Ever heard of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? It's a fable by one Lewis Carroll (born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), a Victorian writer of so little note he wasn't even able to get his name on the boxart. The playable char- sorry, protagonist is Alice, a teenage girl journeying through an imaginary realm populated by stressed rabbits, belligerent playing cards and visibility-deficient cats.
Touching on themes as ripe for pseudo-intellectual pontification as metamorphosis, logic, sexuality and the theory of causality, it's one of the books you can comfortably expect to appear at any decent-sized congregation of simpering eggheads. To cut a long story short, it gives serious subtext.
American McGee and his cohorts at Spicy Horse Studios have a pretty unambiguous - some might say, crude - way of dealing with subtext, which is to turn subtext upside down, shake hard, grab whatever falls off and sick up gothy pointed lettering all over it.
Set some years after the events of the books, with the heroine now a fair few sandwiches short of a picnic, Alice: Madness Returns isn't the most straight-laced of homages. Or is it? Let's put a few of the things the new game and its "inspiration" ostensibly have in common side by side, then slap an arbitrary number on the end for shoots and goggles.
The Vorpal Sword
Alice's "signature weapon" doesn't actually feature in either the original Wonderland book or its expansion pac- sorry, sequel Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (rolls off the tongue like a lead pellet, don't it). The blade gets a mention only in the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky", bundled with - sorry, originally published as part of the second novel.
Madness Returns:
For something a maths professor might have fabricated after inhaling chalk fumes, that Vorpal Sword hits surprisingly hard. The game's melee tool of choice, it'll mince practically anything with bodily fluids in a matter of seconds. Let's not forget those "amplified" sound effects, either. Carroll's blade goes "snicker snack" - the new version goes "zhAANGcrunchAAAAAAAAsplurt". It's certainly emphatic, like besting your university debating partner by seizing his ledger and hammering his teeth out with it.
Fidel-o-meter: 3/10
The Cheshire Cat
The nearest thing Wonderland has to a friendly face, if only because of that infamous jaw-stretching grin. The Cheshire Cat serves as Alice's guide and philosophical interlocutor on her tour of the realm, fading in and out of existence at key junctures - smile first and last. The Queen of Hearts attempts to have it decapitated later on, but the Cat's ethereal substance proves difficult to dissect.
Somewhere along the road to McGee's reinvention, the Cat must have picked up a severe crystal meth addiction from a drunken tattoo artist. With his skeletal haunches, piercings, prominent claws and stabby eyeliner, the virtual puss belongs on the cover of Meat Loaf album. He's still theoretically an ally, but you wouldn't want the mangy thing jumping onto your lap in the wee hours. Yep, "wee" is definitely the right word.
7 comments so far...
Spiderless on 24 May '11 said:
Wow... someone hates Alice in Wonderland
Was it the only book ever read to you as a child, over and over again? So much so that the merest mention sparks a burning hatred? Or perhaps it was the subject of many a long tedious English lesson? (Although you obviously excelled in that subject)
In all fairness though it looks like the developers forgot the art of subtlety entirely. Its a shame, I quite liked the look of this to begin with. On the other hand Tim Burton's Alice was under-done (if thats a word) and Disneyfied (which isn't), its a shame no one seems to be able to nail it completely, but then I guess taste has a lot to do with it.
Grummy on 24 May '11 said:
The problems started the day Disney got their hands on it and made it into a Kids cartoon.
The real Alice stories are pretty dark and f**ked up, like a lot of these stories Disney has made kids films of actually are.
Someone could do justice to the real Alice stories no problem if thy weren't so tied to Disney.
This game, look plenty f**ked up too. a different kind of f**ked up, but f**ked up nonetheless.
I'm hoping there's a demo of it, because I'm definitely interested in trying it out.
CunningSmile on 25 May '11 said:
One of the biggest problems the Alice books (and Gulliver's Travels as well) suffer from is that they are actually hard hitting political satire's that for some reason we have spent a century reading to kids. Seriously. In Alice in Wonderland each of the groups she meets, such as the Hatter's tea party (democracy), the Mock turtle and carpenter (religion) and the Red Queen (absolute monarchy) represent a different form of government and what can go wrong. It's like traveling to the future and finding cbeebies has been replaced with Spitting Image.
Tiamtu on 25 May '11 said:
You've read neither Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass, have you? I have - numerous times - and only recently did I read both tales again, years after enjoying them as a child.
The 'real' Alice stories are not dark, in fact, they are joyous, fantastical, and inspiring (laced with esotericism and, indeed, somewhat petty 'politics'). Quite where 'American' (hah!) McGee gleans his inspiration I do not know, but having read both stories many, many times, I can assure you "dark and f**cked up" is in no way an accurate evaluation of either.
That said, I look forward to the game greatly. It looks like an interesting take on the 'Alice' multiverse, even if it is ludicrously extreme and inappropriately Hellish.
Grummy on 25 May '11 said:
Not for about 20 years, no, so I'm working from memory. I just remember there being a lot of dark themes.
I will hold my hand up and admit my memory could well be skewed though, I remember Wizard of Oz as being a creepy f**ked up read as well, and thinking stories like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel were far more disturbing than people realised.
They all had a lot of dark themes of kidnap, murder, child abuse etc, which are present in the Alice stories as well to some degree. When I was a kid I always wondered why everyone treated Alice badly, and why the Queen wanted to kill her. Now, on reflection, I see the story as a metaphor for a childs escape from the horrors of abuse with themes of insanity, drug addiction and mental breakdown.
You probably won't agree, you never do, and you will probably scoff at these interpretations because you don't agree, that has always been your way, but before you do, try looking at it from a different perspective. If you can't see it, then that's fine, not everyone will, but it IS there.
RType on 25 May '11 said:
Sorry OXM but that's total balls, Jabberwocky is one of my favorite poems and the Vorpal sword is more a description of a blade than a blade itself. If taken literally as "the Vorpal sword" then it is actually used to kill the beast... and I quote...
So really it is quite effective at slaying monsters... or at least Jabberwocky's...
Tiamtu on 25 May '11 said:
What an odd way to conclude a post. Be so diplomatic and rational, and then follow it with a slur. Odd.
Anyway, I do agree (oh my!) that these 'children's tales' are far deeper (I resist the temptation to say 'darker') than many realise, but really, Alice... is not particularly malevolent; indeed, the Disney movies (animated and more recent 'goth' interpretation) are noticeably more sinister than the two books. If you recall, for example, that the Red Queen and Alice get along relatively well - not so in either of the two movies of course.
I hope the Mock Turtle has a role to play in Madness Returns. Sadly missing from the movies, and such an amusing part of Alice.