Why I Hate The Wonka Movie

woner is the latest in a long line of unwanted Hollywood remakes well before it came out the film split audiences for a ton of different reasons there's the dubious casting of Timothy shamay as Willy Wonka for one but also the fact that the movie is so unconnected to the original making it just seem like another Hollywood cash grab but even if you enjoy it the motive behind the movie is still kind of wrong in fact it's the very thing that the original tried to warn us about and to understand why this remake is so creatively bankrupt we need to understand what made the original work and in two words it would be Jean Wilder but obviously it's a little bit more complicated than that his portrayal of Woody Wonka is one of the greatest pieces of acting of all time first the film spends nearly half of its runtime building up to his reveal and when he finally comes out of the doors Wilder sets the tone with one simple move he starts out limping then just as he reaches the lock Gates he stumbles then turns it into a Som assault wer made the small detail one of his essential conditions for taking the role and his reasoning shows us why it tells the audience that he can never really be trusted anything he says or does in all of his lines could be truth or complete fiction in producing the central ambiguity in the character that never Fades away later Wilder adds to this with his R to Sharp sarcasm you truly get the sense that he cares about the experience and childhood Wonder deeply but at the same time he seems completely callous and indifferent to the things that happen to other kids he jokes about Augustus near drowning and getting stuck in the pipe the suspense is terrible he going to go I hope it'll laugh there's a thousand little details you could point out to illustrat how great this performance is from the boat scene alone but it all comes together in a complex self-contradictory brilliant package when you take a performance that's as electric as Lightning it's hard to see how it could strike twice but this is the task that Timothy shamet was given even from the trailer alone you can tell there's tons of aspects of the character missing there's none of the sense of malice or danger that you get from Gene Wilder instead it seems like the eccentricity and the Whimsical parts of his character are all that really is then there's the question of whether Timothy shamay can even live up to this the standards are so high and it seems like he really failed her I mean he didn't even need to audition for the role either getting it solely on name recognition and reputation alone which explains why he just doesn't come across in the right way in the movie whether he's the right choice in the spaces is still a matter of debate but the problem is with framing a prequel around Wily Wonker in the first place a lot of what made him so impactful was that we truly never knew anything about his past or where he came from it's a trap that the Tim bur and Johnny Depp remake fell into as well along with Depp's creepy and cold performance the scenes of him as a child just muddy the water the whole point of wily Wonka is the mystery behind him he's just as insane and unpredictable as his Factory is in the original they're almost the same thing two sides of the same coin humanizing him and explaining his Origins could tamper with all of this ultimately though an actor is always limited by the script they're given however well he plays the role it'll always be constrained by how one note they make this character it's pretty unlikely they'll be able to recapture the magic anyway you'd question why Studios make such unoriginal nonsense when they have hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal people would say that you should blame the audience who are constantly buying the tickets over and over again but that's been changing for a while now even though so many modern movies such just sequels or remakes it won't last forever people are just getting sick tired of it you don't need more evidence than the biggest cinemar event of the Year bimer both films were pretty much completely original besides the fact that barie was obviously already a toy brand the scale of the events and the passion that people had for them proves that people still want good original movies that actually have some substance behind them how long will it take for the studios to wake up to this probably a long time they'll have to be drag Kicking and Screaming towards originality and creativity because it's hard and risky their bottom lines will have to fall so low that they won't have a choice each movie like Wonka they release is yet another test to see if they can still make this repackaging form work every time there's backlash and it doesn't pan out as they hoped it's another victory for the majority of people who want something new when you look at the way both this film and the original being made it's not looking good the first movie was on a tiny budget for how successful and famous eventually became I mean the people behind it only had2 million to work with but despite that the film had a ton of insane sets and crucial details going on in the background and it was these constraints that led to the creativity that made the film a classic they had to improvise and come up with new ideas they had no choice I mean you've already seen a version of the film that doesn't have those limits and it just didn't really make you feel the same way a large part of what was missing from the 2005 version was because of this it had the visual appeal and beautiful sets but it had over 15 times the budget once you account for inflation that's along with all the technological progression that comes with it but what really took away from that was that there wasn't any contrast in the original you go from the streets of' 70s Germany where they filmed it to the incredible Factory but in the 2005 version the world is already weird and absurd even before you get there taking away from that transition and that's why the new prequel just seems like a mistake first there isn't really a factory to begin with then if the world is already Whimsical from the beginning then there's no sense that you're actually stepping into a whole new world Johnny de's portrayal of Willy Wonker is lacking as well while lots of the changes are just making the film similar to the book he still comes off as awkward and creepy it's like they just took one part of Wilder's portrayal and maximized it turning that into his only character trait on top of that lots of the other characters are barely any substance either people rightfully make jokes about Grandpa Joe from the original there's tons of moments where he's selfish or misleads Charlie like when he convinces him to drink the floating bubble drink even in the final scene his response to Charlie winning is to ask what he's going to get out of it then there's the fact that he spent 20 years mooching off of Charlie's mom and lying in bed then starts dancing once he learns about the ticket but even with all of this at least he had a personality he represented the kind of adult cynicism as shown with a suggestion to just sell the Everlasting Gob stopper to slugworth in the 2005 remake he doesn't even have a personality at all contributing nothing to the plot of the story it's a shame he didn't have at least something going on of course it's not an awful film in fact it seems much better than the new one and even if depths woner ISM for most people at least it's an original take on the character the film is much closer to the book compared to the 1971 version in fact it's more like an adaption of the book itself rather than a remake of the previous film there's clearly an artistic motivation behind it even if it feels off you can tell even before watching the movie that there won't be a real message or anything unique being said at all the way they've clearly distilled and reduced wiie Walker's character down to this eccentric genius archetype that's the entire theme throughout the movie setting up the chocolate cartel as the villains is just a cheap copout it means that it's just a bland cartoonishly evil corporation that wants to stop magic and keep making money the little girl's character will be an empty vessel for Wonka to amaz and nut and it's all formula to make sure that it translates for international markets and for the lowest common denominators beyond that it's pretty unlikely that it will acknowledge the iony of one of the big studios making a movie about originality destroying an economic Monopoly it doesn't set up really W his future character trades at all there is no Psychopathic figure from the book here this is just so that they can keep setting up sequels if it does well enough milking it in the most Bland way possible and in the scene where Wonka gives hover chocolates to some of the chocolate cartel in front of an onlooking crowd they eat them tell him it's rubbish and then they start flying one of them shouts who in their right mind wants a chocolate that makes you fly who in their right mind wants a chocolate that makes you fly but obviously everyone does and they try one as well as is seene it gets the heart of why this movie just doesn't really work obviously nobody in their right mind wouldn't want to try it and having the main villain think differently shows they're only there to act as a counterbalance to Willy Wonka's Whimsy having these ridiculous nonsensical villains and characters is just really lazy and and it means the entire movie just has a clear answer from the beginning and there really isn't any Nuance at all the original is barely even had villains if anything Wonker in the factory played that part they were the ones sucking the kids into tubes and making fun of their downfall even if it was completely deserved this is why even with all its floss the 2005 version is so much better than the modern prequel even the concept of the prequel is just all wrong centering the entire film on Willy Wonker alone just takes away the magic his mysterious background and Origins are gone instead trying to add nuance and depth to the character he's become a completely sweet Whimsical shadow of Wilder and depths betrayals without the threat and the danger one of the most interesting and complex characters in children's fiction becomes something entirely mundane once again yet another cashow icon and it's a choice that mirrors the entire concept of the movie taking the parts of the story in the film that fits into the modern Hollywood mode and cashing in it doesn't matter that it's just stealing ideas from the previous generations but it's even worse when you consider the story that they're stealing from the whole point of Willy Wonka's factory are the original ideas and the creativity making a cookie cut a prequel titled after the main character's last name is a complete reversal it's like Warner bro saw slugworth and decided to follow his example instead in the original movie there's this constant tension within the message which shown all these spoiled kids made rotten by always getting what they want then Charlie is the only good one who struggled for everything he's ever had Charlie's mom tries to bring him down to earth telling him that he probably won't ever win the ticket and that good things will happen eventually when he least expects it but then the last lines of the film are about how the good boy who got everything he wanted lived happily ever after it seems to adct the people we've seen who did have everything they wanted and how awful they truly are on top of that the whole Factory is like a consumerist industrial fever dream Free Labor from the umal lumpus is used to create temporary pleasure and escape from the masses the richest man in the entire city is the one exploiting the people's depression using their instant gratification to create ever more greed that's why Charlie's only joys in life are the chocolate bars and the dream of moving up and there's a good chance this is all just another of Wonka's tricks the Whimsical Factory isn't fake it's confirmed by his office in the original film despite not being for the public or even being part of the tour everything has been divided in half for no reason but the idea that this means Charlie will live happily forever just doesn't really fit there are some indications that Wonka isn't just a greedy Baron he did make the Everlasting Gob stopper saying that it will let even the poorest children always have something sweet but we never see him sending them and he insists that the recipe is kept secret so that nobody else can make them it even extends outside of the film itself the original was only made to promote a new candy bar being released by Quaker roads of course it doesn't attract from the movie the w k bar they did make barely sold at all and the marketing stump behind the production was a complete failure but the art they made to go along with it far Outlast the product it's like Warner Bros completely missed the subtext with this prequel instead of being made to promote a product the new version is the product it's going to be a sweet and temperary as a chocolate bar the only intention behind it is money the studiio see these Timeless stories as easy prey just like the Snow White disaster and that means the marketing can be vague as everybody already knows the property and it's much easier to get the idea past a boardroom rather than going to the trouble and risk of making something entirely new then you'd have to explain the story and the ideas behind it it's the reason why so many of these films come out despite the fact that barely anybody wants to see them anymore and remakes and retelling can work but you need a fresh perspective as well to respect the source material ignoring all of this and adding in a water down Willy Wonka and a ton of template characters isn't new every time Studios do this they erode the audience's interest in these sorts of films just a little bit more and sooner or later they won't be able to get away with it anymore then maybe we'll see more than a couple of original Blockbusters every year there's a reason behind why Studios have done this shifting so many resources to just rehashing the same ideas over and over again as the industry has progressed over the past decade or so we've seen medium budget films dry up big studios just don't seem to make them anymore assuming is part of the reason for this when there's so much content at your fingertips there is no reason to go to the cinema anymore unless it's some big event if you wanted to make a medium budget film today would have to go on Netflix or one of the other streaming platforms and even then it's pretty unlikely it will ever make a profit though these films still exist of course but they're in Decline you generally get much further pitching a TV show in that case anyway and that leaves two options for films today either small independent films on a very low to non-existent budget or the massive $150 million minimum films that we're seeing today in the truckload from big studios with Warner Bros investing so much money and time into these films they're going to take the safe option every single time only a few directors like Nolan or scosi have the recognition to get past this filter and actually do something unique and scori still had to turn to Netflix to make the Irishman it's awful for films in general the first and most obvious result is that it leasts to films like Wonka which are taking pretty much no risks whatsoever along with your un originality you barely get any new actors being able to get into films without mid-budget films being a stepping stone to the big leagues you just see the same actors over and over again they're always the safest option as Warner Bros knows that thousands of people will go to see Wonka just for Timothy shamay or Hugh Grant why risk giving someone who isn't a household name a shot there's too much money on the line for that out of the top 20 highest grossing movies worldwide for 2023 only three weren't based on pre-existing properties one was Oppenheimer a no them project so you get away with it another is Elemental another Pixar film that's incredibly similar to their previous ones and the third was sound of Freedom which is at the bottom of the list the tides might be changing but it would take a lot more box of his flots before we see any real progress the worldwide Market is another problem here with so many billions that these Studios now want to sell their films to it makes that much more likely they'll go for the broadest appeal possible plots that are too complicated or layered can't actually be considered because they might not Translate into another language or culture that's why action heavy movies are everywhere at the top because a big CGI fight doesn't need any context and the wonk movie is just another way to explore this tired formula if all the magic is expressed through CGI set pieces then it will play well whether you understand the point of it or not and if that's the main focus then what's the point in having a point at all so if it isn't clear already there's no point in seeing woner every ticket that people buy just confirms the big Studio's plans to keep releasing the same movies over and over again it delays the process of something new coming out of the deadlock we're seeing right now and despite all the pressure is working against them the mid budget movies that do come out have been performing well God of the minus one is a great example with just $15 million too made a far better movie than anything that's come out of Disney recently it's like a vision of what they should have done with Wonka instead of just ignoring what made the original films it's based on great they built on it it isn't based solely on the visuals of the fights although they are amazing considering its budget what sets this movie apart is its soul and the social commentary they've injected into it Godzilla isn't the hero like some more recent movies he's a living embodiment of Destruction and Terr that was what gave the original Power the allegory behind it and the dread it inspired instead modern Hollywood remakes take the surface level of whatever they're stealing and forget everything else it's why they just can't compass

Channel: Moon

Views: 476,031

Keywords: wonka, wonka movie

Id: v4KukxCvBzI

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023