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Film / Alice in Wonderland (2010)

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A 2010 film by Tim Burton, released in 3D, based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Not an adaptation of either book, but rather a sort of sequel, following an adult Alice years after the events in Wonderland. If you're looking for the 1951 film, also by Disney, visit here.

Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) has been having strange dreams since childhood—dreams that take place in a strange land filled with unusual creatures. Nearly twenty years old, she attends a fancy party with her mother and sister where Hamish, a young lord, proposes to her. Marrying him is what is expected of her, but the surprise overwhelms her, and a conflicted Alice runs away ... and then promptly falls down a rabbit hole.

She finds herself in Wonderland - more properly, Underland - where the White Rabbit is confident that she's "the real Alice", while others aren't so sure. The Red Queen has taken over nearly all of Underland, but the ancient document called the Oraculum shows the Frabjous Day arriving, a day of battle on which it is foretold that Alice will slay the Jabberwocky and put an end to the Red Queen's reign.

There're only a few problems: Alice thinks this is all a dream, and she's not prepared to slay anything.

Just as the 1951 film inspired two different rides at the various Disney Theme Parks, this version has now also inspired the Mad T Party, a nighttime event at California Adventure featuring live music that replaced ElecTRONica.

A sequel, entitled Alice Through the Looking Glass, was released in May 2016. Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska return, along with nearly all the main cast, and The Muppets (2011) director James Bobin takes charge, with Burton himself simply returning as producer.

This film provides examples of:

  • 0% Approval Rating: The Red Queen. As the Knave of Hearts comments to her, and she later agrees, "It's better to be feared than to be loved." The only reason anybody ever followed her is because of her big dragon. After the thing dies, they immediately turn on her. In other words, she never learned the other warning of The Prince: "Avoid being hated." The White Queen has clearly read the book.
  • Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: How one properly dances the Futterwacken.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Vorpal Sword. It slices the Jabberwocky's head off with one clean stroke.
  • Action Girl: Alice herself in the final battle when she finally wields the Vorpal Sword and becomes the White Queen's champion.
    • The Dormouse, of all creatures, is definitely one.
  • Actor Allusion:
  • Actual Pacifist: The White Queen - sort of. She's okay with people fighting for her, but refuses to fight herself because of having taken vows never to cause physical harm to anyone. (Cruel Mercy, on the other hand...)
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: In the books, the White Queen did not change much in appearance when she turned into a sheep. Here, she's played by Anne Hathaway.
  • Adaptational Heroism:
    • The Hatter certainly wasn't a villain in Carroll's books, but he really wasn't a hero either, at least not the type with the Knight in Shining Armor attitude he is here. In fact, most of Alice's allies here count as this trope, but especially the Hatter.
    • The Cheshire Cat. In this movie, he's more willing to help others than to get them in trouble. For a sense of scale: he did everything in his power to make the Queen of Hearts angry and get Alice's head chopped off in the original animated movie, whereas in this one, the first thing he does is offer to heal her and later saves the Mad Hatter from getting his head chopped off. Note that this is a case of Recursive Adaptation, as the Cheshire Cat wasn't as much of the jerk in the original books.
  • Adaptation Induced Plothole: In the original book it makes perfect sense for the Queen of Hearts to have an army of lower cards serving her. But there's no real reason why the Red Queen, who's not a playing card, would have one. It is perhaps slightly explained by the fact that they serve out of fear of the Jabberwocky, not actual loyalty. It could also be a result of her being a Composite Character of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen, who were originally from different books.
  • Adaptational Name Change: Alice's surname goes unmentioned in the books and the animated movie, but it's given as "Kingsleigh" here. Wonderland is also changed to "Underland".
  • Agony of the Feet: When Alice initially assumes that Wonderland must be a dream, the Dormouse volunteers to wake her from it by stabbing her in the foot with a tiny sword. It fails, but doesn't cause any lasting damage.
  • Alien Blood: The Jabberwocky bleeds purple.
  • Alliterative Name: The White Queen, Mirana of Marmoreal.
  • All Just a Dream: Subverted. Alice spends most of the film convinced that it is just a dream, but it's all actually real.
  • All Up to You: Combine this with You Can't Fight Fate and Because Destiny Says So for Alice's final battle with the Jabberwocky.
  • Androcles' Lion: The Bandersnatch.
  • And You Were There: Played with a bit: most obviously, the sisters remind Alice of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Less explicit is the fact that both the Hatter and Hamish have red hair, and the Hatter represents everything that Hamish is not. The caterpillar is implied to represent her father, which is probably why he was named "Absolem." There's a nod to Hamish's mother representing the Queen of Hearts, and some have seen parallels between the Knave and Alice's sister's husband. A parallel could also be drawn between Alice's sister and the White Queen.
  • Animals Lack Attributes: The family of bloodhounds. The mother of the puppies has no discernible mammaries, and Bayard has nothing between his legs with which to create said puppies, even when he flops down on his side in front of the White Queen with his crotch pointed right at the camera.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: "I'm sorry, Aunt Imogen, but there is no prince." Now, let me go play with my talking animal friends, this queen I met, and a Hatter who shrinks people and can turn his head about like a hundred owls. It would be Hypocritical Humor were it played for anything but drama.
  • Arranged Marriage: Well, practically — for Alice to Hamish.
  • Attempted Rape: At one point, the Knave of Hearts pins Alice between him and a wall in the hallway and rather seductively (and creepily) whispers to Alice how he "likes largeness." However, Alice fends him off easily, being nine feet tall at the moment (compared to the Knave's seven). If she had been her normal size... well, actually, he would have left her alone. This probably got as close to the trope as the movie could get while still keeping the rating it had, more or less.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The March Hare, in general.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: After Alice slays the Jabberwocky, the Red Queen's crown floats over to land on the White Queen's head, transforming in its design as it goes (though, of course, the Cheshire Cat was holding it).
  • Badass Adorable: The Dormouse. She may be pocket-sized, but she definitely won't hesitate to stab a bad guy, no matter how much height they have over her.
  • Bad Boss: The Red Queen is sort of a hypocrite here. On one hand, she orders her minions executed for trivial reasons, eats their children, and sadistically uses them like furniture. On the other, the Knave of Hearts gets off with nothing more than a few slaps to the face when Alice escapes with the Vorpal Sword (something you'd think would really be bad for them) because he was too dumb to know that she was the one staying in the castle as a guest. Of course, part of that was the Queen's fault too, but she wasn't one to accept blame.
  • Beauty Inversion: Helena Bonham Carter is beautiful. The same cannot be said about the Red Queen.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Alice falls down a rabbit hole, gets shrunk, enlarged and stuffed in a teapot, then fights the Jabberwocky... all without a curl on her head getting tangled. (Though to be fair, she probably got to have a bath while she was in Marmoreal.) There's one small aversion in that even when she returns to her daily life, she still bears the scars from the Bandersnatch attack.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Alice and the White Queen. The Hatter also throws out a Double Entendre, though not of the usual sort:
    Hatter: (to the Red Queen) I've been contemplating "m" words lately. (spouts off a few stealth insult "M"-words, then spots Alice and is startled) M... malice...
  • Beware the Silly Ones: The Hatter especially, but quite a few of the Underlandians embody this trope.
  • BFS: The Hatter wields a claymore in the final battle. He uses it as a walking stick first.
  • Big Good: The White Queen is the leader of the forces opposed to the Red Queen, the Big Bad. She is beloved instead of feared and struggles daily to be good.
  • Big Little Brother: The Red Queen is the eldest, but she's significantly shorter than her younger sister.
  • Bizarre Dream Rationalization: Alice spends half the movie insisting that Wonderland is a dream and that she's going to wake up at some point. It takes the Caterpillar reminding her she visited Wonderland as a child that she realizes that it's real.
  • Blatant Lies: Tragically, by the Hatter. After reminiscing about how his entire family was slaughtered, Alice asks him if he's all right. A clearly shaken Hatter replies with the following line:
    The Hatter: I'm fine.
  • Blood Knight: The Dormouse. Out of all the characters, she's the one most eager for battle and tends to stab her way out of most situations.
  • Bloodless Carnage: There's really not much blood spilt throughout the movie, especially in the final battle, although that one gets a pass as most of the participants are metal cards and chess pieces. In regard to the disaster on Horunvendush Day, the Jabberwocky's lightning breath is capable of vaporizing people, as at least one knight meets this fate.
  • Body Horror: It's theorized by the White Queen that the Red Queen has some kind of growth in her head. That might explain why her head is so swollen while the White Queen herself is normal in appearance. The sequel explains it.
  • Breath Weapon: The Jabberwocky can spit purple thunderbolts.
  • Brick Joke: Futterwacken. Early in the film, the others chide Hatter for never dancing the Futterwacken anymore; he promises to do so "when the White Queen once again wears the crown". After the battle, the Hatter does just that.
  • Broad Strokes: The movie is a continuation of the original stories. However, because the film takes a lot of characters and elements from the Looking Glass story and puts them into Wonderland (such as the White/Pale Queen and the Queen of Hearts also being the Red Queen) means that Alice never visited the world of the Looking Glass and her adventures in Wonderland played differently to how they happened in the book.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • There's a prominent moral, especially early on, of Screw Destiny - in Underland, everyone keeps telling Alice to follow some arcane prophecy and she keeps turning them down, which is meant to be analogous to her refusing to get married in "the real world." A major moment is when she defies the destiny altogether and decides to run off on her own. Except seconds later, it turns out that defiance was part of the prophecy. At the end of the movie, Alice fulfills the prophecy, and everything is lovely. So, was Alice learning the opposite lesson, that sometimes the plans people have for you are good ones? Apparently not, because when she returns to the real world, she still refuses to get married, and this is treated as a good thing.
      • The main difference is that Alice was being forced onto a path to her destiny in the "real" world (bad), but in Underland she was able to start making choices on her path that ultimately still led to her destiny (good).
    • The aspects of rebellion, progress, and fighting the power, both in the real world and in Underland, are undermined heavily by the fact that the White Queen had been in power for a long time as a result of her birthright. The Red Queen is the one who is actually a relative outcast (implied to be The Un-Favorite) who represents a new paradigm, and her taking control is treated as horrible in every way. The film's ending isn't so much an advancement of society as it is bringing things back to the good old days... albeit with the denizens of Underland more grateful for being freed from their servitude... and the sequel film shows that the Red Queen's birthright was given to the White Queen for reasons of maturity and temperament, not due to one sister actively supplanting another.
    • There's a strong undercurrent of "girl power" in the film, what with its conversion of Alice from precocious youth to Action Girl and the constant reminders of Victorian-era sexism, but the film also goes out of its way to depict Alice's questioning nature and knowledge as something unusual (rather than in the book, where they're treated as common even in a girl her age) and credits them to her father. Meanwhile, most of the characters in Wonderland that were jerks, idiots, and Know Nothing Know It Alls that Alice opposed with her genuine wit and wisdom are rewritten to be more heroic, often accomplishing far more impressive tasks than Alice or doing actually plot-relevant stuff while Alice sits on the sidelines, and almost all of the characters to receive this treatment are male. While the movie reminds the viewer multiple times of the idea of women being only valued for their appearance, it also has characters insult the Red Queen for having a big head whenever possible.
      • However, since Alice was half-convinced through most of the film that she was dreaming, that could explain her passivity; also, Wonderland wasn't actively in any sort of rebellion in Carroll's version, so heroics weren't exactly part of the status quo. As for the insults... again, those were the covert aspects of the rebellious society, not the overt; the Queen's court was all about appearance, with courtiers putting on big false body parts to curry favor with her, small creatures being bullied and used as furniture/sports equipment, and Alice only managing to become the Queen's favorite because she was nine feet tall at the time.
  • Broken Bird: The Hatter. As it gets explained to Alice via flashback (and is made more explicitly clear in supplemental material), his entire family was killed the day the Jabberwocky ambushed Witzend and the White Queen lost her crown. The Hatter himself only survived the invasion because he rushed to get the White Queen to safety; he returned to the scene afterward and found everything burning and everyone dead. This is one of the two main reasons for his madness, the other being mercury poisoning (a common malady for Victorian milliners).
  • Butterfly of Transformation: In the ending scene, the caterpillar Absolem appearing in the form of a butterfly can be seen to symbolize Alice's own transformation.
  • Cain and Abel: The vicious Red Queen jealously loathes her younger sister, the benevolent White Queen, because the latter is adored by the populace (and, to judge by a throwaway line toward the end of the film, was also their parents' favorite while the two were growing up).
  • Calling Your Attacks: Alice invokes Off with His Head! by name. Doubles as a Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
  • Captain Ersatz: The film's Dormouse comes across as a thinly disguised Reepicheep.
  • Cats Are Mean: Tim Burton made the Cheshire Cat more creepy-looking due to his personal distaste for cats, but the Cat himself averts this trope. Like his book counterpart he's a mischievous but friendly feline. The Bandersnatch also qualifies, but only at first.
  • Chekhov's Gun: You'll be seeing that eye again. Also, the Hatter's various... hatting... stuff. And the Futterwacken, although that might also count as a Brick Joke.
  • Cherry Blossoms: The pathway leading up to the White Queen's castle is lined with dozens of cherry blossom trees.
  • Chess Motif:
    • The White Queen, her castle, and soldiers.
    • The Red Queen, at least in name.
    • The battle (Red vs. White) takes place on a giant black-and-white checkered chessboard.
  • Chewing the Scenery: Johnny Depp. Oh God, Johnny Depp! Even in commercials he seems to be taking large hunks of scenery into his mouth!
  • The Chosen One: Alice is foretold to be the one to slay the Jabberwocky and restore the White Queen to power.
  • The Chosen Zero: The denizens of Underland aren't sure that Alice is the prophesied champion; the Dormouse is especially prone to proclaiming that "She's the wrong Alice!"
  • Chronoscope: The Oraculum, a scroll which shows the history of Underland and then prophesied Alice's return and her slaying the Jabberwocky.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Zigzagged, and it's an important part of how Alice eventually succeeds. Wonderland is real, but Alice doesn't believe it is, and she has to convince herself otherwise. She thinks she's in a dream because everything that's happening seems impossible to her. The only way she can stand up to the Jabberwocky - much less defeat him - is to convince herself to believe it's real and what she thinks is impossible is, indeed, possible.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: The Mad Hatter and March Hare. Alice herself is this as far as other people in the real world are concerned.
  • Color-Coded Eyes: The Hatter and the Cheshire Cat both have very intense, green eyes that positively glow when either or both of them are in a very good mood. This helps distinguish the Hatter's normal, gentle personality from his much more vicious and violent personality, which has flaming orange eyes. It also allows the Cheshire Cat to disguise himself as the Hatter and be executed instead of the Hatter. The execution doesn't work because the Cheshire Cat can lose his head without losing his life, unlike the Hatter, who would have been killed. It's the slight difference in the shape of the vivid green eyes that reveals which Hatter is really being 'executed'.
  • Combat by Champion: Alice for the White Queen versus the Red Queen's Jabberwocky.
  • Combat Pragmatist: The Mad Hatter. In the final battle when Stayne corners him, Hatter jabs him in the eye with a pin from the pin cushion ring on his finger. Before this, he also uses bolts of fabric, a hat, a powder puff, and a bottle of perfume.
  • Coming of Age Story: For Alice. Ironically, while her situation in Wonderland is a case of You Can't Fight Fate, the experience teaches her stand up for herself and Screw Destiny in the real world.
  • Company Cross References: The scene where the Jabberwock appears bears a striking resemblance to Chernabog emerging from the mountain.
  • Composite Character: The Red Queen comes off as a combination of the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass and the Queen of Hearts, though she's more of the latter, going by her "Off with their heads!" attitude and penchant for tarts.
    • If Tenniel's illustrations on the original book are to go by, her massive head comes from the Duchess being thrown into the mix as well.
    • The Dormouse may have been combined with the Mouse, since she first appeared at the beginning (which the Mouse did in the original novel).
  • Cool Horse: Alice gets one in the form of the Bandersnatch. She rides it when the White Queen and her forces march against the Red Queen.
  • Costume Porn: Everybody wears exquisite clothes. Alice's dresses are just the tip of the 'berg. Colleen Atwood's Oscar-winning costume design is one aspect of the film that is universally praised.
  • Crapsaccharine World: Underland has this sort of vibe. One can get the sense that it's normally very bright and colorful and full of whimsy, but it's been languishing under the tyrannical reign of the Red Queen.
  • Creative Closing Credits: The film had a very pretty scene for the cast list and Avril Lavigne's song that showed the clouds shifting, mushrooms growing (and glowing), and the bare Goth Spirals branches blooming to show that Underland is healing after the Red Queen's defeat. In the 3D version, this is windowboxed, with the growing fauna spilling out onto the blank areas of the screen, giving the impression that the screen is a window to Underland. This awesome sequence can be seen here.
  • Creepy Twins: Subverted with the Tweedles, who are more woobie than anything else.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The Hatter starts out as a cheerfully insane babbling lunatic with occasional hints of darkness. The final battle has him dueling and defeating the Knave without breaking a sweat.
  • Cruel Mercy: At the end of the movie, the White Queen, due to her vows not to harm any living creature, condemns her sister to spend eternity wandering the borders of Underland chained to her right-hand man, the one person she loves. Being shunned wouldn't have been so unbearable, since she thought he loved her too... until he tries to kill her, and later begs to be killed to get away from her. The only response from the White Queen is a faint smirk and the reply, "But I do not owe you a kindness."
  • Curtain Clothing: When Alice grows out of her dress in the Red Queen's Garden, the Queen demands she be given new clothes and tells her servants to "Use the curtains if you must." When we later see her clothed, she has a belt that looks suspiciously like a sash cord, hinting that it's exactly what they did.
  • Daddy's Girl: Alice. In the film's first scene, seven-year-old Alice goes to him after having another nightmare. While he tucks her in, she fearfully asks him if she's going mad, to which he replies that all the best people are. And even after his death, Alice clearly still holds him in high regard.
  • Dance Party Ending: Well, sort of, with the Mad Hatter. In keeping with his promise earlier in the story, he dances the Futterwacken for everyone after Alice beheads the Jabberwocky and the Cheshire Cat crowns the White Queen.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: The Cheshire Cat. Also, at the end, the Red Queen's minions readily quit and redeem themselves as soon as she is defeated.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Absolem the Caterpillar, who practically drips with sarcasm and disdain every time he speaks to Alice. He repeatedly calls her a stupid girl, derides her (in an almost sleepy voice) about how she is clearly not Alice, and how dense she's always been, having misnamed Underland as "Wonderland" when she visited the first time. He drops the snark when she finally cottons on that everything is real.
    Absolem: Alice, at last.
  • Death by Adaptation: In-Universe example, posthumously. The Queen claims she had her husband, the King, executed sometime in the past; judging by her conversation with the Knave, she was convinced he was going to leave her, and he may have had an infatuation with her sister (or at least she believed he did).
  • Deathbringer the Adorable: As it turns out, the Bandersnatch, but only after he and Alice make amends.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: Alice's deceased father, Charles Kingsleigh, while he was alive, would comfort Alice after having a nightmare and encourage her unconventional thought patterns. Alice would eventually follow in her father's footsteps and take up his old business ventures.
  • Defector from Decadence: It seems this way for at least a few members of the Queen's court, seeing as members of the resistance are working against her from within it. The White Rabbit is her courier and also sometimes acts as a sort of herald, while the two Tweedle brothers are her court jesters (after they get captured).
  • Digital Head Swap: Tweedledee and Tweedledum have actors' heads on digital bodies. This was also done for the Red Queen; Helena Bonham Carter's head is tripled in size.
  • Down the Rabbit Hole: As might be expected, given the source material, Alice ends up in Underland when she pokes her nose a bit too far into a rabbit's hole.
  • The Dragon: The Red Queen has one literal (the Jabberwocky) and one figurative (the Knave).
  • The Dreaded: The Jabberwocky, a draconian beast with vaporizing violet thunderbolts in place of fire for its breath. The only reason anyone was ever afraid of the Red Queen was because she had this under her control.
  • Dream Apocalypse: This is played with a little. Despite the fact that this isn't a dream, Alice constantly insists that it is. The Hatter mentions to Alice in a rather serious tone (as opposed to his usual one) that if she is dreaming all this, then he must not really exist (and she agrees with him). However, he doesn't seem too concerned about it; he quickly returns to his jovial attitude, saying that she must be a little crazy to have imagined someone like him. (Again, she doesn't deny it.)
  • Dull Surprise: Pretty much all of Alice's dialogue is delivered in a flat manner - regardless of what's actually happening at the time. She also doesn't react at all to losing her clothes after becoming a giant and outgrowing them. It may be that her preconception of everything being a dream changes how she reacts to it - it doesn't seem real, so the impact is automatically less, especially when she expects to wake up any minute.
  • Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: The Red Queen speaks this way, although it's never made clear exactly why.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Vorpal Sword never shows any outright signs of life, but it likely is. Many characters suggest that it plays more of a role in fighting the Jabberwock than Alice does, and she simply has to be the one who holds it. When Alice doubts that she can fight the creature, Absolem assures her that she simply has to "hold on" and let the Sword do the work, and the Jabberwock himself is clearly more concerned about the Sword than he is of Alice (he even calls her "insignificant" when the battle starts).
    Jabberwock: So, my old foe. We meet on the battlefield once again.
    Alice: We've never met.
    Jabberwock: Not you, insignificant bearer! My ancient enemy... the Vorpal one.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: The Red Queen states that men and women alike end up loving the White Queen.
  • Evil Counterpart: The final battle presents the Knave as being this to the Hatter.
  • Evil Is Petty: The Knaves of Heart lied to the Red Queen that Alice was the one who tried to have her way with him, in order to save his own life and pay Alice back for her rejection of him.
  • Evil Redhead: The Red Queen, whose preferred method of dealing with 'insubordinate' subjects is to chop off their heads.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Averted with the White Queen's voice being deeper (and smoother) than the Red Queen's tyrannical shriek. Played very straight with the Jabberwocky, who is voiced by Christopher Lee.
  • Exact Words: When the resistance goes to meet Absolem the Caterpillar, the White Rabbit asks if this particular girl is "the right Alice"; the insect replies "Not hardly." He later points out that he never said she wasn't the prophesized Alice—rather, she wasn't ready to be when the group first met. Alice needs to find her inner courage and strength and assert them as a hero would, and thus become the savior that Underland needs; once she confidently declares her identity, Absolem smiles and remarks "Alice at last!"
  • Eye Color Change: The Hatter. Whenever he gets angry, his eyes go from a vivid green to a fiery orange, and that would be your cue to run.
  • Eye-Dentity Giveaway: At one point in the film, the Mad Hatter (who has been taken prisoner by the Red Queen and sentenced to death) walks out into the courtyard, his hands bound, and lays his head on a chopping block. After keeping his hat on, at his insistence, the camera closes in on his face the moment before the axe comes down on his neck, and we see him grinning, whilst his eyes are turquoise instead of their normal green, and with oval-shaped slits for pupils. Right as the axe comes down, instead of cutting through flesh and severing his head, the Hatter's entire body vanishes, except for his hat, which floats into the air until it reaches the Red Queen's balcony — and then, below the hat appears the head of the Cheshire Cat himself, who used his shapeshifting powers to impersonate the Hatter, whilst setting him free to instigate an uprising against the Queen.
  • Eye Scream:
    • The Dormouse has a habit of inflicting this on other creatures, such as the Bandersnatch.
    • The Hatter also gets one in on the Knave during the final battle. However, it doesn't seem to affect the Knave much afterward.
  • Eyepatch of Power: The Knave of Hearts. Interestingly, his patch is often red when in the Red Queen's presence, but black at any other moment.
  • Faceless Goons: Both the Red and White soldiers.
  • Family Extermination: After sentencing a Frog Footman to beheading for the crime of eating one of her tarts, the Red Queen then orders her Fish Butler to collect the frog's children because she loves "tadpoles on toast".
  • Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: The Bandersnatch's saliva is one of the few things that can heal the wounds left by its poison claws.
  • Fantastic Racism: The reason why the Red Queen accepts Alice into her court without question. Alice claims to be from a town that mocked her for her large size, and that she came to the court of the Red Queen believing that she would be more tolerant. The Red Queen has absolutely no problem with this, given her own disproportionate head-size. Sure, this is because of her own condition, but the fact that she didn't order Alice's death because she happened to have a massive head that happened to match her body size is fairly impressive.
  • Fate Worse than Death: The White Queen decrees that the Red Queen is to be ignored until the end of time, banished to outer Underland with the Knave of Hearts as her only companion. Considering that the only reason anyone — including even faceless card Mooks — hung around the Red Queen was fear of the Jabberwocky, it's a clear case of Laser-Guided Karma.
    • Stayne's fate too. He's forced to accompany the Red Queen in her exile until Underland is destroyed. Lampshaded:
      Stayne: Your Majesty, please! Kill me!
      Mirana: But I do not owe you a kindness.
    • In the White Queen's defense, she made a final plea for peace with her sister before the battle started, and it was ignored completely. You could argue that the Red Queen had only herself to blame after that.
  • Feathered Fiend: The Jub-Jub Bird, which only obeys the Red Queen, snatches up unsuspecting Underlandians and drags them back to her castle.
  • The Fettered: The White Queen is hindered by her vow to harm no creature, and thus cannot take her crown by force lest she have to hurt her sister in the process.
  • Fingore: One ingredient in the White Queen's shrinking potion is "buttered fingers" - which are literally severed fingers.
  • Fisher King: "Underland" was definitely brighter under the White Queen compared to its look under the Red Queen, and when the latter is defeated, the sky immediately starts to clear. Also, watch how the scenery changes during the credits.
  • Formula with a Twist: This film created a dark and surreal take on the classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland tale (which was already plenty weird on its own) and makes a story that is meant perhaps more for adults than children.
  • Friend to All Living Things: The White Queen, whose "vows" include not harming any living creature. Of course, the vows say nothing about getting henchmen to do the harming for her. She almost breaks this vow by trying to swat a fly, right after she tells Alice about it. Fortunately, she doesn't succeed.
  • Frameup: As if the Knave's crude attempt to seduce Alice wasn't bad enough (see above), when his attempt to seduce her fails, he tells the Red Queen that the exact opposite happened, and she tried to seduce him. This actually works, and the Queen orders her execution. (Ironically, this actually works to Alice's advantage. While he's doing this, she is looking for the Vorpal Sword, and has already found it, befriended the Bandersnatch, and has managed to free the Hatter by the time he shows up to arrest her, at which point what happened before is the least of their problems.)
  • Gender Flip: The Dormouse, who's usually male in most adaptations.
  • Gilded Cage: The White Queen is stuck in her palace after the Red Queen's takeover.
  • God Save Us from the Queen!: Most characters feel this way about the Red Queen, whose rule has turned Underland into something of a hellscape.
  • Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Alice in Wonderland, as a movie, has an abundance of eye tropes. Nearly every character, including Alice, has exaggerated or unique eyes. Even the Dormouse gets a close up of its eyes. The Hatter's eyes are also part of a very subtle scene transition. Additionally, the eyes help distinguish good guys from bad guys.
  • Good Is Impotent: While this is what often happens to Actual Pacifists and friends to all living things in Grimmified versions of fairy tales, both the White Queen and Alice avert this completely. The White Queen is a genuinely decent (if creepy) person, but if she tries to give you a Last-Second Chance, you'd better take it. Otherwise, see Fate Worse than Death above. Alice takes about 20 levels in Badass over the course of the movie - without going Darker and Edgier.
  • Good Is Not Soft: The White Queen demonstrates this in the end.
  • Goth Spirals: Whole forests of 'em! After all, it is Tim Burton.
  • Granola Girl: Anne Hathaway describes her portrayal of the White Queen this way.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: The March Hare is ragged, twitchy, spouts Madness Mantras, and likes to throw things. "YOU'RE LATE FOR TEA!" *flings teacup*
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: The Red Queen goes from being calm and enjoying herself to flying off the handle at the least provocation.
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Several of the Talking Animals, including the White Rabbit and the frogs in the Red Queen's court. Somewhat justified, because the Red Queen gives her servants red garments, red markings, and heart motifs to claim them as hers.
    • Lampshaded when the White Rabbit speaks deprecatingly of the animals in the real world that run around naked and "shukrn" in public, though he doesn't seem to mind Bayard, his family, or the Cheshire Cat being as such.
  • Happy Dance: The Futterwacken, the Mad Hatter's oft-mentioned dance of joy, which is finally seen after the Red Queen's defeat.
  • Heel–Face Turn: The Bandersnatch comes to Alice's aid once she gives its eye back.
  • Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: After all, what's the point of sturdy plate armor if you can have your hair flow in the wind?
  • Her Heart Will Go On: If you picked up on on the film's "romantic subtext", Alice and Hatter get this. No, he doesn't die, but the look on his face as Alice chooses to leave sends him into near Woobie territory. It doesn't hurt that Alice said she knew the way back, implying that they could easily meet again someday.
  • The High Queen: The White Queen is an exaggerated version.
  • Historical In-Joke: The Hatter's design goes back to the phrase "mad as a hatter" which inspired Carroll to create the character. The phrase arose from cases of mercury poisoning in hatters due to the lack of knowledge about toxins. Said poisoning created mental instability and made hair red and skin very pale - all traits given to the Hatter to reflect the original idiom.
    • However, it's only half the reason why he's mad; the other half being losing his entire family in a Jabberwocky attack.
  • Horse of a Different Colour: Unlike the White Queen, Alice doesn't ride a horse into battle. She rides the Bandersnatch instead.
  • Hypocritical Humor: "Hamish said you were easily distracted. What was I saying?"
  • I Control My Minions Through...: Fear and Sovereignty.
  • I Fell for Hours: The rabbit hole in the film's original script and novelization. Not as long-lasting or drastic in the film itself, Alice speeds down the rabbit hole, whams into a bookcase, a piano, and a bed, before finally crashing through the floor of the Hall of Doors and landing on the ceiling. All within 45 seconds.
  • I Have Your Wife: Bayard reluctantly serves the Red Queen because she has his wife, Bielle, and their pups locked in her dungeon.
  • If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: The in-story reason why the White Queen acts as the Granola Girl and doesn't fight her sister directly. When she accepts the Vorpal Sword from Alice and looks like she's on the verge of an orgasm while holding it, she puts it away quickly rather than be tempted into becoming a Lady of War.
  • I Have a Family: The Frog Footman who ate one of the Red Queen's tarts begs her not to, stating he has children. Too bad the Queen likes eating tadpoles.
  • In Name Only:
    • Despite being named for the shortened version of the first book, the movie is actually a "pseudo-sequel" of sorts. Alice is actually returning to Wonderland (although the film calls it "Underland").
    • The Red Queen shares only her title with the chess piece from Through the Looking Glass; she is, in every other respect, based on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.
    • The White Queen is essentially an original character but for her name, as she shares none of the traits of the elderly chess piece of her namesake.
  • Interspecies Romance: Supplemental material verifies what's only hinted at in the film — Mallymkun the Dormouse is secretly in love with the Hatter.
  • Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: All of the Queen's couriers have some absurdly large body parts. As it turns out, all of these are fakes, which they wear to suck up to the Queen, who seems rather proud of her own deformity.
  • It's All About Me: The Red Queen.
  • Jabba Table Manners: "I love tadpoles on toast almost as much as I love caviar."
  • Kick the Dog:
    • The Red Queen herself kicks the dog when she has a talking frog decapitated just for stealing her food.
      • And then says she's going to have his tadpoles on toast....
      • And then tells the fish who's attending her that she loves caviar, i.e. fish eggs.
      • And THEN she demands for a pig, which she promptly uses as a footrest.
      • In one scene, it's even shown that nearly all of her furniture is held up by living animals.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: After the White Queen sentences her to A Fate Worse Than Death, the Red Queen takes comfort in knowing that the only person who loved her, the Knave of Hearts, will still be by her side. He, on the other hand, is so horrified at the prospect that he tries to kill her, and then begs for his own death when he doesn't succeed.
  • Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Alice, naturally. The film takes place thirteen years after the original story it is based on. It's also a Darker and Edgier take on the original Mythos.
  • La Résistance: The animals serve as this.
  • Lady and Knight: Both versions are present:
    • The Bright version is the White Queen as the Lady, and she has two Knights: Alice (a rare case of a female filling that role) and the Hatter.
    • The Dark version is the Red Queen and the Knave of Hearts, although unlike most versions, he tries to kill her in the end.
  • Lady of War: The Dormouse.
  • The Lancer: The Hatter.
  • Large Ham:
  • Licensed Game: Received a video game adaptation, courtesy of Electronic Arts.
  • Light Is Good: White is associated with the good guys, namely the forces of the White Queen.
  • Like Brother and Sister: The original script called for romance between The Hatter and Alice. Although the kiss was removed, the romantic subtext was not, but Johnny Depp stated in interviews that he prefers to think of them as being this trope, protective of each other in the way a brother and sister are.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: Alice quickly adopts the name "Um of Umbrage" after growing tall at the Red Castle to fool the Red Queen. Counts as Line of Sight because the White Rabbit uttered it in hesitation, and the Red Queen took it as an actual name. Hilariously lampshaded later in the movie:
    Red Queen: Hello, Um.
  • Losing Your Head: The Jabberwocky, obviously.
  • The Mad Hatter: "You're entirely bonkers... but all the best people are." The March Hare also thanks the Knave for the compliment of calling him mad. The Hatter himself tends to shake off that there's something "wrong with him" with a vigorous "I'm fine." Interestingly, the original script had the Hatter as an extremely lucid character.
  • Magic Pants: Averted as Alice gets a new bigger/smaller dress to fit her every time she changes size. During the first time she shrinks and grows, though, her dress first shrinks to be a baggy bit of clothing and when she grows, expands to something more her size, but very tight-fitting.
  • Maiden Aunt: Alice's, played by Frances De La Tour, apparently thinks she's Wallis Simpson. ("I'm waiting for my fiancé. He's a prince, but alas, he cannot marry me unless he renounces his throne.") When Alice returns, she tells her aunt she has to let go of her fantasy.
  • Man in a Kilt: The Hatter wears one for the final battle. Little explanation is offered, other than the Hatter's sounding Scottish when he's feeling rebellious. Near the beginning of the movie, when Alice dances with her would-be fiancé, she tells him that she had a vision of women wearing pants and men wearing dresses. Since she is effectively wearing pants (of metal!) in the final battle, the Hatter wearing a kilt could fulfill the other part of her vision.
  • Manipulative Bitch: The Red Queen thinks her sister, the White Queen, is this.
    Red Queen: Mirana can make anyone fall in love with her. Men... Women... Animals... Even the furniture."note 
    (later) "I know what you're doing. You think you can blink those pretty little eyes and I'll melt, just like Mommy and Daddy did. It is MY crown! I am the eldest!" In the sequel film, it's shown that Mirana never wanted the crown, begging her parents to reconsider, but was granted it because Iracebeth showed she did not have the temperament to rule when she let her emotions take over during her botched coronation; thus, Iracebeth's perspective on Mirana being manipulative is to be taken with a shaker of salt, let alone a grain.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • The Knave's real name is Stayne (Stain), and he certainly is one on Underland.
    • The Red Queen's real name is Iracebeth, a play on the word irascible, which she very much is. Iracebeth also sounds a lot like Erzebet. It's also quite similar to Elizabeth, after whom the Red Queen is visually modeled.
    • The White Queen's real name is Mirana, a variant of Mira, which means "peace." It's also similar to 'Miranda', which in Latin means '(she who is) worthy of admiration' or 'she who must be wondered at' - which is apt considering most people's response to her. It also sounds a little like "mirror", aka "looking glass"!
  • Mercy Kill: The Knave begs the White Queen for this when she has him shackled to the Red Queen "from this day until the end of Underland". Of course she denies him.
  • Messy Hair: Alice. The Red Queen even says as much when Stayne shows her the Frabjous Day on the Oraculum:
    Red Queen: I'd know that tangled mess of hair anywhere. Is that Alice?
  • A Minor Kidroduction: We first see Alice as a little girl, then again in flashbacks of the original story.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Alice herself as result of Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing, which forces her to change outfits all through the movie and most of them being dresses that leaves her arms and shoulders bare. One scene even has her outgrow her clothes, leaving her naked (with some Scenery Censor to cover her from her chest down).
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Cheshire Cat and the Bandersnatch.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The real name of Wonderland is Underland. The original name Lewis Carroll gave Alice in Wonderland was Alice's Adventures Underground.
    • While the Gryphon from the books is absent as a character in the events of the film, he is referred to in the Red Queen's castle. The Mock Turtle and Walrus also appear as portraits.
    • Lady Ascot (Hamish's mother) griping about how the gardeners planted white roses when she specifically requested red, and Alice's response that she could paint the roses red, is a shout out to the Queen of Hearts in the book, as well as to other adaptations. We briefly see her doing so in a flashback of her first visit to Underland as a child, with the Red Queen watching over her.
  • Named by the Adaptation: Quite a few residents of Underland have a "real" name here, despite almost none of them being given one in the original stories. The Cheshire Cat is Chessur, the March Hare is Thackery, and the White Rabbit is McTwisp, just for starters.
  • Named Weapons: The Vorpal Sword.
  • The Napoleon: The Dormouse is the smallest and, next to the Red Queen, grumpiest creature in Underland.
  • Negate Your Own Sacrifice: The Cheshire Cat takes a beheading for the Mad Hatter. This trope applies because the Cheshire cat can detach his head from his body at any time.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Yes and no; despite Alice's father having very little screen time, once Alice understands who she is, she labels herself as her father's daughter, then proceeds to continue his work, choosing to go into business and leave home to establish trade routes, rather than get married to a 'suitable' member of the aristocracy. She's doing what the eldest son of a family would be expected to do, rather than a daughter.
  • Never My Fault: The White Rabbit is pissed off at Alice for being "the wrong Alice," lecturing her several times and calling her out as a fraud, despite the fact that he was the one who chose her and brought her there. (Of course, he may have a valid reason for being angry, because as it turned out, he had not chosen the wrong Alice, and Alice's insistence that he had the wrong person was likely making him upset.)
  • Never Trust a Title: See In Name Only entry above.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: In the trailer, there's a scene where a frog confesses to stealing the queen's food. In the trailer, it was treated as a funny scene. In the movie? It's played up to be the Queen's Kick the Dog moment.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: The White Queen, as illustrated by the cheerful way in which she puts the disgusting ingredients in the potion she makes for Alice. As explained by her actress Anne Hathaway, the White Queen has the same craziness as her sister, the Red Queen, and so she tries to act/be very good and pure to compensate, but she is still kind of odd. You could think of her as a Perky Goth who happens to wear all white. On the other hand, she shows a look of brief disgust when Alice cuts off the Jabberwock's tongue and when she collects blood from the Jabberwock's severed head. She also seems to be close to vomiting when briefly smelling the buttered finger for the potion.
  • Non-Human Undead: The Jabberwocky, who looks all decayed and emaciated, and its intro even looked like resurrecting from the dead.
  • Noodle Incident: One that, when mentioned, immediately prompts the Hatter to fly into a furious tirade.
    Cheshire Cat: What happened that day was not my fault.
  • Obfuscating Insanity: The Hatter is very aware that there is something wrong with his sanity, he knows how the people around him react to insanity, and he knows that everyone thinks he's insane. Knowing that the Knave of Hearts dismisses insane people as useless (especially him and the Hare), the Hatter deliberately plays up his insanity to keep the Knave thinking he's harmless. In the process, he fools the Red Queen as well. In the end, he turns out to be much more capable and much more badass than either of them realized.
  • Of Corset Hurts: Alice refuses to wear her corset to show how free-spirited she is, saying how it's an item of female restriction. (Never mind that if she wasn't wearing the corset, she probably wouldn't have been able to get her dress on in the first place...) note  Her objection to stockings, however, is never really explained, though it's possible that she's not a fan of garters or garter belts (which would have held the stockings in place).
  • Off with His Head!: Alice to the Jabberwocky and of course the Red Queen. Unlike the book and the first Disney film, the Red Queen actually goes through with it, even against her own husband!
  • Oh, Crap!: A few throughout the film:
    • The Dormouse, after telling Alice to run and accidentally calling her by her real name in the Knave's presence.
    • After passing out in the Bandersnatch's shed because of her injury, Alice promptly does this when she wakes up, due to having the Bandersnatch growling right next to her face.
    • Alice and the Hatter both have this look on their faces when they see the Jabberwocky lumbering towards them.
    • The Red Queen after realizing that the Jabberwocky has been slain.
  • The Omniscient: Absolem the Caterpillar is implied to be this. Hardly surprising since he's keeper of the Oraculum.
    Alice: It's a calendar...
    Absolem: Compendium. It tells of each and every day, since the beginning.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Johnny Depp decided to play the Hatter with two accents, using a Scottish accent to reflect those moments when the Hatter is slipping into his dark rage/rebellion. Both the accent and the eye color change combine to warn the characters around him when he's about to become very, very dangerous. However, this constant accent switching does mean his accent slips at strange moments during scenes, making it seem like the Hatter comes from both the UK and US; it can possibly be handwaved as his family's accent being from a more remote part of Underland, but adopting a more centralized accent when they started living near the ruling class.
  • Parental Favoritism: The Red Queen's parents (and, apparently, the rest of the whole kingdom) always favored her little sister, the White Queen. This is the Red Queen's excuse for taking over the kingdom and acting like a monster to everyone.
  • Perky Goth: The White Queen - Anne Hathaway is clearly having a ball floating around like a melodramatic crazy girl. Hathaway's own description of her character is "a punk-rock vegan pacifist." One movie critic summed her up as "Morticia Addams's hippie cousin."
  • Pimped-Out Dress: The Queens and their courtiers. Also, Alice gets several over the course of the movie to match her ever-changing size (with the Hatter making one in seconds while she was tiny).
  • Politically Correct History:
    • Alice is rebellious in ways which wouldn't even have occurred to girls of her day. She holds attitudes which would have shocked and offended the feminists of her era; for example, in the late 1800s, her refusal to wear a corset would be as scandalous as refusing to wear a shirt today. What's more, scientific opinion at the time was that corsets were healthy for women; it wasn't a solid consensus, but it was popular enough. This results in an Alice who reads as a progressively feminist girl, born in the last few decades of the 20th century, who has been transported to Victorian England; at the very least, her perspectives on gender norms could paint her as one of the earliest suffragettes, just a generation or two off.
    • Her father's former business partner offers her (an unmarried 19-year-old girl) a 50/50 partnership in a fledgling business as if it were no big deal and only a little strange. In that time period, such a decision might well have destroyed his business reputation - far more impactful than some raised eyebrows.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: A few things or characters are either mixed together or adapted out for the sake of letting the story flow.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Alice, to the Jabberwocky: OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!
  • The Prophecy: Turns out, they have a magic calendar that predicts which direction the plot will go.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: The Red Queen, according to her actress, who evidently took inspiration from her young daughter, Nell.
    Helena Bonham Carter: The Red Queen is just like a toddler, because she’s got a big head and she’s a tyrant. Toddlers have no sympathy for any living creature. That’s our toddler, Nell just bosses us around with no Pleases or Thank-Yous. It’s ‘Mummy, come here’, ‘Mummy, carry me’. It’s all about her, she never considers us.
  • Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Alice stands up to the feminine traditions of the time. Normally, the people of stuffy 1800s England consider it most unorthodox of her.
  • Recycled Soundtrack: Danny Elfman's score reuses cues from the 1994 film version of Black Beauty.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Hatter normally has intense green eyes and an energetic but gentle personality. However, he does have a darker, more violent personality that the other Underlanders fear. The first sign of his personality change is his eyes shifting from green to a fiery orange-red color; at which point, characters either try to pull him out of the dark mood or flee.
  • Royal Favorite: Alice grows to become nine feet tall after eating the "Eat Me" cake, and thanks to this, she manages to ingratiate herself (under an assumed name of Um) with the Red Queen, who states that "Um" is her "new favorite". Free to explore the Queen's palace, Alice finds the Vorpal Sword and cures and befriends the Bandersnatch. Interestingly, this is an inversion of the Queen of Hearts in the original "Alice in Wonderland" - when Alice grows big there, the Queen demands that she gets cut down to size... starting from the top.
  • The Scapegoat: Chess takes a lot of heat for something he did when the White Queen was overthrown, and the Hatter blames him for the whole incident. (This was not without malice on Tim Burton's part; he hates cats.) He redeems himself eventually.
  • Scenery Censor: After Alice eats a piece of the cake that makes her grow, it causes her to outgrow her clothes and leaves her naked in the Red Queen's yard with some bushes covering her from the chest down.
  • Scenery Porn: It is a Tim Burton movie, after all. A visual feast is practically expected. Even the bombed-out ruins of the White Queen's party look impressive.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Chessur does this when the guards crash the Mad Tea Party.
    Chessur: (grinning his usual grin) Goodbye! (disappears)
  • The Seven Basic Plots: Voyage and Return. Yep, painfully as obvious as Alice's adventure but inverted at the end when Alice leaves Underland but vows to return, and once in her own world sails off to China, implying she has at least one more voyage before coming home.
  • Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Whenever Alice shrinks or grows, her clothing remains its original size, forcing some creative costume changes until the White Queen finally puts her back to normal. This is a contrast from the original text, in which her clothes changed size with her. Presumably this was done for the sake of fanservice.
  • Shifting Voice of Madness: The Mad Hatter occasionally breaks into a Scottish brogue, usually to deliver defamation or invective.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Alice's father's name is Charles; Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Dodgson.
    • Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, was another famous Victorian children's author whose work influenced Lewis Carroll. Alice is given the surname of Kingsleigh in this adaptation.
    • The twisted tree near the entry door to Wonderland is very similar to the one in Sleepy Hollow (1999).
    • The Jabberwocky acting as the Red Queen's Sentinel, similarly to American McGee's Alice.
    • The Knave's comment to the Red Queen, "Is it not better to be feared than loved?" is in fact a shout out to Macchiavelli's The Prince.
    • There seem to be a few shout-outs to that other Big Effin' 3-D CGI movie that came out only a few months before, such as the floating seed pods, and having to lead an army to fight a dragon with a dangerous creature they befriended, but it's probably that movie referencing this one's story plus another big effin' movie trilogy's tropes.
    • The first shot of the Hatter sitting in his cell is a visual allusion to the shot of the falsely-imprisoned man in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
    • "Alice's Theme" contains the lyric "Remember what the Dormouse said", which is taken directly from Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit".
    • To Hook. An iconic English literary character returns to a fantastical land after many years away to face old adversaries. Both films contain flashbacks of the protagonist’s past, which feature scenes from the books the films were based on.
    • To American McGee's Alice. A grown-up Alice returns to Wonderland, which has become significantly less whimsical than when she first visited thanks to the cruel reign of the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts, who uses the Jabberwock as an enforcer.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: Alice: "That's enough chatter!" She slices off the Jabberwock's tongue.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The Red Queen and the White Queen.
  • Slasher Smile: The Cheshire Cat, and virtually everyone else who smiles in Underland.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Absolem, of course. Interestingly, this movie came out after Disney stated it would no longer show characters smoking in its movies.
  • Sore Loser: The Red Queen after Alice vanquishes the Jabberwocky.
  • Split Personality: The Hatter seems to have one - he lapses into a Scottish brogue and his eyes even change color as an indicator on occasion. Supplemental material explains that the brogue is common to those who speak Outlandish, the language from the portion of Underland which includes the Hatter's home village of Witzend.
  • Statuesque Stunner: 9-foot-tall Alice. Well, to the Knave of Hearts, anyway.
  • Stealth Pun: If you listen to the White Queen condemn her sister, you will notice that the Red Queen is 'Iracebeth of Crims'. That is, she's crimson. Crims is the region of Underland where Iracebeth's castle, Salazen Grum, is located. The origin of the name probably is a reflection of the color, though.
  • Stepford Smiler: The White Queen, when she's not pretending to be pure.
  • Tailfin Walking: The fish courtier.
  • Take That!: Alice's dance near the end of the movie; Gasp! She's not wearing stockings!
  • Talking Animals: Non-talking (well, not on camera anyway) animals are the aforementioned "furniture".
  • Tantrum Throwing: The Mad Hatter does this in the Red Queen's Castle.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Dormouse again, when the Jub-Jub Bird corners her and Bayard the bloodhound on the battlefield.
    • After the final battle, the Hatter throws his scissors right into the Knave's wrist, just as he is about to murder the Red Queen (to whom he was forcibly handcuffed as punishment).
  • Tome of Prophecy: The Oraculum.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Arguably, the entire cast. Specifically Alice, the Dormouse, and the Hatter. Even the White Queen seems to take one when she gets the crown back.
  • Tough Leader Façade: The White Queen spends most of her time looking elegant and floating around waving her arms in the air; but during her first appearance, she asks her courtiers to excuse her for a moment, and the second they leave, she drops her arms, picks up her skirts, and runs to greet Bayard in a gush of emotion. She's making use of Obfuscating Weirdness.
  • Trickster Archetype: The Cheshire Cat. In true Trickster fashion, it's even implied this whole mess started because of him.
  • Troubled Backstory Flashback: The Hatter has a very tragic backstory that is only briefly seen in flashback, and which is implied to be the origin of his split personality, as it appears to be that moment when his eyes first turn orange; in the current storyline, it is references to that back story that almost always trigger the eye color change in the Hatter.
  • Tsundere: The Red Queen. Dere Dere when it comes to the Knave, Tsun Tsun about everything else.
  • Tyrant Takes the Helm: The Red Queen fits this trope.
  • Unexplained Recovery: The Bandersnatch's eye. Played with in the case of Alice's scratched arm after the Bandersnatch licks it better. The inflammation disappears and the bleeding stops, but it's still pretty visible, even when she returns to London in the ending.
  • The Un-Favorite: The Red Queen, or at least from her own perspective; she insists that her parents favored her little sister, the White Queen. This is her Freudian Excuse for being such a psycho. The sequel film shows that Iracebeth's own lack of grace contributed to her loss of favor, and that her sister had no desire to supplant her sister in any respect, but accepted what their parents decreed all the same.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Alice and the Hatter have a lot of chemistry and are instinctively very protective of each other. The other characters seem to be aware that there's some kind of unspoken bond between the two and tolerate it, with the exception of the Dormouse. Interviews and supplementary information reveal that the original script did intend to have Alice and the Hatter kiss, and that the Dormouse is secretly in love with the Hatter. The kiss is written out, but the romantic subtext and the Dormouse's animosity is kept in.
    The Mad Hatter: (to 9-foot-tall Alice) Why is it you're always too small or too tall?
  • Unusual Euphemism:
    • "shukrn"
    • "slurking urpal slackush scrum": No literal translation was given, but rather simply "words of the foulest meaning".
  • Unusual Eyebrows: The Mad Hatter.
  • Upper-Class Twit: Hamish, Alice's would-be fiancé, could be the poster child for this trope.
  • Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: The Jabberwocky. And it walks on all fours - with its wings. It can even make fists with them, or climb up the ruins, but it can't fly.
  • Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: The Red Queen's home of Salazen Grum is a badland, with dead trees and no grass anywhere. The White Queen's home of Marmoreal is an arcadia, with lush trees in full leaf cover - though the leaves are pale to match her personal palette.
  • Violent Glaswegian: The March Hare is always muttering to himself or shouting in Scottish accented gibberish, and he's certainly violent. The Mad Hatter gets a Scottish accent (with a kilt and a claymore in the final battle!) when angry.
  • Waif-Fu: Alice, who looks like River Tam's even waifier sister, dons a shining suit of armor, and beheads the friggin' Jabberwocky. While leaping through the air for added coolness.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: The Vorpal Sword is implied to be this for the Jabberwocky.
  • Weird Moon: Once the Cheshire Cat gets hold of it. Also, just for a moment in the opening sequence, the clouds in front of the moon form the Cheshire Cat's face as we pull back.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: After the croquet game, the Dodo disappears. There is no mention of him; he doesn't even show up during the final battle!
  • Who's on First?: The Knave has some trouble with the name "Um".
  • Wild Mass Guessing: Depp's take on the Mad Hatter is a historical one: Hatters went mad due to working with mercury (which can turn hair and eyes red while bleaching skin and cause anxiety, hallucinations, and possibly schizophrenia), and the Mad Hatter has had mercury poisoning for a very long time. He also went with the Edgar Allan Poe angle to the Raven/writing desk riddle.
  • Wound Licking: The Bandersnatch's saliva can apparently heal the festering wounds from its claws.
  • Yes Men: The Red Queen's courtiers. The Mad Hatter actually calls them "lickspittles."
  • Xenafication: Alice, naturally, but not right away. At the start of the film, she's just a teenage version of the girl she was before and has to take several levels in badass before the full Xenafication process is complete at the end. (And she becomes a mature, independent young woman in the process.)
  • Youngest Child Wins: Mirana succeeds in taking the throne away from her older sister, bringing peace to Underland.

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