It’s got Johnny Depp as a frightwigged Mad Hatter, a Stephen Fry-voiced Cheshire Cat and a grown-up Alice – are you intrigued or turned off?
We’ve already been treated to a glimpse of what Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is going to look like, thanks to a series of stills that emerged earlier this year. But here is the first teaser trailer, featuring a healthy dose of Johnny Depp sporting a particularly lurid ginger frightwig as the Mad Hatter.
It’s also our first look at the Cheshire Cat, which will be voiced by Stephen Fry, the fearsome Jabberwock (Christopher Lee) and the Knave of Hearts (the horribly underused Crispin Glover). Burton’s Alice, played by Australian newcomer Mia Wasikowska, is 10 years older than Lewis Carroll’s creation, which should allow for a slightly darker, more adult take on Wonderland. But don’t expect anything too racy: this is, after all, a Disney movie.
By the looks of the trailer, the CGI work on the film is satisfyingly vivid and hyper-real. Depp seems to have adopted the camp mannerisms of a certain Captain Jack Sparrow, but shifted his accent from cockney seadog territory towards something rather more eccentrically upper class. It should be remembered, of course, that the actor is more than capable of fouling up an otherwise perfectly decent movie with an unnecessarily eccentric performance – I’m thinking of his Michael Jackson impersonation in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory here – just as he maintains the ability to make slightly average fare transcend its genre parameters (as with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie).
His Mad Hatter looks pretty fun and fairly sensible, though, wouldn’t you agree? Does this teaser make you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes when Alice in Wonderland hits cinemas in March next year?