Since the early 20th-century, silent-film version of Lewis Carroll's 1865 book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," there has been no shortage of cinematic, animated, musical and made-for-TV adaptations of Alice's legendary trip down the rabbit hole. Tim Burton and his partner in big-screen head trips, Johnny Depp, are the latest to take on the beloved children's book.
On Monday (June 22), USA Today released the first eye-popping images from their 2010 movie, and MTV News recently spoke with the special-effects supervisor on the film, Michael Lantieri, about how Burton's edition will be truly unique.
"Tim just has a take on it in his head that is unlike anybody that I know," Lantieri said.
The USA Today pictures show Depp as an orange-haired, white-faced Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen with a high forehead and tons of pale-blue eye shadow, and Anne Hathaway as the peroxide-blond White Queen. Burton's take on "Alice" follows the curious child now that she's 17 years old and has forgotten her original adventure in Wonderland. Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (HBO's "In Treatment") plays the title role.
"There is something real, honest and sincere about her," producer Richard Zanuck told USA Today about the actress. "She's not a typical Hollywood starlet."
According to Lantieri, the decision to update the story with an older Alice was not the only tricky determination that filmmakers had to make. "There were discussions over everything, including, 'Is it OK for the caterpillar to smoke?' " he told us, referring to the iconic scene in which Alice encounters the insect chilling on a mushroom and puffing on a hookah. "You'd be surprised how big a discussion that was and how they solve it."
Another innovation for this newest "Alice" is the introduction of 3-D, and Lantieri maintains that we've never seen the technology used the way Burton does it in this film. "I think that's really gonna be something to look at," Lantieri said, declining to go into further detail. "His vision and his take on things — I never get tired of it. If you can only imagine."
Check out everything we've got on "Alice in Wonderland."
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