The Fate of Modern Wonka

I've spent the past seven years traveling the world perfecting my craft you see I'm something of a magician inventor and chocolate maker so quiet up and listen down nope scratch that reverse it sometimes I imagine the perspectives of the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory bed bound for like 20 years living in abject poverty and having their literally starving grandchild come to them one day and let them know that the highly wealthy entrepreneur who lives just opposite the slums that they live in how he's offering this lifetime supply of luxury goods in return for this Lottery that involves buying as much of his uh chocolate as you can just thinking to themselves wow we really do live in a dystopian world and then I think those grandparents and specifically Grandpa Joe maybe if the floor wasn't so cold [Music] now on I'm going to pay for your tobacco yeah yes I am back in the attic because this is where the audio sounds the best um off I think a lot about the performance of Gene Wilde in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film a performance that's easy to write off because it is this sort of whimsical cartoon Family character this silly children's book role but I think there's depth there we are The Music Makers and we are the dreamers of Dreams there is like a real sense in my mind that Gene Wilder looked at the material and he was like okay who is this Willy Wonka guy who is this guy who is on the one hand this almost childlike creative minds this very fanciful out of this world kind of person but then someone who's also very much a kind of a callous missing my beautiful chocolate don't just stand there do something help Police Murder stop don't come back stop he can't swim there's no better time to learn someone who is very detached someone who has literally caught himself off from almost every person in his life through the kind of person that would fire thousands of his employees just to make sure that you know his personal ideas and secrets aren't revealed really this this character of contrast all this Showmanship and spectacle and even this sort of charitable Spirit underneath but also this sort of Cruelty and detachedness from the world and the whole time it's just is he just with them I assume there's an accident indemnity clause never between friends is this is all just a joke to him it simultaneously adds to The Whimsy and the dark elements of the film that you are never quite sure when you're being messed with by Wonka I said I'd like to come out with a cane and be crippled and I said because no one will know from that time on whether I'm lying or telling the truth he said you mean it if we don't do that you won't do the part I said yeah and that's what I'm saying because it was a tricky part but that element of who knows is he lying or is he telling the truth was what my main motor was there is probably no performance I've ever seen that matches his speech while they're going down on the boat keep on rolling there's certainly enjoying any signs that they are slow it's kind of Fantastical but also kind of a creep and you know the Johnny Depp version very much a similar kind of game that's being played I shake you warmly by the hand maybe with like an Added Touch of Innocence did I just say innocent and Johnny Depp in the same sentence but also way layering on the The Creep factor of the character dead kind of like his version of a different character I feel like I saw before to do that with Johnny Depp who I think is a good actor and I like him but I don't care for that director but that to me is Wonka detached callous but also filled with childlike Wonder a man of constant contradiction the funny thing is that despite all this a lot of people still disliked this version of the story and especially Wilder's version of the performance including Roald Dahl himself who did find it to be too sort of sappy and saccharine a version that was too cleaned up compared to how he would like the story to have been represented now if I were to think of a film version of Wonka that was like that I definitely would not think of Wilder's performance in that original film I guess I would imagine something kind of like this Here We Go Mama yes there is now a modern prequel remake reimagining of Willy Wonka because this is what all mass media is now and there's been a mix of reactions some people are excited to see the new movie but there's definitely been a large amount of negativity generated and a lot of that negativity has been directed specifically at uh young Timmy chalamet a lot of people are unhappy on finding out that Timothy chalamet didn't even have to audition for this role over the last few years there's been a heightened focus on nepotism and privilege in the entertainment industry so hearing that an actor who just had his big career changing role in 2017 hasn't had to audition for anything since can raise questions about privilege and accessibility I don't think the actors necessarily needs to audition for roles if they've shown they can play similar roles in the past but with turfish anime that's kind of the problem because people have never really seen him play a character like Wonka before now the interesting thing about this mix of Whimsy and darkness is that we kind of have seen Timothy chalamet play at least the dark side of that character if you look like call me by your name or Dune you will see shades of that but it's almost played in the opposite way than you would imagine a character like Wonka Paula tradies is very reserved and bottled up while by contrast Willy Wonka is like all Showmanship he's all spectacle and performance and the funny thing is that in terms of the actual performance that people have seen so far it seems like Timothy chalamet has gone full Whimsy there's a real Whimsy overload to the vibe of the whole thing and and as we all know you should never go full Whimsy now he was not the first person considered for the role at one point it was going to be Tom Holland which maybe it was going to be Donald Glover which uh it was gonna be Ryan Gosling probably would have been the best choice and at what point it was going to be Ezra Miller um so at least we know that no matter what there were darker universes than this one some people have compared this performance to like an SNL skit of Willy Wonka personally I think if they wanted to go full Whimsy with this they should have just gone ahead and made a movie adaptation of the sequel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book that no one ever talks about where Charlie and Willy Wonka go to a hotel in space and help the president fight some shape-shifting aliens and then Willy Wonka gives a magic potion to Charlie's grandparents to turn them all into babies I'm sorry for unlocking some Primal memories there it remains to be seen what the movie will really be but in terms of this depiction of the character I think it is in some ways my guided that people are focusing all of their negativity onto chalamet's performance itself well I see Charlemagne's performance as is a kind of symptom of a deeper problem with what this film seems like it's gonna be this white washed cleaned up version of this story that had potentially interesting facets to it that are now being Rewritten in the name of a story that we have all seen many many times before you could change her life Mr Orca change all their lives there is one question that has always plagued mankind when it comes to conversations about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Willy Wonka what about the Oompa Loompas what about the Oompa Loompas I think that if they're gonna take this film seriously Hugh Grant should be in blackface but that's the logical The Logical conclusion of of Hugh Grant double impact in the new film they are fancy British Men played by Hugh Grant I will have you know that I am a perfectly respectable size foreign in the original version of the film they were little orange men with green hair imported from a fictional jungle I said come and live with me in peace and safety away from all the Wang Doodles and Horn swagglers and snozz wangers and in the original version of the novel they were literally African slaves who live off of caterpillars and are paid in chocolate bars who walk around in Grass skirts and dear skin pelts I'm gonna really blow people's minds here and be the absolute first person to point out that the dynamic here seems questionable this is the thing about Willy Wonka as an archetype is that I feel like in many ways he is the rawest depiction of the contradictions of capitalism the poorest depiction of the contradictions of capitalism that this duality of Whimsy and darkness that I talked about before isn't just a fun Quirk of the character but very fundamental to the thing that he is representing fundamental to the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again even Roald Dahl himself felt that Wilder's version of Willy Wonka lacked enough of that sort of nuance and darkness to him and like this certain sort of britishness the reason that his vote as far as performance goes was for Spike Milligan an English comedian for most of the film's pre-production and skimming through the book again I can kind of see the point that he's making on some level you can read all of the horrible things that happen in the factory and the horrible ways that Willy Wonka behaves and all of the praise he gets from everyone around him and Grandpa Joe they're all crazy the man was a genius the most amazing the most fantastic the most extraordinary finest path I've had 20 years and Beyond this surface level there is this Rye British sarcasm to the entire story it does function as a kind of parody of a certain figure in capitalism Violet you first sign here on some level the whole thing functions as a joke about the kind of character that Willy Wonka represents in the story and even and especially at the time it was written it wasn't like there wasn't shade being thrown at this kind of big Factory owner entrepreneur and I think that's an element there Wonka as this guy who has put thousands upon thousands of people in his own local community into abject poverty making it so that this man who has control of the largest chocolate factory in the world lives in a place surrounded by slums because he's so concerned about his IP being breed because he's so concerned about people making cheap knock-offs of his own products something that to be clear has nothing to do with creative ambition and everything to do with maintaining market dominance this man is a capitalist but on the other hand he's also a Dream Maker he is this person of incredible ambition and creativity looking to turn the things that he creates into this mass-produced Global reality on some level I do think you are supposed to admire the spirit of it and the potential and there's even explicit efforts to show that Willy Wonka wants to take his work and turn it into something that benefits the people around him something that actually benefits the less fortunate right for children with very little pocket money you can suck them forever wants to make Everlasting Gobstoppers so a kid can have one candy that lasts them forever he wants to make bubble gum that satisfies you as much as a free course meal also even in those Concepts you can kind of see that he has this certain level of detachedness between material reality and Market spectacle chewing gum isn't actually going to satisfy someone as much as a free course meal a lifetime supply of candy still isn't actually going to help the impoverish it's the definition of a luxury item made specifically to induce consumption in the same way people might think of State authoritarianism and then their mind goes to Big Brother Wonka is a parody of the contradictions of capital the man who gives people what they want at the expense of the things they actually need so there's two sides to this both of which I think are totally ripe to be explored and both of which I think are pretty relevant to the modern day Mr wanker can you send other things not just chocolate I mean anything you like what about people people I suppose I could yes I'm sure I could I'm pretty sure I could callous individualists who is ignorant of how everything is done was off the backs of thousands of other workers someone who far overestimate his own abilities and importance and who it is very apparent maintains success not through his understanding of people but his total Detachment to people in favor of shallow ploys and Big Ideas in a market with a vague grasp of how those ideas meet with reality someone who cares more about maintaining his brand than any of the people he needs to exploit or destroy it to get there I wonder who I'm talking about right now there is one idea you have that we've discussed before which is hyperloop yeah right I would love for you to tell this audience what that is and how it could change our world again thank you yeah I would actually love to to answer that question but if I do uh it will that will be the news tomorrow on musk is possibly the greatest living inventor let's imagine a version of the Wonka story that doesn't shy away from the more controversial elements of him as a character a version that actually leans more into what he was in the first place as a comedic spin on like a mega Rich industrialist they made some frog with a hugely over-inflated ego who happily credits himself as an amazing inventor and philanthropist while it becomes increasingly obvious that all of his work is actually the product of many many throwaway employees and all his ideas and charitable inventions are actually just blatant Market spin that might excite a shareholder meeting but in reality Arriva completely unworkable or actively harmful to actual people always goes wrong when we come to the dessert it happens every time they all become blueberries the kind of character that doesn't just exist to propagate how the market rewards spirits and ambition but highlights their markets utter absurdity lickable wallpaper for nursery walls the thing about this is that it is already so incredibly close to exactly how the character was originally depicted fantastic invention revolutionize the industry you can suck them and suck them and suck them and they'll never get any smaller never at least I don't think they do a few more tests while also seeming like a perfect parody of certain extremely relevant modern billionaire industrialists whose ideas are also basically all unworkable nonsense whose attempts at charity only cause him to make even more of an ass of himself he wouldn't have made the first 50 meters into the cave just just a PR stunt and sticky submarine where it hurts and whose Fortune was also built on the exploitation of workers in Africa and you're like Willy Wonka without the underpaid munchkin without the underpaid munchkin without the underpaid much without the underpaid munchkin Elon wanker starring Jeremy Allenmore we've all seen the Tony Stark story told a million times before the genius philanthropist entrepreneur the incredible billionaire inventor industrialist the solo genius who's just such a special mind that they've risen to the top of society good idea for an electric jet you do yeah and even with Tony Stark I think you can see stories that kind of reflect this growing audience skepticism towards this sort of character how many Iron Man stories do you need that are about Tony realizing that he isn't as infallible as he thinks he is how many do you need about how there's these other people that are unhappy because it turns out that either Tony or someone in his family just straight up stole from and profited from their own words but obviously we know that in the end they have to be the villains of the story you can just do the exact same thing that Cruella did transplant all of the edge of the character onto these generic mustache twirling villains who they can then defeat maybe they can even toss in a thing where it turns out that Wonka is like the rightful heir to the chocolate Empire or something so that we can know for sure that legally they're allowed to be the good guy just really boil it down so we can just have a nice simple story about an amazing brilliant genius who wins in the market through their sheer creativity and ambition or you can just do the um Oz the great and powerful thing and you can I'm actually not really sure what Oz the Great and Powerful was supposed to be about other than in making Oz this sort of creepy manipulative womanizer just to give James Franco the easiest acting job in his life I'd really like it if someone were to check the text between James Franco and that porcelain doll child I love how that movie doesn't even try to come up with a reason to think that this is like a good person so instead it's just a bunch of characters telling him that he's a good person I guess in the end we're supposed to root for him because it turns out the villain is another woman that he took advantage of I like the Zach Braff monkey aesthetically it reminds me a lot of a different what was I talking about now the musky Wonka path is one that may be a little bit predictable and not necessarily the only one that can be gone down and I do think there's another just as interesting maybe arguably more relevant path for them to go down that could also potentially explore some interesting facets of that character and that story in a way that would fit with the modern day and would also have a connection to another figure in popular culture who I'm sure at this point we're all quite familiar with [Music] let's imagine a version of the Wonka story more tuned to the modern day not rooted in nostalgic fables about how back in the good old days all the corruption and exploitation was ended but more focused on how a person like Wonka might find success post influencer era like as an influencer I mean Wonka's success was already built on the chocolate industry equivalent of clickbait lean into that tell a story about someone rising to success as someone who isn't necessarily a greedy or malicious person but understands engagement well enough to know that the best way to success is by big showy headlines even if they might be a bit naive or bend the truth the work actually being done who can then be faced with the struggles and limitations of that kind of success of the limitations of charitable work in that context of the inherent frivolousness of a career like this and the alienation it can lead to a version of Wonka that would both be an interesting commentary of a type of career many kids today are drawn to and once again still not that far from the original idea of the character to the point where as a deliberate spectacle a lot of his work and inventions actually make more sense I recreated Willy Walker's Chocolate Factory in real life and one of these 10 people is gonna walk away with this Chocolate Factory I propose Wonka Mr Beast starring Daniel Radcliffe there is no getting around this Mr Beast is Zuma Willy Wonka let me give you ten thousand dollars now Dream Maker and entrepreneur always coming up with some new Fantastical idea that's gonna simultaneously make the world a better place and also happens to be a giant content spectacle that just keeps pushing that amazing brilliant smile deeper and deeper and deeper into the crevices of our minds this is one of the things that makes me sad that this movie is gonna just do the Edwardian early 1900s wishy-washy old-timey aesthetic that just makes it look like a fantastic Beast sequel because I could absolutely see a version of this character that totally works in the modern day with the modern philanthropy influencer and the complicated feelings that a lot of people have with them oil accounts Mr Beast does not seem like a bad guy at all please discount the segment if he is canceled and he has made efforts to use his platform for positive causes in the same way Wonka as a character is not typically just a villain he just complicated because he is both a market spectacle driven symptom of a larger problem and also just a person who's probably genuinely trying to make the world a better place this is the trouble I think people often have with the idea of philanthropy and charity by the highly successful that these are usually good things being done with good intentions that also happen to be representative of a much larger bad thing the idea that the deeply impoverished will end up relying on the charity of these extremely successful people for things like clean water and housing and vision and that's a facilitate this they'll even be turned into content and how when you really think about it that's kind of a depressing reality in the same way it might be kind of depressing to think that it's uplifting to imagine a child getting a lifetime supply of food in return for buying as much chocolate as they can from the man who helped turn his home into a slime and there's two sides to it because yeah a man who makes chocolate shouldn't really be responsible for whether thousands of people live in poverty just like how a YouTube influencer probably shouldn't really be responsible for whether a town in Kenya has clean water there's a story from the Roald Dahl original book that was adapted in the Johnny Depp Tim Burton version but not the original film about a man who wants to make a palace out of chocolate and Wonka in all his creative ambition is more than happy to facilitate this make him a chocolate Palace but obviously tells him you're going to need to eat this chocolate This Is Not Gonna Last I will not eat my Palace I intend to live in it man doesn't want to get rid of his Palace of chocolate and obviously the palace melts because you can't build a foundation out of chocolate the guilty ones [Music] themes of personal responsibility versus the conditions that were forced into are already there in the original books to play the mother and the father after all so much of it is just a morality tale about punishing kids for being bad eggs and then rewarding The Good Children I think all of this represents the kind of complicated perspective you could explore through a character like Wonka and it's not really something we've necessarily seen before what is the role of these extremely powerful successful people in their limitations but also the immense status that they hold all the complicated feelings that people have for that type of person individuals who are not necessarily bad people with bad intentions but do end up symbolizing a very bad part of our reality speaking of very bad parts of our reality there is a traits in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-jews I mean there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason you know when I think of words I would use to describe Adolf Hitler there are some words that have never really come to mind do you think Hitler was a stinker I I yes now look I'm gonna let you in on a very precious secret to me when I was a child I liked the books of Roald Dahl I liked the twits I liked James and the Giant Peach I like The BFG even though that scene in the movie scarred me deeply and forever and I liked Charlie in the Chocolate Factory even if this movie was the most whitewashed cleaned up Sappy's saccharine depiction of the whole Willy Wonka Mythos it would still not be the first time that Roald Dahl's work has been whitewashed in history again actual African slaves and over the years doll's books have seen these little tweaks and revisions some of which I think are maybe a little bit misguided given the context of the revision at the end of the day Roald Dahl was a millionaire trust fund kid and he was a bigger and at this point the museum dedicated to him has condemned his past words his own family has apologized on his behalf I would honestly love to see a rolled down defender in my comment section and I cannot wait to see your essay length comment about how wrong I am and cocked and beta and woke before I delete the entire thing without reading it so this is definitely not a thing about adaptations respecting the sanctity of the original author's intentions and maybe adapting the stories that they've written in ways that don't necessarily have all of the baggage of the original thing I don't like seeing is when that baggage is stripped out of the work when arguably that baggage is the most interesting commentary of the entire thing and especially not when that baggage gets stripped out in favor of the same Hollywood fired saccharin story about how someone beat out the free market through their just pure individual creative Spirit a story that is far more fair than the reality of the one that we actually live in one that has fared a lot of misguided views on people that I hope at this point is well understood are not the creative Geniuses that they were once portrayed as again very hard to read Grandpa Joe just constantly fondling the balls of Willy Wonka and not imagine a blue check mark Twitter account and no I'm not calling it the other thing I don't really care about being faithful to doll's original story and I don't even really agree with his past takes on other adaptations of his work ultimately it is in the nature of art to be taken and reinterpreted by other artists or sampled or inspired of a word this is kind of just how art develops but you at least want to see the thing reinterpreted as something other than the same misguided tired cliche story that we've seen so many times before the kind of cliche that in many ways was already being parodied by the original work and I'm not saying it's impossible that we get this from this new movie it is directed by Paul King who did Paddington that did manage to take this beloved childhood character and turn it into this sort of interesting perspective on illegal immigrants and the struggles that they have to go through at the same time I also saw that video of Paddington having tea with the queen and thank you so and kind of see how it could end up being co-opted by the exact powers that are otherwise being criticized and on top of everything else I think that giraffe looks fake at a time of mass worker unrest strikes protests unionizing efforts I cannot think of a better time to take a story like this and reinterpret it in a way that explores these ideas that I've just been talking about to take this character of contrasts and contradictions and use them as a vessel to explore A system that I think at this point people have very complicated feelings about and I know I'm overthinking this because that is the brand of the channel and a lot of people I just don't like it because they think that Timmy's performance seems a bit cringe but I do think that the reasons it might come off as a bit cringe do go a bit deeper than the performance of young Timmy himself and that maybe we should stop just throwing all of this negative energy at Timmy ultimately the vibe of the era is just decidedly not one where we all stand in all of these one percent senses who have just earned their amazing positions in the market through sheer Genius and graph ignorant of the thousands upon thousands behind them that have done all of the work that has allowed them to reach the position that they are in the people that not only end up forming the production base but as it turns out usually also the ideas and inventions themselves who are then taken advantage of and forgotten about thrown away like so many Oompa Loompas even within Hollywood this is not the vine the first visual effects Union might be about to happen and as someone who has already talked about that industry and how terrible it is in past videos I think that's incredibly exciting and I do think in an age where Barbie is out there making a billion dollars this would be a good opportunity to take a story like Wonka examine some facets of it that maybe haven't been looked at as closely before and then produce something that is both a fun enjoyable family film that also has some commentary to it some relevant commentary to the current world that we actually live in rather than this constant Disney fired nostalgic narrative looking back at this tired cliche that no longer has any resemblance to any reality that we live in on the other hand what I do think all of this recent action shows is that at the end of the day media representation is only going to do so much there's always going to be these protests and Union efforts that actually create the change that benefits working people at this point I have talked many many times on this channel about corporations co-opting their own criticism and then profiting off of benefiting from the exact thing that's talking about how bad they are that this is never going to lead to revolutionary content because there is no revolutionary content once again you can give people as much chocolate as you want they cannot use it to build a palace and that's why I've decided that from now on I'm not going to be using my channel to create more frivolous media critique content that ends up just serving a company that I'm already highly skeptical of and that I guess is just now promoting deep fakes of teenage celebrities that's why from now on I'm gonna be dedicating my channel to the things that really matter to activism to the promotion of real causes that really benefit people so that we can create the change that [Music] thank you [Music] thank you all as always for watching if you like the video please like share it subscribe um YouTube ad Revenue sucks and this video is unsponsored so if you would like to support the channel throw us a buck or two we have links to the patreon or the Kofi I do actually still think that there is some value in media that can kind of promote for in different areas that you might not necessarily be inspired to think about through just like sermons or directions or whatever and I am probably gonna do a video about the the thing I've also been playing a lot of slay the Spire recently and it's very good uh I've also been playing a lot of The Evil Within um and I don't think that that was very good [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Jack Saint

Views: 1,422,413

Keywords: wonka, willy wonka, timothee chalamet, mr beast, elon musk, charlie and the chocolate factory, charlie bucket, gene wilder, johnny depp, paul king, paddington, jack saint, critique, analysis, lackingsaint, review, rant, modern wonka, cruella, oz the great and powerful, disney, warner bros, box office, roald dahl, remakes, remake

Id: ogMM2zdGzIs

Length: 36min 0sec (2160 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2023