St. Mary’s College of Tagum, Inc.

Tagum City, Davao del Norte, Philippines

Higher Education Department
TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

Name: KATE JUNYSHEIL R. ABARIENTOS Year: BSED-3

ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

BY: Lewis Carroll

“Time is a cruel master. I used to think time was a thief. But you give before you take. Time is a
gift.” Another Tim Burton film about a girl named Alice who once fell into a rabbit hole
and went to Wonderland. Through the Looking Glass holds a new epic adventure of
Alice Kingsleigh fighting Time himself.

This sequel to the 2010 film, Alice in Wonderland, opens with Alice sailing the Straits of
Malaca with her crew on her father’s ship, The Wonder. They were attack by pirates and
survived it with her beliefs on the impossible. Three years later, Alice returns to London
and reunites with her mother where she informed her daughter that Hamish the man that
Alice rejected has taken over the company of his father, as well as Alice’s share of it, along
with her mother’s house. As the conversation is going, there along she sees Absolem, who
is now a butterfly. He tells Alice that she has been away for too long, then Absolem flies
toward a mirror and goes through it. Alice follows.

In a bit, Alice is back in Wonderland, but this time it was not an accident. She is on a quest
to go to save her beloved friend, Mad Hatter who is dying of sadness, pining for his
family who died years ago, yet he believes that they survived and wishes them to be back,
and that only Alice can do. To bring his family back, Alice needs to meet Time ( “Time is
a he?” Alice questions.) and needs to steal his most valuable possession, and only to find
out that the Red Queen and Time has a thing. As Alice journey through time in a thrilling
and dangerous adventure she learns more about the past of the Red Queen and White
Queen, why they don’t get along, and of course the actual truth about the Mad Hatter’s
family.

According to Sragow (2016), most people saw it as a flesh-and-blood iteration of an old

Disney cartoon, executives thought they found a potent new box-office formula:
rejiggering, cartoon features or analog Hollywood classics into CGI extravaganzas with
star-laden cast and pasted-on subplots filled with empowerment and redemption.
All the major characters from the first film return, including the Hatter, and the feuding
Red Queen and White Queen. The Red Queen is sidelined through most of the movie, as
the White Queen, and when they finally get a halfway decent scene together, the movie
is about to end and their previous rivalry is about to come to an end (Seitz, 2016).

This movie is telling that Chess is a metaphor of Fate, this is guided rigidly constructed
rules that guide along her path to a preordained conclusion. In the framework of a chess
game, Alice has no control over her life, outside forces influence her choices and actions.

Prof. Ryan A. Jancinal, LPT, MAEd | Academic Year 2020-2021 1

 St. Mary’s College of Tagum, Inc.
Tagum City, Davao del Norte, Philippines
Higher Education Department
TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

By using the chess game as the guiding principle of the narrative, this suggest that a larger
force guides individual through life and that all events are preordained. With this concept
of life, free will is an illusion, and individual choices are bound rigidly determined rules
and guided by unseen forces.

“I may not be able to change the past, but I can learn from it.” My personal favorite line
from the movies which can be heard to the end part, this is reminding us that no matter
how hard your past was, how you have suffered from it or the result is, you cannot undo
it, but just remember what you felt and learn from it, so that it may not happen again.

REFERENCES

Sragow, M. 2016. ”Deep Focus: Alice Through the Looking Glass”.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/deep-focus-alice-looking-glass.

Seitz, M.Z. 2016. “Alice Through the Looking Glass”. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/alice-

through-the-looking-glass-2016.

Prof. Ryan A. Jancinal, LPT, MAEd | Academic Year 2020-2021 2