Alice In Blunderland

As the most militant film trailer watcher (™ JJ Dunning) on The Fly team, I’ve watched the trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland about ten times, each viewing getting me more excited about its release in March. I’m no film buff – more of a slow-witted film dunston – but Alice In Wonderland seems to have everything you’d want in a Tim Burton film – Johnny Depp, a talking cat voiced by Stephen Fry, weird monsters and 3-D psychedelica. Sure, the naysayers will say that, coming after adaptations and reworks of Planet Of The Apes, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd, Alice In Wonderland is yet more evidence that the gothic imagination that once burst through Burton has gone, but that would be criminally underestimating one the world’s most magical directors.

Or, at least, it would be if Burton hadn’t put the Alice In Wonderland soundtrack, details of which were announced this morning, in the hands of emo surburbia. A quick scroll through the bands contributing is almost enough to make me never listen to music again, the likes of Avril Lavigne (splughh), The All-American Rejects (uchhhhrghh), Owl City (whurghhh), Plain White T’s (boooooom) and, worst of all, a Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy collaboration (beeeeeeeeeeeeep) suggest that Alice isn’t actually going to Wonderland at all, she’s just taking a trip to the Vans Warped Tour, the presence of Franz and Burton-hero Robert Smith a hollow nod towards PEOPLE WITH EARS.

It’s astoundingly bad – especially when you consider that Burton’s track record of music in films is top notch. Danny Elfman’s wonderfully creepy scores aside, Burton’s crowbarred Prince’s technicolour-pop into Gotham City’s industrial cityscapes in Batman, turned the Oompa Loompas into Rocky Horror prog-rockers in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and, in ‘Man Of The Hour’, got Pearl Jam to write one of the best post-‘Vs’ songs for the closing credits of Big Fish. On top of that, he also made a cameo in Singles, the best film about music (sort of) ever made. Period. Why, of all a sudden, he’s decided to turn to the daft side for the Alice In Wonderland soundtrack is a mystery, but here’s hoping it’s just a blip and not much of the music actually makes it into the film – after all, even James Cameron had the sense to leave the cackatrosity that is that Leona Lewis song until Avatar’s closing credits…