Tim Burton nearly didn’t make “Alice in Wonderland”, the picture currently storming the box office charts worldwide.
“A few years ago I don’t know if I would’ve been as intrigued,” the quirky director of such hits as “Beetlejuice”, “Batman Returns” and “Edward Scissorhands”, confesses. “There’s twenty something versions and I’ve never really connected to any of them.” Ultimately, the chance to make the film in 3D was what swayed his hand. “The way the characters and images have infiltrated culture is so strong, I thought it was an interesting challenge,” he notes. “It seemed like a proper mix of the medium and material… For me, I knew the world of Alice not through books but from bands and other artists’ interpretations, so to me I felt like it was open territory because it’s in our culture.”
Australian actress Mia Wasikowska was the one chosen to play a teenage Alice in what is essentially a sort of sequel to the original story. “One of the things we wanted to do was take away some of the baggage that comes with being “Alice in Wonderland” and just find the teenage girl behind that iconic image and make her relatable,” she explains, noting that the special effects work was so extensive she basically had no idea what she was doing a lot of the time. “For me it was ninety percent green (screen), so to actually see the character I was acting against and the locations I was in – all the weird things I had to do make sense now,” she says.
