Wonderland or Wonderless?

This past weekend marked the release of Tim Burton's sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass.

In Alice Through the Looking Glass our heroine returns to Wonderland for another adventure, this time to save her friend the Mad Hatter. While this film offers a new look at Wonderland's characters and their backgrounds, which was not present in the previous film, some argue it loses a lot of its 'muchness'.

Film critic Andrew Lapin even goes so far as to say, "We're not in Wonderland anymore, if indeed we ever were. Most likely, we'd already left it far behind with the 2010 Tim Burton reshuffling of Alice in Wonderland".

Many critics would agree that this film left much to be desired not only with the plot, but with the visuals as well.  The original Alice in Wonderland introduced Alice to the public as a little girl in a world filled with so much wonder it allowed audiences in 1951 to escape reality for 75 minutes. The 2010 reboot offered these same wonders to a new generation with vibrant backgrounds and computer graphics which brought the characters of Wonderland back to life for 109 fantastical minutes.

The sequel sought to bring back the same well known characters in a new tale for audiences to be hooked once again. However, many fans of the first movie, people who enjoyed the novel Through the Looking-Glass, and older movie goers were unimpressed. In fact its been said that a sequel shouldn't have been made at all.

Movie goer Hameeda Osman from Denver expressed a slightly different take on the movie saying it, "revealed more of who the Mad Hatter was, not just a happy go lucky weirdo, but someone who has felt pain. In, my limited knowledge this film was definitely darker than the previous one. All in all though, The Looking Glass is a memorable film with a typical happy ending".

I would have to say I agree with Hameeda's take more than the film critics'. While this sequel to Alice in Wonderland failed to reach the same level of spectacular and wondrous overall, it more than made up for it in other areas. The audience becomes acquainted with each of the major characters (the Mad Hatter, the White Queen, the Red Queen, and the March Hare) in ways that were left unexplored in the previous movie. In addition, Tim Burton does an excellent job of tying in various backstories while still making each of the characters a dynamic part of the progressing storyline.

At the end of the day this film is very well done Disney film, while it may not show it the box office, this is a sequel worth seeing.