There was no trouble in the sweetest factory as Willy Wonka productions was given the green light to start. With Paddington’s Paul King directing and Timothée Chalamet to star as the younger incarnation of Roald Dahl’s zany chocolatier – the news was as unsurprising as it was deflating. Origin stories are all the rage these days, and the idea of one for Wonka has been kicking around the industry for a few years now.
This week marks a full 50 years since the first big-screen stab at Dahl’s 1964 bestseller was released, making Wonka an enduring figure of fascination for generations of children, while the ostensible hero of Dahl’s story – wholesome 11-year-old poppet Charlie Bucket – faded in his top-hatted shadow. Nobody’s ever expressed interest in Charlie-driven film spinoffs, while Dahl’s own sequel, 1972’s Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, has remained unfilmed. It’s Wonka, the strangely sadistic man-child magician and devil-may-care capitalist, that people and producers can’t get enough of, and who can blame them? Wonka is weird and dry and inscrutable; Charlie is blandly selfless and inoffensive.
It was Mel Stuart’s 1971 film that stated this most bluntly, changing the title of Dahl’s beloved book to make Wonka the eponymous character. Half a century later, its legacy rests on Gene Wilder’s droll, eerily underplayed interpretation of Wonka, a sinister-sweet antihero who has haunted as many dreams as he has launched memes; much of the film around him is mechanical and twee by comparison, but you don’t remember those parts, so it hardly matters. Few films as spotty have attained cherished classic status on the strength of a single performance; on the flipside, its Johnny Depp’s off-puttingly fey, chilly spin on Wonka that has largely sunk the reputation of the 2005 remake by comparison, even though Burton’s film handily trumps Stuart’s for cinematic verve and vibrancy.
It would not be fair to say that all ages have not enjoyed the 50 years that have been for Willy Wonka. As it reaches the half century mark the movie has been remade several time and each time it gets better which was not thought as possible. But none the less it should be stated that the movie has done as well as the book and that is something to be proud of.
