1964, Tokyo hosted the 18th Summer Olympics, we were nearly entering space, The Beatles were taking the US by storm, while race riots were ripping the US apart. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, and a little book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was released.
It was a different time.
The book discusses the power of imagination, innocence, greed, poverty vs wealth and the cautionary tale of unchecked desires. There was also the slight case of the Oompa-Loompas, which were originally described as African Pygmies and were also drawn like that in the first edition.
It was a different time.
The book was adapted for the big screen in 1971 but changed its name to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for totally creative reasons. Roald Dahl helped write the screenplay. It was pretty faithful to the books but they changed the appearance of the Oompa-Loompas to get away from the idea of you know, slavery.
Gene Wilder played the titular Willy Wonka and despite it not being a huge success in the theatre, in 1980, the VHS market was all the rage and the film got a second life and it became a beloved classic.
The film also explored the themes of poverty, wealth, and the danger of greed while simultaneously being a big long advert for Wonka Chocolate. Quaker Oats had the rights to make the film because they wanted to get into the chocolate business. It is such a good idea to change the film’s name, because of branding.
It wasn’t that much of a different time.
Fast forward to 2005 and they re-adapted the book for the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which had Johnny Depp in the Wonka role. It received very mixed reviews and Deep was seen as being very strange.
It wasn’t that much of a different time.
Now we are here, today, 2023, with the film Wonka which is a prequel to one, some, or all of those stories. Timothee Chalamet is playing the titular Wonka role. The film is directed by Paul King who has also directed the marvelous and lovely Paddington and Paddington 2. If you haven’t seen them you should do yourself a favour and watch them with your family over the holidays.
Wonka feels like a spiritual successor to those two Paddington films with visual style, the elements of magic realism, and the general tone of the film following a down on his luck but totally upbeat and positive Wonka as he tries to make his fortune selling his chocolate in the most chocolate educated part of the world.
The trouble is, in this city, there are many people who are mean, malicious, and/or malevolent. There is a chocolate cartel that controls the supply and quality of the chocolate to the chocolate addicts of the city.
It sounds very familiar.
Wonka runs into a colourful cast of characters who all are down on their luck but ultimately good people who just need some help. There is the usual cast of actors that King casts in his other films: Sally Hawkins as Wonka’s mother; the always-excellent Olivia Colman hamming it up as the horrible Mrs Scrubitt. Tom Davis is great as Bleacher, and Keegan-Michael Key is a lot of fun as the Chief of Police.
In a modern retelling of the Oompa-Loompa you get a CGI Hugh Grant.
Similar to the Paddington films, Wonka doesn’t change throughout the film. In a normal story, the main character grows and changes throughout the film and will succeed or fail based on the ability to change.
This is not one of those films, Wonka doesn’t change but he helps change those people around him who ultimately grow and succeed or don’t change, and fail.
Like Paddington, the film is imbued with sweetness and kindness. It helps restore your faith in humanity that good can triumph over evil. That greedy people get their comeuppance. And that we all find the family we need.
P.S. I don’t know how this film fits into the wider Wonkaverse as it were. How Wonka finishes in this film is a completely different person to when we see him again in either of the other films.
This film might stand alone and not be connected to the other films. I could be thinking way too much into this but it seems like something terrible happened to Wonka after this film to turn him from a positive, upbeat dreamer to the cynical cold capitalist of the other films.
17th December 2023
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe