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1970s Willy Wonka or 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?


Danger_Jules

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Wilder was sarcastic whereas Depp was creepy. Supposedly, Dahl, the author of the book, was disappointed with Wilder's performance and Depp is closer to the way Wonka is supposed to be. I still like Wilder's version more, of course.

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Wilder was sarcastic whereas Depp was creepy. Supposedly, Dahl, the author of the book, was disappointed with Wilder's performance and Depp is closer to the way Wonka is supposed to be. I still like Wilder's version more, of course.

 

That's interesting.  Wilder's smarmy Wonka has a subtlety that Depp's Wonka can't really touch, but Depp's Wonka has slightly more range, mostly because Wilder is so eerily even throughout the performance that the time he melts down near the end is shocking.  Also, never listen to the writer.

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Wilder's depiction was a much more likable character. Doesn't make it better, though. We read somewhere that Depp took inspiration from Michael Jackson to get a creepy, unrelatable, children-loving vibe. And We think he pulled that off rather well.

 

The subplot with Wonka's father being a dentist in the remake was awful. The new interpretation of the oompa-loompas was somewhat distracting, like it never felt like it was part of the same movie. The original certainly has the same "and now we cut to the singing midgets" routine, it just feels like it belongs more, to Us at least. We liked the adults in the original more. They seemed less like cartoon characters. That may be largely due to the fact that We haven't seen the original since becoming an adult ourself, and had a completely different perspective of how grown-ups behave.

 

There's a lot about the remake that We don't remember, having only seen it once. We remember feeling like it was a generally good movie, with some flaws here and there, and there were things it actually did better than the original... We just don't recall what those were. It was far and away closer to the book, which is nice and all, but really doesn't have any bearing on being a good movie.

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I don't know much about it besides what was in the animated stuff.  I haven't even watched the live action yet.  I hear they changed some stuff around which I don't find ideal but I understand that a couple of things need to be changed if you want to cram multiple sources into one movie.  Although I'm not sure why they wouldn't just remake the first movie by itself.  It would have kept the neat visuals while sticking closer to the story.

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I've loved Roald Dahl's books since grade school, and I deeply respect him, but he was dead wrong about the 70s adaptations.  Gene Wilder's performance is one of the all-time greats, and the movie manages to be both heartwarming and really goddamn creepy at turns, which is just right.  I didn't even have any interest in seeing Depp's version.

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