Alice in Wonderland [2010] (2 discs)

Random Trivia For This Title:

• Michael Gough (The Dodo Bird) previously played the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland (1966). This was Michael Gough's final film before his death on March 17, 2011 at the age of 94.
• All of the voice actors did their lines in one day.
• Actress Mia Wasikowska beat out several candidates for the role of Alice, including Amanda Seyfried and ^[?] Lindsay Lohan, who lobbied for the role. According to Tim Burton, it was Mia Wasikowska's gravity that won her the role.
• Jim Carter speaks only one line in the entire film. Christopher Lee speaks only two lines, while Michael Gough and Imelda Staunton speak only three.
• For the character of the Jabberwocky, Christopher Lee had originally tried to make his voice 'burble' (as described in the poem "Jabberwocky"). However, Tim Burton convinced him to use his actual voice, as he found it more intimidating.
• Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Barbara Windsor, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Imelda Staunton, and Jim Carter all recorded their dialogue in one day.
• Tim Burton sought after Barbara Windsor for the role of The Dormouse because he is a fan of her TV show EastEnders (1985).
• Despite the fact that there have been many other Alice in Wonderland films, Tim Burton has said he never felt an emotional connection to it and always thought it was a series of some girl wandering around from one crazy character to another. (In fact, the original books by Lewis Carroll are part of a once-popular fantasy genre in which the character does nothing except wander around from one crazy encounter to another. Those films which replicated this were being true to the spirit of the original books.) So with this, he attempted to create a framework, an emotional grounding, which he felt he never really had seen in any version before. Tim said that was the challenge for him - to make Alice feel like a story as opposed to a series of events.
• Tim Burton and Johnny Depp worked hard to give the Mad Hatter more depth and presence than in past portrayals. In fact, the pair swapped sketches and themes for the character prior to creating this new version.
• Alan Rickman was originally going to have his face composited onto the animated Caterpillar Absolem. He was filmed recording his voice in the studio, but the idea was eventually scrapped. The animators did, however, try to give Absolem's face characteristics similar to Rickman's.
• This movie unites several actors from the [Harry Potter] film series, including Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Paul Whitehouse (Sir Cadogan), Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew), Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime), and Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge).
• Dwayne Johnson and David Walliams were considered for the role of The Mad Hatter.
• The Mad Hatter asks Alice several times, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" This is directly from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Carroll admitted that there never was an answer to the question; he made it up without an answer. He did provide one possible answer years later after many requests from his fans for the answer: "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are VERY flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front." ("Nevar" = "Raven" spelled backwards. Carroll's deliberate misspelling is often erroneously "corrected", obscuring the point of the joke.) Another answer, from the American puzzler ^[?] Sam Loyd: "Because ^[?] Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both." Over the years, numerous others have come up with possible answers as well.
• This film marks the 7th time Johnny Depp has worked under the direction of Tim Burton and the 6th time for Helena Bonham Carter.
• Before Tim Burton was involved with the project, Anne Hathaway was offered the titular role of Alice, but she turned it down because it was too similar to other roles she had previously played. However, she was keen to work with Burton, so was pleased to be cast as the White Queen. She shot all her scenes in two weeks. The Los Angeles Times reported that film director Tim Burton based Anne Hathaway's White Queen on a TV cook who writes cookbooks. "There's this very beautiful cooking show host in England named ^[?] Nigella Lawson, and I quietly had her as my image for this character," Burton said. "She's really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there's this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, 'Oh, whoa, she's like really ... nuts.' I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don't know."
• Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen is a combination of two characters from the books. The Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass is a chess piece who competes with the White Queen. The Queen of Hearts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a playing-card with anger management issues, decapitation mania, and fondness for flamingo-and-hedgehog croquet. Thus, while the White Queen's army is chess-themed, the Red Queen's army is playing-card themed.
• The sound effect of the JubJub bird's calls are the same as The Probe's in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Johnny Depp, who says that he likes "an obstacle" whilst filming, admitted that he found the process of filming on a green screen "exhausting", and that he felt "befuddled by the end of the day".
• Michael Sheen was originally cast as the Cheshire Cat, but backed out due to scheduling conflicts.
• Danny Elfman scored the film to green screen footage.