Willy Wonka remake coming soon

The fact that its produced by Pitt and Aniston does not augur well. Burton as director sounds more promising.

At the risk of sounding like a writer of a letter to Points of View, why oh why oh why can't they restore the original title of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this time around?

(By the same token, I was never ALL that crazy about the first movie, beyond Gene Wilder himself and the unavoidable nostalgia bite. I liked the books much more.)

(xp)

I suppose the whole build-up thing with Charlie being the main character who finally finds the fabled Golden ticket lends itself much better to a TV serial than a film. in fact, I'm surprised the bbc haven't tackled it (maybe they have and I never heard about it). But then, hasn't the slot it would occupy...sunday afternoons, e.g. Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe, Brat Farrar ect ect disappeared now?

Come to think of it, I'm not sure. If not, that might be unfair of me -- two books are obviously going to leave more of an impression than a movie that only covers one of them. (I was also one of the only kids I knew who liked Glass Elevator more than Chocolate Factory, and who read Fantastic Mr Fox or Danny, Champion of the World -- so my Dahl opinions might be totally weird, I don't know.)

A Charlie/Wonka/etc miniseries -- BBC or whoever else could do a good job -- would be great. Surely no one would object to that! Much less chance of it being a remake of the movie than something that just happens to be based on the same source material.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4737975-3156,00.html

I haven't found the link, but someone on IMDB has it solid that he has signed for the part.

I like Burton more than many, perhaps; I liked Sleepy Hollow, for what it was, and loved Nightmare Before Christmas (although I saw it as a parent, and realized that has a lot of influence over how you watch movies). James and the Giant Peach came out decently, produced by Burton and directed by Selick, Burton's director on Nightmare. I'm not going to discount this project before seeing as trailer.

Weird that I remember those details -- ohh, and some kind of meat pie that had hard-boiled eggs in it -- and not the actual plot.

Fantastic Mr Fox was what Animal Farm reminded me of, when I read that later -- a very smart fox outsmarting the farmers, and it ends with this like self-sufficient animal utopia starting up underground ...

I'm sure you can still find those in decent country-town butchers' shops. Along with things like tripe and haslet.

and that

Johhnie Depp is always in atrocious films? name one good film he has been in ( don't say Edward bleedin Scissorhands)

i just cant see what both of these guys' reputations are built on.

Wooo. Now I need to get famous and I can ask you to ask her about a Danny movie! I think I'm starting to grok this networking thing.

also Christopher Walken was originally supposed to be Willy in the remake.

it avoids putting anyone in danger, it avoids the genuine sense of malice in the orginal, and it tacks on a family friendly happy ending with a really banal message thats why the movie was so good, wilders, it poisoned this fake setiment that infuses adults realtonships to children

and the set design, too much, too manic, too picturesque, and the father is still alive, and god is it awful

do they have beats & glitchy production?

This film is getting very high marks on both IMDB and Rotten Tomaotes, but ILX isn't keen so far... It will be interseting to see what the UK audience thinks.

I think most people over here read the books first, and were very disapointed with the Wilder film. In retrospect it had its moments. but just felt wrong.

Anyone who just compares it to the previous (hugely flawed) film is not doing themselves a favour. The two really can't be compared.

of course if burton follows this with a movie version of "charlie and the great glass elevator," all is forgiven.

(The edition I read as a child and still have was illustrated in a very realistic style by Faith Jaques, and they are still how I imagine it in my mind. I can't stand any of Quentin Blake's illustrations for anything - they're terrible)

(actually, this is not entirely true. His illustrations for Nils Olof-Franzen's Agaton Sax... books are livable-with, but only just)

Frankly after people tell me how much the first movie sucked I hit the mental mute button on them for the rest of the conversation. Look at them there, mouths opening and closing like that. They're cute.

(Mind you it was said by Richard Wilkins who is an A-grade twit, so maybe I shouldnt worry, heh).

So it did as it was supposed to?
It didnt creep me out in a "yay creepy dark Dahl!" way, it creeped me out in a "god this looks kind of hideous and the songs are terrible" way. But that was only the trailer. I'll be fair and give it a viewing, I want it to be good!

****

I adore the first Wonka perhaps more than my own family, and I found this version of the book exhilarating.

Highlight: The Oompa song about Veruca calling the fish-heads "her newfound friends".
Lowlight: The fact that it shows the kids leaving the fac, not dead. One thing I always liked about the 1st movie adap. is that it left this kind of vague idea of "maybe they died."

gay or fey or foppish?

I was going to say they're flat out ugly too, but the whole bit about them being a South Pacific sorta pygmy tribe that lived in the trees and all that, I thought that was cool. It's just when you dress them up in bad 70s space age costumes and have them wag their butts at the camera to gaudy brassy razzle-dazzle it's a bad idea. I think they should have played digeredoo and banged on gongs and giant tympanies and performed everything in a kind of tribal chant, that would have made so much more sense. I think it would have fit in with Burton's goth/retro/exotica aesthetics so much better too (a la Beetlejuice calypso).

All that said, the rest of it was pretty fun and gorgeous and fuck whatever anyone else says, Johnny Depp was amazing. He sounded like he had just got out of a mental institution or something.

1. There was absolutely NOTHING sinister about Wonka. He was weird, charming, tender, and yet completely lacked that sadistic undercurrent that made Gene Wilder's version of Wonka so impressive.

2. The mix on the oompah loompah songs. I mean, you put all that effort into the damned thing and don't make the voices more than barely intelligible. Fuck that.

3. When they went into the chocolate room I could hear "Pure Imagination" in my head and really, really missed it.

4. Seeing the children leaving, alive.

Otherwise, I thought it was actually, um, pretty brilliant. Lukas did NOT like Violet turning into a blueberry though, he was trying to cover both his and MY eyes at the same time.

-- roxymuzak (emilysu...), July 19th, 2005.

Well it's a long way to come from eating bloodied mashed-up catterpillars from a bowl. I just thought it would be cool since he went through all the trouble of showing where they come from, treehouses and loincloths and all. Maybe they've been 'corrupted' by Wonka's decadence.

bloodied mashed-up catterpillars is to chocolate beans
as
Ancient tribal chants are to hollywood musical performances?

i haven't seen it yet - plan to tonight, maybe, though this thread is scaring me off - but you do see how this could potentially be, like, the funniest thing ever??

anyway there's lots of stuff on this thread that sounds like it could go either way, as far as good or bad goes, and i'm having trouble following some of the thinking. like, why would willy wonka necessarily need to be sinister to work as a character? is being weird, funny and callous not enough? why does the character need the sadism of gene wilder - why is sadism necessarily better in that role? (if you want to be uncharitable, you could argue that wilder's sadism is memorable because it's the only thing that redeemed wilder's performance, or at least raised it above the rest of the stock disney-type gentle selfless grandfather figures)

i am totally with anthony e upthread abt mr snodgrass being totally amazing in the 1st movie. snodgrass is the best part of the 1st movie.

but am i right in assuming y'all think that the office scene at the end of the 1st movie (YOU LOSE, CHARLIE!!) was the best part of it? (i guess it might have been) could there be a version of charlie + chocolate factory that tops the original without using that scene?

-- milozauckerman (wooderso...), July 21st, 2005.

she had his baby!

dahl daughter (granddaughter?) reckoned roald would prefer the new film.

if the new one does well will we finally get to see vermicious knid's on the big screen? 8)

i always felt sorry for violet; yeah okay it's bad to eat too much or watch tv all the time or be a bitch to everyone, but what's so fucking wrong with CHEWING GUM?

but it was pretty true to the atmosphere and style of the book throughout - they even kept my favorite wonka line, where he says that breakfast cereal is made from pencil shavings. the oompa loompa songs were funny except for the last one. the stuff with charlie and his family was good, though the scene where he finds the golden ticket was a lot more suspenseful and fun in the original.

2) The chocolate factory looks like Battersea Power Station, obviously a good thing.

3) Choosing to play Wonka as a chocolate geek was a genius move, and so obvious! Self-aggrandising, difficult to talk to people, little grasp of other's priorities, spending an inordinate amount of time fussing over one thing - Wonka's a geek! And Johnney Depp nailed him, stuttering in all the right places, inflecting all the right words - what would happen if you gave a chocolate geek lots of money and the world's largest chocolate factory? Depp is remarkable in this. Sure he doesn't do menacing as much, but why does he NEED to? Comparisons with Gene Wilder are misplaced. WIlder has more going on under the surface, his performaqnce brimming with cocealed disgust at the outside world, whilst Depp just IS, nothing more or less than what you see.

4) "The Ooompa Loompas are addicted to cocoa beans." - I'm not sure about this. Putting in drug references for grown ups is a bit rubbish, but this was handled fine.

5) OMG the squirrels! I knew he'd spent a few bob on training the damn things, but that whole scene was amazing. CGI schmee-GI.

6) It's a fairy story, with a fairy story beginning and ending. Tim Burton's asthetic is not so far from Roald Dahl's.

The first musical number worked through sheer exuberance and surprise, but once I realised we were going to get a routine every time one of the brats got his/her commupance the appeal started to wear thin.

I've never read the book or seen the earlier film so can't compare.

its a nostalgia trip and i enjoyed it a lot, its individual enough and for some reason i enjoyed the kinda shit jokes in it, like the 2001 nods and stuff. the problem is, in the book, all the kids come out alive at the end, cant really remember what happnes to charlie but the whole ending is kinda flat, so a film where you expect a sort of narrative peak at the finale, is going to feel the same, sort of rather neutral at the end.

i thought it would be better than it was, and i didnt really like the factory that much. also in my imagination the wonka bars were just mars bar sized. this really spun me out seeing them buy huge packets of chocolate. cos it meant the golden tickets were really big ....

Er, but that was just like in the original movie too, surely. Unless you didn't like that there either.

What freaked me out was Grandpa George, who was the absolute absolute image of Roald Dahl. Spooky.

Er... No.

Haven't seen the new one yet, but - yes - the AmericaniZations grated in the trailer: "He makes the best Candy"

or maybe it's just a deliberate melding so that the film will sell well on both sides of the pond.

I thought it was great. The bit with the synchronised swimming had me roffling in the aisles.

also, i heard that the squirrels were real, trained. am i just gullible, or is that true? they sure looked real to me!

i liked the new oompa loompas better, as well. but missed some of the other songs.

I haven't seen the Wilder film in years, but some of the scenes felt exactly the same. Others felt completely hollow (which may have been the point sometimes). Why didn't Burton just make Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator, as (aside from Depp v. Wilder) he didn't really bring anything new to the story.

Bavaria Filmstudios, Geiselgasteig, Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany
(studio)

Bavaria, Germany

Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Nördlingen, Bavaria, Germany
(flying pod scenes at end)

Hang on, the IMDB is claiming that Doctor Wonka, easily the biggest difference to the first film, is not in the book at all?

I really like this but it shares the same faults as the first one in that there's a rather heavy handed puritan streak running through it like the letters in a Wonka bar. The Oompa Loompa's were like some Chris Cunningham/AFX Twin nightmare and had a greater sense of mischief, but still too much finger wagging.

I like Depp's portrayal rather more than Wilder's, a little stranger, more unpredictable and much funnier. I never could believe the way Wilder switched from rage to fatherly love in the original.

CJ otm about the Grandad looking like Dahl, I did a double take when I first saw him.

Watching the Rifftrax take on the original flick, I'm at the scene in the test labs. I'm remembering reading somewhere that Jon Pertwee was offered the Wonka role, but couldn't take it due to his other shooting schedule. The two things that make me remember this is that I see more Pertwee than Gene Wilder with 'Time is precious; you must never waste it' gag with the alarm clock, then cutting to him riding the mixing bike and singing.

Oh yeah, and the crushed velvet overcoat and large bowtie.

Also, there's far more ADR in this movie than I ever remembered. Like in every single scene, you can pick it out.

Are the Oompa Loompas in the remake a tribute to Flash Gordon?

original film's director Mel Stuart dead

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-mel-stuart-1928-2012

Prepare for the cursed object

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmtRhKvmVE

lol if someone told me this movie had already been released and was a huge success/failure I would believe them.

The Hugh Grant Oompa-Loompa character already feels like a well-worn meme along the lines of "I Don't Always..." guy.

Just in time for Christmas 2019

It really does feel like it should be on a doublebill with Robert Downey Jr's Dolittle as a forgotbuster special.

I don't know if WB thought the IP would do the marketing for it, but I had no idea a) this was a musical and b) was from the director of the two "Paddington" films and c) had songs from Neil Hannon, which gives me more hope this could actually be good, even if I have no desire to see it. Though it does have Keegan-Michael Key, whose presence in anything apart from Jordan Peele is generally a bad omen.

seems to be getting good reactions from critics

yes, those paddington films are pretty much adored by tons of people... and i had no idea on the connection until reading the guardian review today. very odd marketing to not make that front and centre.

Pretty sure every trailer I've seen mentions "from the director of Paddington" and mentions a Harry Potter connection. I remember because the Paddington mention was the first time I became even mildly interested in this.

Yeah, but I was never going to watch the trailer, lol.

I quite liked this. My wife didn't, really.

It’s not v good

It’s terrific.

it strained so hard to be a classic, but the magic just wasn't there for me. without wonka's dark streak he's just twee, and it didn't help that almost every other character seemed to have been custom designed for a corresponding luvvie.

^ the only bit of Chalamet's performance that actually sparked anything is when he's presaging harshness, the "ladies and gentlemen, do _not_ eat the chocolate". The rest of the time it's good but not great, you can hear the gears turning.

It works a lot better when it's by the director of Paddington then when it's a prequel to Willy Wonka, the tweeness and procession of Ghosts / Horrible Histories alumni are a feature not a bug

Also an enjoyably magpieish eye for what to fill the other characters with: a little Matilda, a little Madame Thenardier.

i ... loved this? it's not very dahl-esque (ie no darkness to wonka at all) but it's very paddington/paul king and that was enough for me. songs range from fine to great (the comic songs are much better than the ballads). chalamet is miscast but tries very hard and sometimes succeeds at quirkiness/wistfulness. mostly i enjoyed the parade of british comedy pros doing their things, paterson joseph is the ringer but even matt lucas got some laughs out of me.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as "love", but I was very pleasantly surprised by how good this was, definitely the Paddington vibes helped this be more enjoyable.

the problems I had w/ it

1) you don't really get to see Wonka become who he'd be later, he seems already fully-formed already at the beginning of this film, just undiscovered. So it feels like a Forbes article titled "How Willy Wonka Rose to Power in the Chocolate Industry"

2) heavily auto-tuned songs since few people in this movie are trained singers. very robotic sounding.

otherwise, it was fairly inoffensive, if forgettable. I did like Calah Lane and (forgive me) Hugh Grant.

It was good enough to remind me of how much better Paddington and Paddington 2 were. There seemed to be a weakness in the core of the story which the film-makers tried to cover over with a surfeit of incident and star turns, with enough sub-plots (albeit hackneyed ones) for several movies and a stable of gifted actors not given enough space/material to work with.