Watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) today. You can watch the trailer here. The movie was very pretty and beautiful, but yet Johnny Depp’s performace scares me. I really didn’t like the whole vibe of this movie and the old version made in 1971 had a more cheerful feeling to it. Since most of you guys already know the storyline behind this book and movie, I’m not going to bother explaining that.
So immediately I noticed many discrepancies between this movie and the 1971. I went ahead and IMed a lot of people (you may have been a victim of the IM and I thank those who were able to give me a response). I have read the book actually back in grade school, but I no longer could tell what was from the book and what was made up in the 1971 movie.
Spoilers:
First thing you notice is that there’s no spy telling Charlie to try to steal the secret recipe of the everlasting gumdrop, or however you say that candy. Nor does he get mentioned in the end that he was Willy Wonka’s assistance. So my first question to everyone was if they remember if this character was in the original story. According to most accounts I got back (ignoring the “I think he was in the book” replies), Snugworth (as I later found out what he was called) was only mentioned and played no big role in the book.
Second thing I noticed was instead of geese that laid golden eggs and sending the girl off as a bad egg, they had squirrels sending the girl off as a bad nut. Apparently the book used squirrels too.
Other small things you noticed included removal of the Fizzy Lifting drink which got Charlie in trouble in the 1971 movie. They also had a side story about Willy Wonka building a chocolate castle for a prince in India.
One major difference I also noticed was that they delved into Willy Wonka’s past when he was a kid and his father was a dentist. As you can imagine, having a father who’s a dentish doesn’t exactly make eating candy easy. Apparently this was a made up character and in the book there was no mention of such father.
One thing that I must say was that without Snugworth’s part in this movie, it didn’t seem whole. The moral story just wasn’t there and the only reason why Charlie was chosen to take over the factory was because he was the last one standing. According to the book, that’s how Wonka chose him too.
According to several accounts, this 2005 movie is in fact more accurate to the book than the 1971. I later found this Table of differences between the book and film adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which explained the differences between the book, the 1971 movie, and the new 2005 movie. Quite an interesting read. One thing they did do right was at the end, you actually get to see the kids leaving the factory. Mike Teavee, the guy who shrunk in the TV teleportation, actually got stretched. I guess with computers nowadays, doing that wasn’t too hard. One thing I do miss are the oompa loompa songs. Though they did have songs sang by oompa loompas in this movie, I miss the jingle. Those were classics! One thing they did bad, in my opinion, was that Willy Wonka came out as a crazy guy who makes candy. He would have these random flashbacks, not sure what he’s doing, making illogical statements, and basically acting like and immature kid. Though this might actually fit better with the original book.