Tim Burton came back to Alice and her adventures in 2016 in his movie ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. And again, he combined both books and added his own twist to the story on top.

This time Alice accesses the Underworld through a mirror. She is trying to save the Hatter but she thinks that what he is asking her to do is impossible. She never used this word before. She even said that ‘the only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible.’ But she didn’t believe the Hatter and therefore didn’t believe in herself either. In the end she decided to try anyway even though it was dangerous. But she was doing it for her friend and not for herself so it made it easier for her to follow. She wanted to prove to him that she is the real Alice, that one that makes impossible possible.

In the past she did many dangerous things and she did admit that sometimes she was afraid. But she did them anyway because the only way to achieve anything is to push through our fears. To face them and to act in spite of them arising. This time she had to race against Time. She finds out that Time is a he. She doesn’t have a good opinion about him. ‘Time is a thief. And a villain’ – Alice says to her mother who also doesn’t think highly of him. But Time is not as bad as he seems at first. He is trying to warn Alice: ‘You cannot change the past. Though I dare say, you might learn something from it.’

Alice sails the ocean of time and tries to save the Hatter’s family. But whatever she does, things that are meant to happen, happen anyway. There’s nothing she can do to change the destiny. In the meantime the Red Queen also tries to change the past but she lets her past-self see her and that breaks the past. Alice comes to the rescue and everything ends well. Everybody realizes what is really important and reconciles: the White Queen with the Red Queen, the Hatter with his father, and Alice with her mother.

Sometimes all that people want to hear when we hurt them, even unintentionally, is ‘if it’s not too late, please forgive me’. That’s what the White Queen said to the Red Queen and they became a family again. The Hatter reminds us that family is a very important thing because we only have one. And the other important thing is to have friends. The Hatter makes Alice realize that ‘the only thing worth doing is what we do for others’. He tells her that they will always be able to see each other in a dream ‘But a dream is not reality’ – says Alice but the Mad Hatter replies: ‘Who’s to say which is which?’.

The last message of the film is that ‘Alice can do whatever Alice chooses’. No matter what other people say, she can decide what she wants to do with her life and how she wants to spend it. Because she now understands that ‘every day is a gift. Every hour, every minute, every second’.