical.

An interesting thought, by the by. The films do certainly follow a more traditional plot in comparison to other movies, but the books themselves, and all the arguments and logic therein, are completely logically sound! Meaning here that by following standard rules of reasoning and logic, the arguments, conversations, and one-liners in the stories are all logically and linguistically sound. Dodgson himself loved word games and was a rather smart man of logic; he even wrote a few pieces on logic himself!

I'm not attempting to correct you, since you're not wrong, but a great many people think Wonderland is full of "dream logic", which is actually actual logic! I find it fascinating to the nth degree.

'Up is down and ugly is beautiful'- Walter Moers

Madness stems from logic, and logic comes from madness. Or perhaps not.
But I suppose I see it as surreal and nonsensical rather than logically illogical because the books have many layers, and it is the dreamlike layer that attracts me.

[SakuraInWonderland]

Well the stories are different. The book is basically just a series of events where it involves a little 7 year old English girl going through each one after another, filled with poems, wordplays, puzzles and riddles. In Tim Burton's movie, it's about this girl (who has now become a young adult) who goes back into Wonderland to save it from the evil Red Queen, as We're All Mad Here claimed earlier, similar to Looking Glass Wars but not as violent and more family-friendly. I just don't think they should be compared anyway because they are both works in their own right (although the books are way better than Tim Burton's movie, IMO, as the movie was more simplistic than the books).

[Guest]

Disney's/Burton's movie isn't even an adaptation, it's a sequel.

nuff said, burton!

[uergyuiop]

I would agree with SakuraInWonderland. Both stories are different. The movie clearly shows Hatter more than they show Alice (well, almost), whereas the book is all about Alice's time in Wonderland. Besides, Alice never married in the book.