My niece was a bit disappointed in Alice in Wonderland and didn't know that there was a book. I've always hated the early Disney version (I have serious Disney issues with a lot of the cartoons)but I offered her the following explanation:
They took parts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and used parts from each. The theme in Wonderland was the cards. The cards in Looking Glass was chess. The Mad Hatter and The March Hare was in both, but even Alice is different. There are characters that are only in one book or another. Carroll wasn't on LSD btw, he used opium for chronic migraines, but the sub genre "nonsensical" was deliberate. Many authors have used his ideas as patterns. There's often things in JRR Tolkien's writings that show he was a student of Carroll.
Just a Reader's Digest summary.
Further, on the the LSD myth, in the cartoon Alice eats mushrooms that have been misinterpreted to be the hallucinogenic species and the hookah used by the Caterpillar (which made an appearance in this version). The potion ingredients are listed by the White Queen and yet Alice STILL drinks it. The characters are so engaging and memorable. The nonsense is more sensible than anything we see these days, with "Madness" being a positive thing as the Hatter is loyal and filled with integrity. The Cheshire cat unpredictable but in a good way and the Caterpillar is wise and enigmatic. It's a thinker movie and not just for children.
It makes mockery of people who dislike it because they don't understand it. It also shows how few of our children have ever been educated in Olde English (Anglo-Saxon) works like The Canterbury Tales (actually Middle English), Beowulf, and The Jabberwocky as an independent poem. Johnny Depp even quoted some of it and I almost HEARD the fellow theater occupants say "HUH?!"
Last of all, just like Willy Wonka, Tim Burton managed to bring it all around to the moral... I hate when they miss the moral!
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