Disney's Alice in Wonderland : A Visual Companion

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
• THE PERFECT ALICE
• THE MAD HATTER
• THE RED QUEEN
• DESIGNING WONDERLAND
• IN GREENLAND
• BACK TO REALITY
• INDEX

In 1865, Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson penned a fantastic tale about a young girl who tumbles down a rabbit hole and enters a world where animals speak and events unfold with the graceful chaos of dreams.

Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, captivated readers with his sometimes-diminutive, sometimes-huge, and sometimes-just-right-size heroine named Alice. Never before had the world known a character like Alice, a tale like that of her adventures, or a place like Wonderland.

With his film, Disney's Alice in Wonderland visionary filmmaker Tim Burton takes the now-familiar tale of the girl who finds herself the guest of honor at a mad tea party and unwittingly stirs a revolution against a ruthless queen and uses it to astound the world once again. Burton's brilliant ability to take popular stories and find new ways of telling them - and of making them his own - has perhaps never been quite as evident as it is in Alice.

Burton's reimagining finds Alice in a place called Underland. It's a realm she's visited before, but she only half remembers her experiences, in fleeting, dreamlike memories. All of the usual suspects are there : the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Alice is here, too. Only, she may or may not be the girl fondly remembered from past adventures in Wonderland. The film is a story about discovery - chiefly, Alice's, of her own self.

In Disney's Alice in Wonderland : A Visual Companion, Mark Salisbury wonderfully presents us with the concept artwork, set and costume designs, and all of the other visual developments that make Burton's take on the classic tale the most unique since Reverend Dodgson put ink to paper and first thrust us headlong down the rabbit hole in 1865.

MARK SALISBURY is the editor of the best-selling Burton on Burton and the author of movie companions Planet of the Apes : Reimagined by Tim burton, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride : An Invitation to the Wedding and Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A former editor of Empire and for many years London correspondent for Premiere magazine, he writes for numerous publications in the United Kingdom and United States. His other books include Writers on Comics Scriptwriting and Artists on Comics Art. He can be found at marksalisbury.blogspot.com.