Tim Burton is making new version of Wille Wonka and the chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp in the title role. (With Burton? What a surprise!)
I think it could be decent IF (and only if) there are no old farts singing and dancing, oh yeah and no singing Oompa Loompahs, Just no singing and dancing, please, I’ll be happy.
When I saw the movie as a kid I was rather creeped out by a kid having to live with four old people who all lived in the same bed. But not as much as… shudder… the WonkaWash.
I did Okay Mom said in the theatre with the Psychedelic acid trip boat ride, it freaked me out I know a little, but I didn’t panic or scream or anything – the dreaded Wonka Wash that was my undoing.
I don’t know if it was the mountains of bubbles, the car being open in it, or the fact they were being wrung out and squeezed by that machine – No idea. But it evidentially freaked me the hell out enough I was bawling trying to run away.
Now his office, were everything was cut in half, I kept expecting something come and cut charlie in half I know that.
In retrospect, I thin the entire movie freaked me out, the Wonka Wash was just snapped the last straw on sanity.
The movie is definitely, I think, a LOT too weird for kids I mean Augustus getting stuck in the tube, that girl turning into a blueberry, the other girl falling down the chute, the boy being shrunk – that scary stuff to a six year old.
This is why I say Willie Wonka should never bee seen by small children, the people who made it were smoking crack, or some like substance. That crap scars you for life.
Tim Burton can’t make it any worse, I guess, even if he is going to make a darker version. I can’t imagine though a director I’d rather do it.
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Have you ever read the book? Uber creepy. (As if the Oompa Loompas weren’t creepy enough, right?) There’s bits about what happens to the kids after the Oompas get them and “fix” them… Shudder. I heard somewhere once that Dahl didn’t like children very much. Reading the book… I can see that.
IMHO there is still no one that even comes near Roald Dahl as a children’s author. All my three kids just loved his books. They are violent, quite misogynistic, subversive and brilliant.
No scarier than most of the cartoons on TV for kids (not that THAT makes it OK…)
I, too, have always felt that this is a very, very creepy movie. Not just for all the blatant drug references, but for the undeniable feeling of “wrong-ness” that pervades the whole movie. All those people in that one bed. . and it’s implied, as far as I can tell, that none of them ever leave the bed. Willy’s little orange slaves, the feeling that there’s a hidden agenda to the factory tour, an agenda that is undoubtably sinister. . .
Tim Burton makes a good dark movie. But if we’re going to remake Willy Wonka, in all its creepy, sinister forboeding, let’s really do it right. I imagine my “dream” Wonka remake: Marilyn Manson as Willy (think about it, it’s prefect. He could also re-record all the songs), directed by Stanely Kubrick (Shining era Kubrick, not Eyes Wide Shut) who has full creative control, Christopher Walken as the grandfather, and of course, Haley Joel Osment as the boy (face it, that kid’s creepy). I’d wait in line in the snow to see that movie.
For all its weird wickedness, Willy Wonka is my favorite movie and Roald Dahl, one of my favorite authors. I can’t wait to see the remake. When I was a kid, the part that always scares me is when the gang is on the Wonka boat and they show all those creepy scenes of death and bugs and a chicken gets its head chopped off…eeeeeeeew! Gene Wilder was brilliantb in this movie. I hated the grandparents though. If Grandpa Joe could walk all that time, he should have gotten his lazy ass out of bed and help the family make enough money to eat more than bread and cabbage water.
my ex-ex-ex trainee is working on that film, and he’s such a misgonist fart I’ll never see the movie.
;9 I know that sounds mean, but he had such a hard times taking orders from his (female) boss that I can’t help but hate him. Made my job of training him unpleasant hell for no reason.
I remember very little from the movie. I know the turning-into-a-blueberry bit scared me, but I’ve blocked everything else from my memory, apparently.
A little fear, a little scare, that’s all part of literature, childrens or otherwise. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, thw Big Bad Wolf making a meal out of Grandma,the list goes on and on.
I am certainly not suggesting you should not have been creeped out; I just think it’s part of literature overall.
Now if Tim Burton does to the story of “Charlie and Chocolate Factory” what the producers did to “Cat in the Hat” (or, for that matter the producers of Doctor Doolittle, et al), then that would be a shame (IMHO)
Wanna know what really creeps Jen out??? It’s her Mom, writing into her blog! HA!
Dad and I watched Willie Wonka last weekend, and I was telling him again (every family has to have their stories) about you getting creeped out during the Wonka Wash bit. I agree, especially in retrospect, that the whole movie is weird, and you’d think that more kids would be totally twisted for life, watching children drown in chocolate, and go down the trash chute to be burned, explode,etc. (well, it worked for YOU!) (I’m not sure what happened to your brother…)
But wasn’t Pippy Longstocking a wee bit weird too? Must be something about that US/European kind of film making. You loved that weird, homeless, orphaned little troublemaker, Pippy!
BTW, that day in the theater, when you were going spastic, wanting to run out of the place, and I (probably in a very nice, motherly way) told you….”NO…I’m watching this!”. I do remember thinking that I’ve just scarred your tiny psyche forever….
See? It worked!!!!
Love,
Ma
(personally, I’m scared of clowns and Oompa Loompas)