In Disney’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” an all-new spectacular adventure featuring the unforgettable characters from Lewis Carroll’s beloved stories, Alice returns to the whimsical world of Underland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter.
This week, a new trailer came out for “Alice Through the Looking Glass”. The first 2010 film was a live action reworking of Disney’s animated film, “Alice in Wonderland”. Critics weren’t impressed but it earned over a billion dollars worldwide. This time, all ties to the animated film are ignored. The film is clearly Tim Burton’s vision using characters and situations first created by Lewis Carroll for his novels. The trailer is a cacophony of odd sights and sounds while Pink sings a remake of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”. She’s also penning an original song for the film.
Since “Alice in Wonderland”‘s enormous success was was assumed to be a combination of higher 3D prices and Johnny Depp, “Alice Through the Looking Glass” is being released on 3D Imax with a plot revolving around Depp’s Mad Hatter, both of which the trailer highlights. Even the poster below draws the focus to the Mad Hatter rather than the title character, Alice. However, the trailer does leave out that the film will deal with Hatter’s childhood.
Burton turned over directing duties to James Bobin whose previous experience is making comedies like Da Ali G Show, Flight of the Conchords and the last two Muppets films. It doesn’t seem surprising then that the most prominent of the new cast members is Sacha Baron Cohen who created, wrote and starred in Da Ali G Show.The film will also be the last new film released with Alan Rickman. He reprised his voice role as the Blue Caterpillar before his death in January. The trailer also featured footage of the Jabberwocky that was portrayed in the first film by the late Christopher Lee. It’s unclear whether his voice will supplied from archival footage or the creature won’t speak in the new film.
One aspect of the trailer that felt tired was Alice being threatened with placement in a mental asylum. It’s not just Andrew Card acting villainous again, but it’s also the premise of the Once Upon a Time spinoff, Wonderland. Plus, there was “Return to Oz” (1985) where Dorothy is also deemed mentally unstable.
“Alice Through the Looking Glass” will be released May 27 in the United States.
