Alice Through the Looking Glass

Stepping into a theater in 2016 to watch Alice Through the Looking Glass felt a bit like being invited to a party that had actually ended six years prior. The 2010 original, directed by Tim Burton, was a billion-dollar behemoth that kickstarted Disney’s obsession with live-action remakes, but by the time the sequel arrived, the neon-drenched, "Hot Topic" aesthetic of Underland felt a little dusty. Yet, as I sat there in a half-empty cinema—nursing a lukewarm ginger ale that had lost its fizz twenty minutes before the trailers ended—I realized something surprising. This movie is actually more interesting, more coherent, and more emotionally grounded than the first one. It’s a sequel that didn't need to exist, but I’m strangely glad it does.

A Race Against the Grandfather Clock

The plot ditches Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical chess match for a high-stakes time-travel heist. Alice Kingsleigh, played with a refreshing, steely resolve by Mia Wasikowska (Crimson Peak), returns from years at sea to find her career and family home under threat. A blue butterfly (the late, great Alan Rickman in his final film role) leads her back through a mirror to Underland, where the Mad Hatter is dying of... well, sadness. To save him, Alice has to steal the "Chronosphere" from Time himself.

What follows is a surprisingly brisk adventure that feels less like a Burton fever dream and more like a steampunk odyssey. James Bobin, who previously directed the joyful The Muppets (2011), takes over the director's chair and brings a much-needed sense of whimsy that was missing from the 2010 film’s gloom. While Burton stayed on as a producer, Bobin’s touch makes the world feel less like a CGI graveyard and more like a functioning, albeit bizarre, clockwork toy. The "Ocean of Time"—a literal sea of memories where Alice navigates through the past—is one of the most striking visual concepts I’ve seen in a modern blockbuster. It captures that sense of discovery that defines the best adventure films: the feeling that the world is bigger than the characters inhabiting it.

The Man in the Clockwork Suit

The secret weapon here isn't the returning cast, though Helena Bonham Carter is still clearly having the time of her life screaming about heads. No, the MVP is Sacha Baron Cohen as Time. Dressed in a costume that looks like a cathedral mated with a grandfather clock, he plays the personification of the fourth dimension not as a villain, but as a middle-manager who is just incredibly tired of everyone’s nonsense.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance is essentially a bizarre Werner Herzog impression delivered through a mouthful of marbles, and it is glorious. He brings a weird, pedantic energy to the film that balances out Johnny Depp’s increasingly frantic performance as the Mad Hatter. By 2016, we were arguably at the height of "Depp Fatigue," and while his orange-haired Tarrant Hightopp can still be a bit much, the script by Linda Woolverton actually gives him a tragic backstory that justifies the madness. Johnny Depp’s Tarrant Hightopp is essentially a neon-haired emotional support animal in this outing, and for once, the stakes feel personal rather than "save the world from a dragon."

Stuff You Didn't Notice (But Should Have)

Beneath the layer of hyper-saturated CGI, there’s some fascinating craftsmanship going on. Apparently, the production was a massive undertaking that involved building actual, physical sets for the interior of Time’s castle to give the actors something to touch besides green screens.

Alan Rickman finished his voice work as Absolem just months before he passed away; the film is dedicated to him. The costume designer, Colleen Atwood, earned an Oscar nomination for her work here, and you can see why—the intricate embroidery on Alice’s "Captain" outfit is stunning. James Bobin insisted on adding more "British humor" to the script, which is why the banter between Time and his tiny robot minions (the Seconds) feels like a lost Monty Python sketch. The film’s box office was a bit of a disaster, earning roughly $700 million less than its predecessor, which has turned it into a bit of a "forgotten" Disney sequel that fans are only now rediscovering on streaming platforms. * P!nk recorded a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s "White Rabbit" for the marketing, but the actual movie features her original song "Just Like Fire," which feels very 2016.

The Legacy of the Looking Glass

In the era of "franchise fatigue," Through the Looking Glass is a weird outlier. It’s a film that tries to do something meaningful with the "legacy sequel" format by exploring the trauma of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). It turns out Anne Hathaway’s Mirana is low-key the villain of the entire franchise, and seeing her forced to reckon with a childhood lie gives the movie a narrative weight the first one lacked.

Is it a masterpiece? No. It’s still a bit over-reliant on pixels, and the pacing in the middle act can feel like it’s running in place. But as an adventure about the inevitability of loss and the importance of family, it’s surprisingly touching. It treats time not as a thief, but as a gift—a sentiment that felt particularly poignant given Alan Rickman’s departure. It’s a film that was misunderstood in its moment, caught in the crossfire of a shifting cinematic landscape, but it remains a visually spectacular journey worth taking if you’ve got a couple of hours and an appreciation for the slightly tilted.

Ultimately, this is a movie about forgiving the past so you can live in the present. It might not have the cultural footprint of the original, but it has more heart in its clockwork gears than most of the assembly-line remakes we’ve seen since. It’s a bold, bright, and occasionally loud adventure that reminds me that even when the box office says "no," the imagination usually says "why not?" If you missed it during the franchise shuffle of the mid-2010s, it’s worth a look through the glass.