Alice in Wonderland, the latest addition to the overwhelming over budgeted IMAX movies that are flooding out of Hollywood. Just because someone sticks closest to the story, doesn't mean they have the interest or love for the story in mind.
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I've heard every kind of argument between the self-made purist to the cynic. This Alice is more for the simple minded and the kids. How many times are we gonna re-live the same story over and over again? We know how it ends, and we know Alice comes out in the end... (refer to 'Through The Looking Glass").
But there have been other versions of this story that prove there is a real threat. The example that takes the lead was "Pan's Labyrinth", while not based off of Lewis Carroll's Alice, it is the example of the protagonist between two worlds, but the finest version of this creepy tale was Jan Svankmajers' Neco Z Alenky,
a stop motion film from 1988, where it's much more like looking through the windows of a modeled city, marveling at dark secrets you might find throughout. The translation of the events in this film gives you much more room to live through the events in a somewhat confused state, making things that much creeper and dreamlike, and you are really wondering what will happen next.
Marilyn Manson will also be contributing to the list of Carroll interpretations, in a film called "Phantasmagoria: The Visions Of Lewis Carroll". This is more like a moment in the writer's life where his internal vision and; characters become more of a catalyst toward madness, while residing in a haunted mansion. Something truly original, that demands for something more than booming & boring score, state of the art CGI and the same Vs chorus vs that numbs the mind.
... and because this is a music blog after all, I'll go further down the hole and talk about ...
The opening track establishes the movie's theme music but fails when it becomes more pop, giving the impression that instead of taking advantage of all the unlimited potential of variations of the theme, Elfman just throws a chorus in to keep it simple... too simple in fact!
Generally the opening theme is the only part of the soundtrack that takes advantage of setting down a foundation for what will be slide shows of characters and the movies' personality. There have been some notable exceptions for this of course, but this movie relies on constant movement and action and there simply isn't time to develop something better or at least interesting for some of the most fascinating characters in literature (Notice in the movie how there is music for every action and event). Everything is blaring and he uses the same tricks you've heard time and time again so, you wont hear anything particularly new here. Danny Elfman hasnt made an interesting score since Red Dragon. He just does it for the pay check.