• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Tim Burtob's latest should be called "Alice in Wonderland 2"

Gaith

Vice Admiral
Admiral
D'oh! I apologize for the thread title typo. A little help, mods? :)

This obviously isn't the most pressing issue facing Earth today, but I do feel that it's artistically offensive to make a sequel film to Lewis Carrol's "Alice and Wonderland" and steal his title. I love the public domain, and don't care what Lewis' estate might think or anything like that, but the current movie should have been given a different title.

I know that they probably didn't do that in order to avoid confusing audiences, and if it were my money on the line I don't know what I'd do, but I'm talking philosophically here. ;)

Same goes for Trek XI. It's fine to call stuff like TNG "Star Trek" informally, because it's understood that one is referring to a franchise and that TNG itself is not titled simply "Star Trek." In this case, you could argue that the Paramount ownership makes Trek XI's title less odious, but still, the only single piece of media that deserves to be called "Star Trek" is the show Roddenberry created.

One could perhaps bring a similar complaint against Sherlock Holmes the movie. True, Doyle never called any single work "Sherlock Holmes", but that is the universal if unofficial title of his sixty-story collection. And true, there were three movies titled "Sherlock Holmes" before last year's, but most had enough class as to give them titles like "Sherlock Holmes in...", or, even better, to emulate the original stories by giving them titles without Holmes' name: "The Sever-Per-Cent Solution", "Murder by Decree", etc.

Sigh. Whatever happened to artistic integrity? (And yes, I do ask that with tongue-halfway-in-cheek.) ;)
 
I kind of agree that the new Alice movie should have had a different title. Maybe just "Alice," since they made such a big deal in the film about whether or not she was "the right Alice."

Maybe "Alice(?) in Wonderland."
 
^^ Didn't you read that I said that this is obviously the most pressing issue facing Earth today?! :p
 
Yeah, but then I got distracted by Cavuto on Faux Noise going on about how the people were robbed when Avatar lost to The Hurt Locker at the Oscars, due to tone deaf elitists, then went on to compare it to the health care debate.

I can only take so much, man.

:eek:
 
I disagree with the OP regarding the use of the Star Trek title. (There are plenty of excellent reasons why they couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't have ever used Star Trek XI or even "Star Trek: The Beginning". And anyway, officially Roddenberry's series is now known as Star Trek: The Original Series, and I'm sure someone involved with the Remastered project probably considered putting that title on the screen.)

I do agree that giving a sequel the title of the original in the case of a famous piece of literature is not on. I didn't realize this was a sequel until I read a review of it.

And in fact this is actually "Part 3" apparently because I guess it takes into account both the first book and Through the Looking Glass.

The problem I have is so many people take their culture cues from films these days, that many people will now seek out Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which is good) but be disappointed that the storyline isn't connected to the movie (which is bad because it could turn them off his writing).

The title "Alice in Wonderland" and the word "Wonderland" has such cultural cachet that Burtob ;) could have gotten away with calling it Return to Wonderland or Alice vs the Red Queen or The Wonderland War (though I think someone else already used that title).

Alex
 
The original novel is called "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", this one is called "Alice in Wonderland", so it is different, but yeah, it's probably not different enough.

They should have called it "Alice" or "Wonderland". Or maybe just "In".
 
The problem with all those alternate titles is that they imply that there was a previous film in the sequence, which would just confuse people. (Yes, I know there have been umpteen previous adaptations of the original books, but those were different takes on the story, featuring different casts.)

You wouldn't want people going, "Huh? Did I miss Part One?"

While not entirely accurate, calling it ALICE IN WONDERLAND was the only sensible thing to do. Nobody is going to demand their money back because it's more of a sequel than a literal adaptation. And everyone's just going to call it ALICE IN WONDERLAND anyway.

To quote Saki: sometimes an ounce of inaccuracy saves a ton of explanation.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top