#american mcgee | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hasaniwalker · 1 year

Text

A word about Alice

“Have you seen that evil Alice in Wonderland game at best buy?”

That was how I was introduced to it. A game that would stay with me for years after. I had no idea what the person was talking about at my high school in the A.V. room. I was there frequently, editing my first stop motion film (An adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven). They told me she had a knife and there was a thin cat next to her. I was intrigued and the next time I was at best buy I wandered to the Computer Game department and found the box.

That’s when I was introduced to American McGee's Alice.

I feel like I should mention, I was not and still am not really a PC gamer. I do console games mostly and reserve my computer for animation and editing. This game however, I needed to play it. I was gripped by the image. The stark red background. The haunting stare of the character. the hand on the knife. It was unapologetically dark and I was obsessed.

I went online wanting to learn more. It was early 2000 and my home internet was still dial up. I still recall going online to the Alice website and finding a countdown page. It was a music box, a child singing in the background, a terribly broken tune looping as the box threatened to open. It was haunting and perfect. I’d come home from school and for the short moment while I was the only one there, I’d go to the site and let that strange tune play though the house. At the end of the countdown, the box opened to reveal a decaying baby doll head (All of this is from memory and may be distorted by time. I unfortunately can’t find any images of the countdown page.) It stirred something in me to see that page come to life. It was the early days of internet. The time of MySpace. So the site was crude by today’s standards, but it was the most amazing thing to me at the time.

I’d leave it open on one of the computers while I was in A.V. at school. friends would come and we’d watch Alice move (sitting up from her seat, marveling at her blade, dusting off her dress.)

And of course, take time to show anyone the trailer.

undefined

youtube

I remember this time of being a teenager entering adulthood, feeling misunderstood, anxious, scared, and losing myself in the music of Garbage, Poe and Crystal Method. Alice fit right in to the aesthetic of everything I saw at the time. If Wednesday was the goth friend saying and liking macabre things, Alice was the older teen sister angry with the world and ready to scream at it with you. She was grunge, she was dark, she was frightening and wonderful.

I couldn’t afford the game, but I could afford the soundtrack. I ordered it from Amazon. A site that was also in it’s early days at the time. I hadn’t ordered much form the site, but I needed this.

I’ll always remember when the email alert came. My package had been delivered. There was a storm that day. I lived in Phoenix Arizona, and when we have storms it looks like the world is ending. The sky was dark, the thunder was loud. You had to get inside. I came home and went to the mailbox. The CD shape of the package nearly made my heart stop. I knew what it was, but holding it felt like an achievement. I listened to that music daily.

Now, so you know, I didn’t just admire this game from afar. I did get the game for my birthday one year. I had talked about it so much that it was almost certain my mom would remember. It was the first computer game I owned. I was terrible at using a keyboard for games and couldn’t get through the first few levels without a huge amount of struggle. It was a lot of getting used to and I loved it.

From the opening cinematic, the menu screen, the sound of the bell when you start the game. It was exactly what I wanted.

At the time I couldn’t think of another game like Alice. It felt tailored made from people with my mindset. A frightful game with a deep story and a character I immediately identified with. At a time where games had very action oriented goals, Alice gave a backstory of an asylum even coming with a patient log for Alice. All of it detailing the terrible fire, her mental state, and the struggle she was going through.

The best part of this was that I wasn’t alone in my admiration for this story. You could walk into Hot Topic and Tower Records and be greeted by large Alice statues modeled from the box art that captured my imagination from the start.

I wanted to see more of this character. I dreamed of seeing a movie someday.

And it almost seemed like I would get my wish.

There was news that a film was being developed of Alice with Wes Craven directing and possibly Natalie Portman or Sarah Michelle Gellar playing Alice. part of me hoped for an animated film with the original voices, but I was still gripped by this news.

At the time, I didn’t consider myself a horror person (feels weird to write that now since I think I’ve always really been one). I didn’t really seek out horror films and avoided gore. But I wanted Alice to by a disturbing and imaginative experience. I wanted to be scared watching this while feeling for the main protagonist and wanting her to reclaim her mind.

In a world where this film went the way I hoped, people would have movie nights today of Midsommar, Pearl and Alice. It would be a film that would take you somewhere you were afraid to go, but couldn’t look away from.

But then...I heard the movie wasn’t happening...and news of Alice stopped.

I never stopped thinking about that macabre girl and her journey through a tattered land of her mind. I listened to the music, revisited the game and also drew her now and then. lines from the game even made it into my typical dialogue (”Promise only what you can deliver” wise words).

I also still dreamed of seeing a film someday and would imagine who would play Alice (for a while I kept seeing Emma Watson as the character, but also still like the idea of an animated Alice.)

Then, one day, watching Attack of the Show on G4. I saw the most unexpected image.

Alice was coming back, and this time she would be on consoles.

The thrill was back, and as soon as a trailer came out, I immediately shared it with everyone.

undefined

youtube

I was quick to buy the game when it came out, and it was wilder than I could have hoped. A gripping story with tragedy, beautiful animations and moments that sent a chill through me. The kind of chills that made me pause the game and take in what I was seeing. The sight of a monstrous train rampaging through wonderland was a gift. The way Alice’s mind would unravel things was mesmerizing. Seeing life in London through her eyes and getting more of the history of the character (and the twist of the Red Queen’s identity) it was perhaps the only game that really pulled me in fully. I love games like the Arkham series, Bioshock, Horizon, Silent Hill, and so on. Alice to me felt like something more. I wasn’t trying to save a city or save someone, I was playing to help retain someone’s sanity.

The fascination with this character and world was just as alive as when I first saw all of it. I bought the art of book and still go through it and use it as a bit of inspiration if I have a creativity block.

I carried my love for the character all the way to my work in animation and even built a stop motion puppet while I was working on Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio film. A character who I was so taken by in high school now stood on my desk.

All this is to say that this take on Alice Liddell and her fantasy world has had a great influence on me. I was prepared to continue following this story and I hoped to someday see her find her way to the big screen and have a final story where she would come to peace with what happened to her.

The news that the tale of Alice is not going to continue is devastating. It’s troubling to see so many stories be brought to an abrupt end. for finales to never be given and answers to questions to be lost forever.

There are a lot of stories that I believe deserve to be told, but we’re constantly given entertainment that’s simple, easily digestible, with nothing to say except to reference nostalgia and trend online. It’s hard to find something that you can connect with. Something that you need a moment to think about after you’ve seen it. Something that gets you emotionally. These things are found mostly in the passion projects of creatives. The projects they pour so much into and want to present to the world. The projects that are not just made with earnings in mind, but also how you’ll connect to the audience. I think these projects are important. They push us to look further in and to question how we connect and interact with a story.

Too easily these types of ideas are thrown aside now and it’s harder for anyone to finish the tale they wanted to present to the world if it doesn’t fit with what a studio algorithm says. It may be a dark time to be a creative right now, but I’ll remember the stories that I connected with. The ones that hit an emotional part of me and made me stop and think about a new perspective on life, fear, depression, joy and how I connect to these things.

Thank you American Mcgee and the Alice team for taking me and many others through a Wonderland that reached into our very soul.

330 notes · View notes