#anyways. i'm sorry im always fussing about movies lmao

[vintagecandyshop]

Ok. Hello, can I be unhinged about Willy Wonka for a second?

Yes, this is spurred on by the new Wonka movie, but I haven't seen it-- what I'm reacting to is the way other people talk about that movie. And most of all Willy Wonka as a character and when people try to explain what they think is wrong with Timothy Chalamet's performance. Here's a funny thing about me-- I'm an old movie fan, but I don't usually like movies from the 70s. And yet, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1970) is my all time favorite movie.

I have given the inner psyche of Willy Wonka more thought than any reasonable person should and if I wasn't so sure I could not do him justice I would draw this old movie character more often.

But here's the thing. Everyone in all the world is remembering this movie incorrectly. Let me get this out of the way now. Willy Wonka, the original film adaptation, the one of which everyone bases their understanding of the character on, the one that invented the orange oompa loompas and the boat ride, all that, DID NOT........ kill any children. He didn't even hurt them. He didn't even turn them into weird shapes like the Tim Burton one. Here's the part no one remembers-- There is a scene right before they get on the glass elevator at the end where Charlie asks Willy Wonka something like "what about the other children" because he's a nice boy and Wonka says-- and if you click the link you can see the clip-- " My dear boy, I promise you they'll be quite all right. When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves."

Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, the best one, the only one that matters, was specifically rewritten from Roald dahl's... deeply strange book... to be much more likable for the screen so that he would be seen as a more sympathetic and morally good character that you want Charlie to be friends with. He, at no point, directly harms a child himself nor does anything to trick them into being harmed, and once their parents fail to keep them from behaving erratically in a dangerous factory setting he personally makes sure they're ok and back to normal. Every single child's fate is caused by going against direct orders or suddenly doing something dangerous before they could be stopped. August was called for to stop eating from the river and fell in by himself, Veruca threw a musical tantrum destroying supplies and hitting tables and threw herself down a chute, Mike and Violet ran in and took something before they could be stopped. These things were entirely up to the parents to prevent, not the factory tour guide. In this adaptation, Willy Wonka's wit and calm in the face of panicked parents isn't apathy it's confidence. He knows they'll be fine, and he knows whatever happens to them he can undo, they'll just be given a scare. He wanted to teach the parents a lesson as much as the kids, as evident by how he most talks to the parents once the children begin acting up, but this particular iteration of him did not want to kill kids.

I MEAN-- I could go on, like make no mistake, Willy Wonka is an insane man, morbid and strange, driven to seclusion by bitterness and heartbreak, but above all he loved children. So much so that he believed only a child could run his factory. He idealized their child-like innocence and wonder-- something he was painfully aware he didn't have anymore after years of being taken advantage of. He had become cynical. But honestly I...... feel like all of that becomes pretty evident by just removing the pop cultural mythos of him being some kind of psychopath.

And the movie has all these themes of how capitalism scared away the artist that was Willy Wonka-- how he didn't really care about the money or want the negative attention it brought him, that he tried to share his art and his romantic idealism and all people saw was opportunity and money. But people still refer to him like a symbol of an evil capitalist instead of how the movie highlights a successful artist's struggle in a capitalistic world-- yes, he must make money to make his art, but bitterly so, not ideally so, to him the money and fame was a burden.

It just drives me insane that the movie is so widely interpreted in the most cynical way possible when that's exactly the opposite of what its asking you to do. At the end of the day I just want a T-shirt that says Willy Wonka did nothing wrong istg.