posted
Did you see Finding Neverland? Depp liked the lead kid (I forget his name) so much he asked for him to be in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kid was a pretty good actor in Finding Neverland.
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posted
Gene Wilder is the epitome of Willy Wonka. Depp just looks like a woman in a cool coat in those pictures.
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Yeah, I saw "Finding Neverland". The kid who plays Charlie really shone. As opposed to the "endearing" boy who chattered away without showing a trace of emotion who played his younger brother.
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posted
As much as I like Johnny Depp, I can't say I'm too excited about his Wonka. The hair and makeup is just creeping me out, and I really didn't like his reactions to each of the children in the trailer.
Charlie looks great, though, and so does the factory.
Posts: 4292 | Registered: Jan 2001
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I too am a bit wary of Depp's Wonka. The rest looks okay, but I've never seen a Dahl adaption I liked (except The Witches) so I'm keeping my expectations fairly low.
(That sounds a bit angry, and it's not intended to be; I've been disappointed by many childrens writers being adapted into American or semi-American movies and it's starting to be a bit painful )
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posted
I thought the teaser trailer looked odd. The full length trailer looked even stranger.
I think my thoughts were summed up pretty well when Mike TV said "why is everything here completely pointless?"
Maybe if a second trailer comes out that seems like it has more to it, this just looks like stupid reel of Tim Burton like images and Johnny Depp gags.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
hmmm... i myselfed liked depps portrail of wonka, from what ive seen that is. maybe its just me; but i also liked him in potc and fear and loathing. both had the same kind of body language.
i dont know we'll see i guess.
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posted
since i didnt read the original novle i only know things from the movie. so there were squirrels, instead of geese, in the book. i can see why they didnt want to use them in the 71 film, those little buggers arent very cooprative.
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posted
I don't mean to knock all adaptions. Some are good. I've just been disappointed in the past, most prominantly with those that could be considered "odd", which I suppose Matilda falls into.
quote:What did you think of the change to the ending of "The Witches"?
You mean it's lack of openness? SPOILERS: as far as I can remember he still remained as a mouse forever.
They can play with the plot as long as the rest of the movie is treated seriously. The new movie (1997) of the Borrowers took plot liberties and somehow made the movie ridiculous. The same was done with Matilda- the plot was changed as well the ending which actually detracted from the plot of the novel, as well as being made more ridiculous than I saw the novel. It just went to far for me. To me, all these stories were not funny or silly but deadly serious.
The Borrowers TV series, made 1993-1992 is an example of the seriousness I see in these stories.
The real problems seem to occur when the book can be interpreted in the more "silly" way- Matilda, the Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc. Harry Potter managed to get by, and I'm fairly sure The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe will get by too- because they are so serious already and that's clear. The third HP movie was more serious than the first two, which made me like it more.
I took my childhood very seriously, and so I suppose I take all those childhood books very seriously. I like to see that reflected in the movie and not twisted with the silliness that other people percieve (wrongly or rightly) in the books.
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quote:What did you think of the change to the ending of "The Witches"?
You mean it's lack of openness? SPOILERS: as far as I can remember he still remained as a mouse forever.
No. No, he didn't. In the coda of the film, a witch (the one who was the Grand High Witch's put upon assistant, in fact) becomes a beautiful good witch, transforms Luke back into human, promises to destroy the other bad witches...and bang! The film ends on a traditional happy ending. One very different from the book.
C&tCF _is_ one of the sillier Dahl books, despite the darkness. While I'm not without my own fears, they really can't ignore the intense silliness of the source material. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Eenteresting. I could have sworn that the ending was similar to the one in the book! I've looked it up and indeed you a right and I am wrong.
My apparant belief that The Witches was a good adaption seems to have fallen off the rails. I will have to watch it again to refresh my memory. My strongest memory is hiding when the witches take their faces off. I was young.
I think the Dahl endings are very important to the books- however, I also think that changing Luke back is not such a problem plot-wise as allowing Matilda to keep her powers.
The thing about me (which may be different from everyone else in the world, and that's my fault) is that I don't see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (or the others) as silly. Don't know why; it's not the darkness, I never see that either. When I first heard the word "dark" used in relation to Dahl's books I was very surprised. I read them straight on without percieving either the silly or dark side. I could be horribly wrong in my interpretation, but there you have it. It's my way of seeing the world, I suppose!
posted
Any book that has an entire chapter about "Square Candies That Look Round" has at least SOME silliness to be acknowledged. Hee-hee-hee.
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posted
Yeah but not... silly silliness. I can't explain it. If I was filming that scene, I'd film it perfectly straight. I wouldn't play on the sillyness. Same with acting, I'd act it perfectly straight.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Why not a combination of both sillyness and seriousness? That's the sort of movie I'd like. I liked the movie version of Matilda a lot, having read the book and seen the movie. It was adorable in a lot of bits, and the million dollar sticky part cracked me up. But, perhaps the movie ending is like the difference between the Japanese ending of Kiki's Delivery Service and the English one. If you've seen both versions, you'd know what I mean.
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It's not an absence of sillyness. It's the sillyness handled with a perfectly straight face. I know Willy Wonka is supposed to be eccentrically bonkers, but I never saw him as particularly silly. Have you seen the Ministry of Silly Walks- the Monty Python sketch? That's a literal example- and a bit over the top- but it illustrates what I mean. What makes that scene for me is the fact that nothing but the walks are silly. Nothing.
Does that help?
I can't explain it clearly enough. It's complicated. I'm not judging this movie yet, anyway.
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posted
The thing is, Dahl has nearly every main character in the book (except for Charlie and Grandpa Joe) exclaim about how silly they find Willy Wonka to be.
And he does do MANY nonsensical things in the book that follow a very illogical logic.
The reports on the film indicate (and the second trailer seems to confirm) that it won't be all gee-whiz zaniness...yet if they want to do a version more faithful to the Dahl story (which they claim they did), then they _can't_ play it totally straight.
Dahl had Willy cracking rapid-fire jokes, laughing often. He's a merry, albeit strange character.
Not that I think this proves Depp's Wonka will be good. What I've seen looks a bit too "Pee Wee Herman" esque. But, there are a couple of moments in the second trailer that give me hope I'm wrong.
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posted
I'm not saying you're wrong to feel differently.
I'm just saying that Dahl didn't play the willy Wonka or the Factory parts of the book seriously. At _best_ they were VERY tongue-in-cheek...and often downright goofy. If it hadn't been for the often dark, sad descriptions of Charlie's poverty in the book's first few chapters, or for the karmic fates of the other ticket winners, the book would be non-stop goofiness.
That's all I'm saying. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I'm saying: I don't/didn't see it like that, particularly. Wrongly or rightly. Who knows what's going on inside my head when I pick up those books, but it's not as silly and goofy or tongue in cheek as what's going on in other people's.
In the Japanese version Jiji doesn't speak to her at the end, in the English version, he does. That bit of dialogue doesn't exist at the beginning. Jiji not talking at the end seems to symbolize that she must stop talking to her cat and interact with other people... But,when he stopped talking to her earlier in the movie it was because she was losing her power. Something like that.
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