Wonderland vs. Underland

You might have heard of Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy novels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Each book is about a young British girl named Alice who enters in a bizarre realm and encounters different zany residents. Two theatrical films both produced by Walt Disney Studios are based on theses books and are done in animation.

• Disney's first Alice film was done in 1951 and was the classic Alice in Wonderland. It was produced by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske.
  
• The second premiered recently on March 5, 2010 and was produced by Tim Burton under the same title as the first one.
  
• The 1951 version involves traditional hand drawn animation with wild colors, sound, flow and rhythm that was previously used by Disney to produce Fantasia (1940) and The Three Caballeros (1944).
  
• In Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, he uses live action animation with computers to make the movie.

Now you may think that both films are chronological since they are made under the same studio and there is an age difference in each of the Alice's. In the earlier film she's around ten years old whereas in the second one she is nineteen.

However, they are not sequels.

In Disney's first Alice in Wonderland, the story begins with the curious Alice following the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and finding herself in Wonderland.

• The story goes through a series of events where Alice runs into a variety of weird characters while hunting down the White Rabbit.
  
• She eventually is fed up with everyone's nonsense and just wants to go home. The film ends with Alice waking up, revealing the whole story was a dream.

In Tim Burton's version, the film moves more in the direction of a full length story rather than a series of events.

• In his film, Alice returns to Underland (Alice misheard it to be Wonderland) after being absent from it since the age of seven.
• Unlike the first movie, the inhabitants there depend on and look to Alice as their savior. Each character in Underland seems to have a special bond with her.
  
• Alice takes time to socialize with her old friends whereas in the first film she doesn't seem to be attached to any of the residents in Wonderland.
  
• In fact they seem to be only focused on themselves.

Another difference in the films is that Tim Burton's film combines both the Red Queen (absent from the the first) and the Queen of Hearts into one character. He also takes elements from Lewis Carroll's poem, Jabberwocky, which is the title of the dragon that Alice is forced to slay in the end of his film.

Overall, Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland's, moral is that one should be careful what they wish for. For in the film Alice dreams of living in a fantasy world of nonsense which ends up coming literally true. The moral in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is to be true to yourself and do what what you want to do in life.

These two Alice in Wonderland films compliment each other well. The earlier film is aimed at entertaining the whole family with a series of events whereas Tim Burton's film takes the events and transforms them into a more well-developed story.

A Fairy Tale That Couldn't Come True

The Fleischer Studios was famous for it's classic black and white rubber hose cartoons. Their most successful cartoons were Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor Man. In fact in the 1930's there was a poll taken that revealed that Popeye was a more popular cartoon character than Mickey Mouse. Max Fleischer, however, developed a grudge against Walt Disney who was having so much success at the time.

Walt Disney had exclusive rights with Technicolor which made their cartoons popular and enjoyable to watch. Max Fleischer asked his studio, Paramount, to give him the money for colored cartoons but they could not budget it. Max Fleischer was forced to invent his own method of coloring his cartoons which did pretty well for its time but really couldn't compare with Disney.

Max Fleischer was not satisfied and loathed the fact that Disney's Studio was doing so well and got rewarded at the box office. He jealously commented to his son at one point when Walt Disney was getting so many rewards that “You can't eat medals.”

In 1937 when Walt Disney came out with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Max Fletcher did not want to lose to his competitor so he set out to produce a full length feature of his own. He moved his studio to Florida and begged Paramount to back him in making Gulliver's Travels which he promised would do well. Unfortunately this proved to be the worse decision he could have made for his studio. Snow White had taken Disney three years to complete and Fleischer was given only one year to finish his film, Gulliver's Travels.

In 1939, Paramount released Gulliver's Travels and the response after Snow White was poor. It did not have the heart and feel that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had had which captivated the audiences back then. The failure of Gulliver's Travels marked the end of Max Fleischer and his relationship with Paramount and the studio soon was forced to shut down.

Max Fleischer was better off going with his original style of cartoons that had made him famous in American households everywhere. If he only had not been so stubborn and just let Disney's success be he would have had a better end to his career.

From Ragged Rabbits, to Rich Mice

Some of you believe that lovable, heartwarming cartoon rodent we know as Mickey Mouse to be Walt Disney's first original creation in theatrical animation history; however, this is not true. In reality, Walt Disney's legacy did not start with a mouse . . . but instead . . . with a rabbit.

• When Walt Disney first started working for Universal Studios on the Alice Comedies, he and his partner Ub Iwerks together created a mischievous and spunky character that they dubbed Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
• Oswald premiered on September 5, 1927 in its first cartoon titled Trolly Troubles.
• From 1927 to 1928 Disney made twenty-six Oswald cartoons that became pretty popular.
  

Now you might be wondering that if Oswald was made before Mickey, why didn't Walt Disney make him his first mascot rather than Mickey.

Back then, even though Oswald was a success, Disney had a desire to push the sound and color of his films to a higher level in terms of quality and this proved to be very expensive process. Walt decided to meet with his boss, Charles Mintz to discuss his problem and asked him for more money towards his project. Sadly, not only did Mintz refuse Walt's offer, he told him that Universal Studios legally owned all the rights to Oswald and that he would only give Walt Disney 20% of the cut on profits associated with Oswald.

Refusing the offer, Walt Disney left Universal Studios and Mintz gave the job of making the Oswald cartoons to George Winkler. Eventuallly Walt was able to come up with a good replacement for Oswald with a character that also matched the rabbit's charm and appeal, but had round ears instead.

Thus Mickey Mouse was born and put Walt Disney on a path to success. As for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, by the late 1960's it ended up being set aside and soon became a forgotten cartoon.

But now, thanks to a deal between Walt Disney Studios and Universal Studios in 2006, Oswald has returned and is part of the Disney franchise.