Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

No, this is not a family courtroom battle. Today I’ll be comparing three films: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Wonka (2023).

I realize the third installment is a wholly different story and I’d kind of be comparing apples to oranges but I’m really focusing on Willy Wonka as a character.

Not only was Gene Wilder, who played Wonka in 1971, extremely familiar with this character, he fought for certain actions and idiosyncrasies that supported that character. If you read the Roald Dahl books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Great Glass Elevator, you learn Wonka is not simply a whimsical happy nice guy who sings songs and dances and makes amazing candy. There’s a snarky, sarcastic, cynical, didactic edge to him. Sometimes he seems almost sadistic.

Willy Wonka is almost defined by didacticism! We see children run off into danger without listening to instruction and Wonka (Wilder) calmly and quietly says to himself “Wait, stop, come back” knowing that even if he had put effort into stopping the children, they wouldn’t have listened. I feel like this all the time with my kids.

When one of my kids gets hurt while doing something stupid, my first reaction is “well, are you satisfied!?!” Then I cool off and make sure the kid isn’t fatally wounded.

The villains of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are Gluttony, Greed, Pride, and Sloth. Wonka is a discriminating and merciless crucible melting and removing the dross from the precious metal. He is Diogenes, seeking an honest man, and just like any judge sentencing an unrepentant felon, he is swift, impartial, and exacting.

It’s a kids movie for kids! It also has bugs on people’s faces and chickens getting their heads cut off. You know, kid stuff!

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) Wonka is certainly strange. We see him bizarrely excited when his animatronic characters inadvertently burst into flames. He’s eccentric, astronomically rich, utterly unaccountable, lives in a crazy fun house, and now he has a tragic backstory. He’s Michael Jackson!

I think there were scenes in 2005 that achieved the same goals as Gene Wilder’s choices. A strange lack of trust in Wonka’s intentions prevails in both versions. But in 2005 Wonka gets his story fleshed out a bit. Not only do we have the previous “villains” and their terribly enabling parents but Wonka also has something to learn in the importance of family, even those members who might disapprove of his life goals. Humanizing Wonka with a backstory makes him less mysterious in my book which neutralizes much of his appeal as a character, in my opinion anyway. 

I still liked this movie and the idea of Wonka’s father being a dentist was kinda funny.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Deep Roy a couple times and he even borrowed my crazy trademark glasses to reprise his role as the oompah-loompas for lookers-on. I invited him to Red Lobster but he declined. Probably a wise decision.

I once concocted an entire Wonka costume based on Johnny Depp’s version. It was effective in entertaining people at a chocolate festival with which I became affiliated. The signature opera hat was eventually incorporated into my writing persona.

Finally we come to the film Wonka (2023) with Timothée Chalamet as the title character. Here we see a Wonka who is sweet, caring, compassionate, naïve, and vulnerable. In a word: He’s nothing remotely close to the previous versions.

I understand this is a prequel and as such might be an origin for many aspects of the original story. Personally, I think “origin” films that exist solely as a means to explain every single minutiae of successive films are boring and usually lack real substance (looking at you The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes). Wonka (2023) hardly even does THIS but it ALSO lacks any compelling story. The story is an uninteresting roadblock in Willy’s travels. It feels like a prequel to another prequel (God forbid). I would have appreciated something, ANYTHING that hinted at why he became such a cynical adjudicator but we GET NOTHING!!! GOOD DAY SIR!!!

The songs were cute and I liked the girl’s story. I think my wife summed this up in one aptly placed word: milk toast.

Full disclosure: I thought milk toast was one word when I started that sentence.

I know he’s often downright creepy but I miss the middle-aged Wonka. He’s genuinely fascinating to me even if it is a morbid fascination.

Whelp! I’m off to watch the sequel to all these films: Snowpeircer!

…or Tom & Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory which is fantastic! They even animated the girl getting smacked in the face with the counter top. There’s even a subtle cartoony soundeffect. The attention to detail was impeccable.