Alice Through The Looking Glass

About Time for a return trip to Wonderland.

Director James Bobin Starring Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen

ETA 27 Ma

alice does Terminator’ might have been the pitch for this sequel, as our titular heroine (Mia Wasikowska) steps through a mirror to make her return to Wonderland and – if that’s not wacky enough – finds herself having to turn back time to rescue the Mad Hatter ( Johnny Depp).

“I think that you can pretty much safely say it’s not the book!” says director James Bobin ( The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted), who’s taken over megaphone duties from Tim Burton. “I mean, Lewis Carroll was a mean mathematician and he wrote Alice Through The Looking Glass as an analogy of a chess match, whereby Alice becomes a queen after eight moves – so eight chapters. The chapters are not related, and the characters come and go without reason or accord. This film takes a huge amount from that book in terms of feeling and style, but the narrative is very different. The basic premise is: Alice has to save the Hatter by saving his family in the past.”

Inheriting many of the characters and much of look of this strange, surreal world from Burton (who’s stayed on as producer and has “been very helpful, from the beginning”), Bobin has nonetheless looked to plant his own footprint on Wonderland. “I work in a slightly different milieu,” he points out. “My background’s largely in comedy [ co-creator of Flight Of The Conchords, he also helped Sacha Baron Cohen develop the characters of Ali G, Borat

and Bruno]. I wanted to bring a touch of brevity – wit, even, some might argue – because Lewis Carroll has always been one of the great originators of English comedy. For me, he’s like one of the early satirists: Lewis Carroll to Edward Lear to The Goon Show to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the Establishment Club, Monty Python...”

And so the returning cast of Wasikowska, Depp, Helena Bonham Carter (as the Red Queen) and Anne Hathaway (White Queen) is joined by – you guessed it – Cohen as Time. Bobin laughs, saying, “He’s very good at playing twits! Time is a buffoon, but also very powerful, which is a very dangerous combination.”

Another change wrought by Bobin is the favouring of physical sets wherever possible. The original movie featured entirely CG environments, but production designer Dan Hennah looked to John Tenniel’s grotesque illustrations in the Alice books of the 1860s and 1870s for inspiration.

“We built a village, Wit’s End,” says Bobin. “I love that movies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

and Oliver! built real sets in Pinewood and Shepperton. So I was very keen to build on-stage sets and create that real feel of a kind of Cotswolds village meets Dubrovnik – somewhere with a European-ish, historical-ish feel. It’s a fun place for actors to do their work.”

And what actors. As well as the aforementioned principal cast led by Depp, who Bobins insists “can interpret my ideas in better ways than I ever could”, there’s a best-of-British support cast and voice cast that includes Andrew Scott, Michael Sheen, Toby Jones, Timothy Spall, Ed Speelers, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Rhys Ifans (as the Mad Hatter’s dad, Zanik Hightopp) and, of course, the sadly departed Alan Rickman.

“It’s a terrible honour to have,” says Bobins of Alice Through The Looking Glass being the final film of a true acting great. “Obviously he’s exceptional; an incredible voice. As a performer, that’s such a rare thing to have – the moment you open your mouth, to know exactly who that is. But he has that. It lends us gravity. Absolem [ AKA Blue Caterpillar] is the wise, mysterious, oblique person that he is in the books. From the first movie, Alan absolutely nailed it. And he really guides you into our movie. It starts with him, and he takes Alice back.”

One thing’s for sure: Rickman’s final work will reach millions. Alice In Wonderland, released in 2010, is one of only 24 movies that belong to the billion-dollar club, and its success unplugged a deluge of children’s-fantasy movies that include such hits as Cinderella and

Maleficent. So, is there any pressure on Bobin to match – or even surpass – the original’s gangbuster success?

“The first film took a billion dollars? Yeah, so I hear. It’s been mentioned a few times,” he laughs. “I don’t even think about it. My job is to make the best film I can. It doesn’t influence any decision you make, because the moment you chase popularity, you’re doomed.” Really? Or is that the political answer? “You’re always aware of the weight,” concedes Bobin. “But it’s not just that. It’s Lewis Carroll. I’ve got kids who’ve got pictures of Alice from the British Library. Like with The Muppets, there’s a huge cultural responsibility I feel. Frankly, you feel the weight of that more than anything else.”

‘This film takes a huge amount from the book, but the narrative is

very different’

James Bobin