In biological terms, the word adaptation signifies the process of change that animals or plants undergo in order to better function in their environment. The adaptation of a book into a film is quite similar: the book must undergo some changes in order to work as a film. Generally, when speaking of a book-to-film adaptation, people refer to changes made only from a “fidelity” standpoint, ignoring the other reasons that filmmakers may have for changing details, or even entire plotlines. This concept, that there is more than just fidelity to the source text involved in adaptation, is also applicable to “remakes” of old films into new films. Kate Newell, in her article “’We’re Off to See the Wizard’ (Again),” says, “the governing question here is not ‘is this adaptation faithful?’ but ‘to what is this adaptation faithful?’” (Adaptation Studies 80, italics added). In the case of Alice in Wonderland, the Walt Disney production company has made two films. Each is different from the other, and both are different from the original novel by Lewis Carroll, because of the reputation and rules that the Disney company had set up for itself at the time of each film’s release.
In 1951, when Disney released Alice in Wonderland as an animated feature film, they had already been making films for fourteen years and had already established “rules” that viewers expected them to follow. Most Disney films up to that point contained musical numbers, and sometimes many (or all) of the characters were either anthropomorphic animals or objects. Since Carroll’s Alice already included anthropomorphic animals, the filmmakers were easily able to take that aspect of the story and use it in the film. However, to keep up with what viewers would be expecting, they also had to create a musical soundtrack for the film that would involve various characters singing. Also, Disney movies are quite simple (some may argue they are deceptively simple, but that’s too much to get into at the moment). When considering Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-glass, most readers tend to see Wonderland as a more simple narrative, while Looking-glass is fairly complex. Disney, in order to keep the simplicity that their viewers were accustomed to in the 1950s, took many of the characters, such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee and garden of living flowers, from the Looking-glass narrative and put them into the Wonderland plot, which would be much easier for children, who were the primary Disney viewers at the time, to understand. Also, to make the plot simpler still, the Disney screenwriters made it extremely obvious that Alice was dreaming the experience, even going so far as to have Alice see herself sleeping, so as not to mislead any viewer into thinking that Wonderland is a real place.
When Disney released another Alice in Wonderland in March of 2010, directed by Tim Burton, most viewers expected it to be a live-action remake of the original cartoon. By this point, nearly sixty years after the first Alice film, Disney had developed quite another set of standards. Their previous live action films, such as Narnia, Pirates of the Caribbean, and National Treasure, had all been adventure-based, with many action sequences. Alice was changed to reflect this cinematic trend: instead of merely mentioning the Jabberwock, as in Through the Looking-glass, Alice is actually destined to defeat it herself, and she is beset by the Bandersnatch and the Jub-jub bird (referencing the original Jabberwocky poem by Carrol) as she tries to complete this quest. These elements make for exciting cinematic action in the form of chase scenes, and an epic battle with the Jabberwock at the climax of the film. Also, the Disney characters, while once occasionally children, as in the case of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and Alice, are now nearly always at least in their late teens or early twenties, especially in Disney’s live action films: Elizabeth Swann, in Pirates of the Caribbean is eighteen years old, and Benjamin Gates in National Treasure is at least in his mid-twenties. In the original Alice book, and the movie as well, Alice is seven years old. In the Burton film, she is nearly twenty, and is getting ready to be married. In addition to making changes because the era of Disney has changed, the Alice story was bound to change in some very distinct ways when Tim Burton signed on as the director. Burton is known for making his films slightly twisted. An audience attending a Burton film expects to see four main things: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, a score by Danny Elfman, and some sort of black-and-white striped costume. All of these things were included without much stretching of the Alice story, though they did change it somewhat, as the costumes and characterizations are a bit more modern and Burton-ish than Carrol’s originals.
Repeatedly in her article, Newell says that it is the “spirit” of the source text that must be captured, because this “can transcend its form and be transferred faithfully to another form” (79), and that different retellings of the story often change things “without ever losing the central meaning of the classic story” (89). Disney’s two adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland do just that. The story of Alice’s coming-of-age is still there, and although the nonsense and fantasy of Wonderland are different for each film, they still remain an integral part of the story. The Disney filmmakers, both in 1951 and 2010, were as faithful as they could be to the source text while still complying with the audience’s wishes and expectations.