Movies

The nineteen year old Kingsley has been ravaged by strange dreams throughout her life. Part of the dream comprises a smiling cat and a blue-colored caterpillar. One morning, Kingsley and her mother take a journey to the upcountry to attend a party and this happens while the dreams are still fresh in Kingsley. At the party, Alice is supposed to agree to a marriage proposal from a family friend who is expected to suppress her independent spirit. Although the party commences and the proposal is made, Alice is shocked and thus disappears into the woods where she unbelievably falls down the rabbit hole. While at the bottom of the hole, Alice is subjected to her usual behaviors which she typically experiences in her normal day-to-day life. Alice drinks, eats, and reduces in size and grows and finally passes through the small door to Wonderland. The paper is an attempt to critique the film with background knowledge of Tim Burton, who directs the film.

Critical Analysis of the Movie
Tim Burton effectively makes use of the recent 3-D explosion to incorporate animation that helps in development of the fantasy adventure which is the idea behind the entire film. Nevertheless, the 3-D aspect is carefully and strategically intermarried with live action but does not employ motion capture. In addition, the film takes a unique position in Tim Burtons typical productions as this stands to be the first works filmed on green screen. This type of filming is referred to as Chroma key compositing and it can always prove very excruciating on the part of the actors as the actors are forced to endure long periods of exposure to the green color. This should have been counteracted by fitting lavender lenses. Nevertheless, such a feature was essential for the sake of achieving the desired characteristics of the film like distorted features such as increasing Red Queens head to the desired size.

The 3-D animation in the film is superbly executed even though the climax of effective usage is realized in the pre-Wonderland segment which is set in the Victorian high society. The 3-D depicting a look down an eagerly standing crowd waiting to witness Alice as she agrees to a marriage proposal is a good fete of the 3-D animation in the film. There is a gradual attenuation of the 3-D effects in this film which achieves effectiveness better than previously done works such as Avatar by James Cameron. However, the animations still experience problems as at sometime in the course of the cast, the background is thrown out of focus.

The theme and features within the plot development of the film exhibit a continued feature that Burton has centered on in his career. It is typical for Tim Burton to incorporate metamorphosis of characters into bizarre creatures in his productions. Look at the Red Queen and her head. This keenly takes after the Beetle Juice, where we encounter a smiling skull on top of Beetle Juices head. Tims career as animator which saw its long time at Disney is therefore clearly revealed in most of his film including Alice in Wonderland.

Another characteristic that clearly identifies itself with Burton and which comprises a better part of the film is fantasy. Tim Burton typically incorporates fantasy aspects in his films. The entire film is a fantasy adventure. In most of his previous productions, also one feature that could be drawn from his works is the centering of plot development around a misunderstood outcast. Keeping the original characters also helps the film in achieving the classic luster that is complemented by a darkly shone background and heavily epithetic character identification. For instance, heavy names like the Caterpillar, White Rabbit among others are an immense depiction of the characters in the original stories.

Conclusion
The establishment of the film as Burtons work is evident from the renditions of the classic characters. Even though this feature also makes the settings of the film as close as possible to the original settings in the mother tale, it also portrays Burtons inclination toward a classic appreciation with classic characters making up most of his works. And when he combines it with Johnny Depps efforts to achieve the same, the results are even more outstanding. In spite of Burtons dire strive to maintain the original setting of the story, his usual luster of classics environment and fantasy is complemented by the dark scenes in the film. This is part of his uniqueness and identity.

In conclusion, Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland is a good show of creativity and maintenance of established personal tradition though with a detour into 3-D model of casting. Even though there are some gaps especially with the 3-D part and other minor places, Alice in Wonderland clearly identifies itself with Tim Burton.