Headscratchers / Alice in Wonderland (2010)

• What's with the names? I really have no problem with them, but why are they there? Why can't we just call a hatter the Hatter?
  • In the movie the characters have dialogue between each other and calling each other "Cheshire Cat", "White Queen", "Hatter", etc. would be excruciatingly annoying after a while.
    • Why? That's what they called each other in every other version of the story.
    • A mark of added realism and character depth—in the real world even people known by titles (like the Dalai Lama) have given names, and those who assume a name along with a title (like the popes) also have birth names. Giving names to the characters suggests a past, a history, and that they are real people. Of course whether that was an appropriate thing to do, particularly with a product like Alice in Wonderland where things don't make sense as a rule and the characters are in many ways archetypes, is another matter—but even if you think that was a bad or wrong reason to do it, that is still likely the reason.
    • The names don't feel realistic either, though, because most of them are just interjected into the dialogue once or twice.
    • It doesn't matter that you don't think they sound realistic, and do you tend to needlessly toss your friends' names into every sentence? Underland is a real place in this film, so it makes sense for the characters to have real names.
    • One possibility is that it's because ALICE has grown up more, and reached the point where she is expected to call people by their names, and so she ascribes it to Underland/Wonderland.
• The futterwacken. Alice's use of it at the end was... utterly pointless, even if you consider it to be a generic victory dance, unless you interpret it as her attempt to convince those present that she's mad, a sort of Refuge in Audacity (I thought at first that she was merely flaunting her lack of stockings).
  • I saw it as a Take That! to everyone who expected her to do the "proper" thing at all times.
    • What bothered me was that there's already a 'mad dance' in the books, the Lobster Quadrille! It even has a song that goes along with it! Why, when inventing the dance Brick Joke, did they not just use the Lobster Quadrille? Why create a nonsense word where there's already one ready-made?
    • Because she would need at least one other person and two lobsters, of course.
    • Film!Alice hates the Quadrille with a passion. Of course they couldn't have danced the Lobster Quadrille.
    • That's actually more of a reason for Alice to do the Lobster Quadrille. Alice hates normal Quadrille for being boring and tedious, so she'd find the idea of showing off how Underland livened it up amusing. Plus referencing the Lobster Quadrille is totally pointless if they're not going to go through with the whole thing.
• How did a movie that's basically a love letter to macrophilia and the giantess fetish ever get past the Disney censors?
  • Considering that Lewis Carroll's repressed paedophilia is more or less a given these days, I imagine they thought it was an improvement.
  • A grand misconception more than a given: having a history of entertaining children does not make one a repressed paedophile.
    • Quite. Moreover, Carroll first became acquainted with Alice's older brother, rather than Alice herself. Yet he doesn't get a book, because he wasn't a ten-year-old child who asked Charles Dodgson to write down the clever stories.
  • Disney executives don't lurk in the dark corners of the internet?
    • Disney is known to get many a crap past the radar themselves.
  • Um... you act as if the growth and size change were only in this adaptation. It's in every adaptation, and in the original book as well. Yet I've never seen anyone accuse Lewis Carroll of have a macrophilia/giantess fetish (as opposed to the usual one someone above me just brought up)...
  • The whole growing larger and smaller thing has nothing to do with any sort of fetish and everything to do with math. Carroll was a mathematical and at the time when he wrote the book "new" math was coming about with things like imaginary numbers and such. The whole of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was to show a world that existed entirely on the basis of those new maths. Things grow larger and smaller, it's chaotic, you don't know whether you're coming or going, and all because the math is wonky.
• Opening up trade with China. Were we supposed to think that Alice would be the cause (even if indirectly) of the ugliness of the Opium War, or was the writer really that naive?
  • It's a Historical In-Joke gone sour. Though whoever said Alice would be trading opium?
    • Opening a direct trade-route to China would result in the British Empire's attempts to open the country to further trade, eventually choosing a merchandise that they would have to buy. Alice herself doesn't need to do the opium-trading in order to bring about the circumstances where the opium trade became a viable political strategy.
  • Alice humiliates Lord Ascot's son in public and the Lord gives her a job???
    • Maybe the Lord doesn't like his son very much.
• Why did the Knave of Hearts beg the White Queen to kill him after he failed to kill the Red Queen? Sure, he had failed that attempt, but he's much bigger, stronger, and more well trained than she is. Plus, it's not like she's going anywhere.
  • Maybe because he doesn't like her and it's Rule of Funny?
  • Maybe he didn't try to kill her, but himself?
    • Exactly.
  • I thought it was because he was going to be stuck with her for eternity and she would be the only one who wouldn't be ignoring him. Death was preferable than being trapped to the Red Queen forever.
• If the Red Queen knew that Alice was destined to kill the Jabberwock on a certain day, why in the blasted infernal hells would she have the Jabberwock fight Alice on said day? Why not just stay home and wait until tomorrow? It's not like the White Queen was going anywhere.
  • Why do ANYTHING on ANY day, seeing as how according to that paper we already know what's going to happen every day for the rest of eternity? Honestly, an item like that which completely and utterly removes any kind of intensity is.. a bad move. If You Can't Fight Fate, what is the point of even trying?
  • Alternatively, it might be that the Queen was trying to assert her own power via a Screw Destiny. If the Jabberwock destroyed Alice on the very same day she was supposed to kill him (and that didn't seem a long stretch, prophecy or not, given that on one side we have a pyroelectric spitting dragon and on the other a young girl) surely the denizens of Underland would have lost all hope and will to fight back against the Queen. Alternatively, maybe the Red Queen was as much a skeptic as the Dormouse and also thought this was the wrong Alice.
  • Self-fulfilling prophecies are like that.
  • Because, as was pointed out above, the White Queen had said whether Alice would fight or not was her own choice. Despite the fact the Oraculum showed her fighting the Jabberwock that day, if Alice had continued to believe it was All Just a Dream or had otherwise chosen not to fight, the Red Queen would have won. By coming there she was simply counting on Alice continuing to remain oblivious and clueless, or at least neutral. The fact that Alice remembered her past visit, then decided to protect her old friends and be strong to embrace her destiny, fulfilled the prophecy—but not only did the Red Queen think that wouldn't happen, fate was not as ironclad as it appeared. Until the last moment, Alice still could have chosen not to fight. And as has been pointed out farther down, the Oraculum just shows her fighting, not winning. If she hadn't hung on to the Vorpal Blade as she'd been told...
• When Alice first shrinks, we never actually see her arms get out of the puffy sleeves. She never raised her arms, so it's like they just magically passed through the torso of her dress, which is ridiculous, even for Wonderland.
  • She just shrank that much. She gets small enough that her whole body could fit in that sleeve, you're expecting her arms to stretch far enough to fit through both of them? She gets skinnier, therefore farther from the sleeves. Her arms gets proportionally shorter. You do the math.
  • The meta justification is probably movie-maker magic. If they don't have to show Alice's arms moving through the sleeves, the special effects are a lot easier to pull off. The shot is clearly set up to keep said sleeves and the lack of arms in them out of view for as long as possible...it's just not quite long enough to keep up the illusion for sharp-eyed viewers.
• Why are ALL the members of the tea party Scottish? In a world kind of based off England, there's a little bubble of Scotland just hanging out? Why? I mean, it kind of explains why the Hatter pulls out a fucking claymore during the final battle... but only in a roundabout way...
  • My Dad thought that the Hatter's Scottish split personality was Scottish because it was a reference to Scottish separatism and anti-monarchist sentiment of the time. I didn't know the March Hare was supposed to be Scottish, though.
    • Your Dad is a genius.
• Chessur says, rather bluntly, "You'll need someone with evaporating skills to tend that wound (from The Bandersnatch)" so, then, is The Bandersnatch a master of evaporation?
  • No, it's just got poisonous claws (either magically or naturally), or the wound had started festering to the point that Alice's own immune system or some medicinal skills wouldn't heal it. You don't need to grow penicillin in your nasal passages to sneeze on someone and give them a cold.
    • No, but the Bandersnatch DOES heal Alice's wound by licking it. HOW?
    • Ah. No, it's presumably a master at evaporation the same way termites are master architects, or sorcerors are different from wizards. It could be a master at evaporation magic, though, if it really is a being rather than just an intelligent beast.
    • That and a creature who spreads poison by scratching would presumably need to evolve either a resistance to or way to combat his poison, lest fleas would become a very deadly problem indeed. It's possible that bandersnatch saliva had evolved to the point of being able to chemically nullify any accidental scratches. He's not a master of evaporation, it's just that he's got the only antidote and it's not exactly easy to harvest so it wasn't a viable option.
    • Chessur wasn't saying evaporating skills was the only way to heal her wounds, just that that was what she would need. Why would she need it? Because he knew (or at least strongly believed) that the Bandersnatch could never be convinced to heal her itself with its antidote saliva, so his evaporation was the only method available to heal her. The unstated part of his sentence is "You'll need someone with evaporating skills to tend that wound [because the Bandersnatch certainly won't help you]." He didn't say that part because there was no point getting her hopes up with something he thought impossible. (He didn't count on the Androcles' Lion gambit.)
    • I got the impression that Chessur was just puffing up the importance of his own abilities. Didn't he also say that the White Queen's champion should have evaporating skills? He probably says that all the time, about all sorts of unlikely tasks.
• The Oraculum. With it there are no shortage of plot holes we could probably think up. Why were the characters having some sort of celebration when that scroll probably had a nice shiny picture showing the Jabberwock attack them?
  • Given that Absolem is the guardian of the Oraculum, and he doesn't seem prone to over-sharing information, perhaps it's on a need-to-know basis? It had to happen, so it did.
• Why would it take the death of the Jabberwocky for everyone to turn against the Red Queen? It obviously wasn't at the castle and it looks like it would take a bit of time for it to wake up or move anywhere. The Red Queen is surrounded by people that hate her and can easily find weapons, can they honestly say that no one was capable of poisoning her or killing her in her sleep?
  • That would probably result in the Jabberwock going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Bad idea.
    • The Red Queen probably gave the Jabberwock specific orders of that nature. Assuming she's the one who gives orders.
  • Just my interpretation, but I was under the impression that the Red Queen's authority and power derived magically from the Jabberwock. Because the minute it was destroyed, we didn't see everyone run away, or immediately rise up against her—instead the cards lost their will to fight, the Knave lost what had seemed to be fanatical loyalty in favor of contempt and hatred, and even the Hatter stopped threatening the Knave, as if he no longer saw him or the Queen as threats anymore. Why this would be or how, I don't know, but it seemed that it wasn't just fear which compelled people to follow and obey her, but an actual magical compulsion. Perhaps the Power of Fear made literal?
• When talking to Absalom before going to slay the Jabberwocky, Alice expresses concern that he is going to die. Absalom is quite clearly forming a cocoon. Alice knows that he's a caterpillar. Which raises the question: Why does a 19-year-old girl have no idea what a butterfly is?
  • You're applying logic to Wonderland. For all Alice knows, the absence of logic in Wonderland means that caterpillars don't turn into butterflies.
  • Plus, she initially only asked him why he was upside down, and then assumed he was dying after he tells her "I've come to the end of this life." It's a fair conclusion to come to based on that.
• Just a really small one. Upon looking at the picture in the Oraculum, why does everyone immediately assume that Alice will defeat the Jabberwock when it just shows her with the Jabberwock flying towards her? I mean in the flashback we saw another knight who took the same stance and he got flamed.
  • They've been ruled by a tyrant for the last several years, and the first hint of their salvation has just arrived - of course they're going to assume the best possible outcome.
• I know, I know, this is Wonderland, but you still gotta wonder. Apparently the Vorpal Sword is the only means to slay the Jabberwock(y) - "if it ain't Vorpal, it ain't dead". But ironically, to know this for sure, the only way would be to actually slay him. And de facto the dragon appears to have had at least an encounter with the blade, possibly more, but there he was standing in front of Alice, very much alive. So how would the denizens of Dreamland know the Vorpal Blade can kill him?
  • Unless that is no other weapon can even pierce his skin anyways.
  • Or unless he has in fact been killed but has regenerated through his own power or the Red Queen's - if he has that possibility, this would mean Alice's efforts were moot anyways.
  • Or that it had been foretold, apparently quite precisely.
  • The Jabberwock specifically calls the Vorpal Blade his "ancient enemy", with Alice a mere bearer. So yeah, either he's been killed and regenerated/resurrected before, or simply wounded by the only thing that COULD hurt him.
  • OP makes it sound like there's only one Jabberwock. How do we know it's not part of an entire species?
  • Considering that everyone is not worrying about the Jabberwock coming back to life after Alice killed him, it can be presumed that if he is capable of regenerating/resurrecting, it will take a very long time (probably a couple of centuries or decades). Or that it was originally killed but someone somehow brought it back to life; or more likely that someone else tried to kill him with the vorpal blade before, but hadn't managed to kill him yet.
• How did Alice's flashback include the Rabbit's "She's the right one, I'm certain of it!" and the Dodo's "You'd think she would remember all this from the first time..." lines when she never heard them say that herself?
  • We don't know that she didn't hear them saying it. She might've just been too busy trying to escape the room to react.
• The White Queen has vowed "not to harm any living creature". Must we assume that the ingredients for her potions - many of which are animal body parts, human fingers included - are taken from corpses, or given willingly by volunteers? Human fingers, mind you.
  • There's no in-universe explanation. The most common fan theories are either corpses or her subjects bring them to her and she doesn't care how they get them.
  • She's taken a vow of pacifism because she's worried if she hurts someone, it'll bring out the side to her that's as psychotic as her sister and she won't be able to control it, sort of like Batman. Things being harmed by other people don't carry that same risk, so she's more okay with it.
• The first few times Alice takes the Pishalver that changes her size it presumably tastes foul and she coughs. But when the White Queen gives her the solution Alice doesn't cough. Always wondered why. She was possibly used to the bad taste by then or the Pishalver tastes different depending on temperature and freshness. Some liquids taste better or worse when hot, cold or room temperature, and if they're newly prepared or not.
  • The coughing could also be because some of the pishalver made it into her windpipe the first time. When the White Queen gives her some, notice how she drinks it much more carefully and only takes a little sip.