Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ from 2010 moved Alice from Oxford to London and made her older. Instead of 7 years old, she is now 19 and everybody thinks it’s time for her to get married.

She is not ready for such a big step yet though so she runs away from her own engagement party. She is confused and not ready to grow up. She also realizes that she is different from everybody else but she doesn’t mind. Her father used to tell her that all the best people are mad and that nothing is impossible. So when she finds herself in the dream she keeps on having every night over and over again, she just goes with it. She meets the animals who decide that she is the wrong Alice. They are waiting for Alice who came to visit them over 10 years ago because she is supposed to help them and defeat the Jabberwocky. This way the White Queen is supposed to get the power back from the Red Queen.

That is the prophecy. Everything is already written in the Oraculum. But Alice is sick of everybody telling her what to do and will from now on decide which way to go. ‘I make the path’ – she says. And they have no choice but to agree. But they do debate if she is the right Alice. She was different as a little girl. She believed that Wonderland was real back then. She believed in herself more too. But she lost it. That confidence she used to have. As we all do as we grow up. As children, we are all healers and we have skills that we stop using because we are told it is childish and we can get them back only if we realize it and work for it.

Alice has to make a hard journey to become herself again. Firstly, she has to face her fear of Bandersnatch. Then, when she meets the blue caterpillar again, he starts to see the old Alice in her: ‘I said you were not hardly Alice, but you’re much more her now. In fact, you’re almost Alice’ – he tells her. But she still believes that Underland is not real and that it all comes from her own mind: ‘You seem so real. Sometimes I forget that this is all a dream’. But the caterpillar makes her realize that all realities are real. He is now in a cocoon and tells her: ‘I’ve come to the end of this life’. She asks: ‘You’re going to die?’ and he replies: ‘Transform.’ And they meet again when he appears as a butterfly.

When she comes back to her reality, she announces: ‘This is my life. I’ll decide what to do with it’. As the White Queen told her – ‘Alice, you cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.’ And we must all freely choose the path which we are supposed to take.