The Tim Burton Willy Wonka Movie Deserves More Credit as a Gen Z Touchstone

Released in 1971, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a staple of the Generation X childhood, a film to be both adored and ironically homaged forever after. At the time, author Roald Dahl received a much publicized screenwriting credit, albeit that more reflected marketing concerns more than it ddid the actual work done (David Seltzer penned most of the finished screenplay). Still, the film managed to retain the cynicism of the original book while director Mel Stuart mixed the tone surrealistic ’60s imagery and contemporary family movie friendliness, making for the ultimate movie in ironic appreciation.

Let’s now contrast that with the world that greeted the film’s most famous (and in some circles sacrilegious) remake. In 2005, the children who would compose Gen Z were already facing a different sort of malaise. Four years after 9/11 and four years before the Great Recession, two “one-in-a-lifetime” calamities, Generation Z got their own version of the Dahl classic. In place of the previous movie’s psychedelia is media overload. In addition to the focus on Charlie and Grandpa Joe is a daddy issue origin story that is effective precisely because it’s so dissatisfying. And the prickly but lovable Willy Wonka played by Gene Wilder gets transformed into an off-putting charlatan that better resembles a seedy talk show host.

Even more strangely, it would be brought to them by two Gen-X icons: Tim Burton and Johnny Depp remade Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a story about awkwardness and media saturation… and as a better movie to boot.

Sadness in the Chocolate Factory

Wilder’s Willy Wonka famously enters the 1971 film with a feint. With the toll of a bell, Wonka stumbles out of his factory and limps toward the crowd assembled at his gates, leaning on a cane. As he nears the puzzled press, he removes his hat and starts to smile, a smile that barely covers the haggard expression he previously wore. Yet upon arriving, he realizes that he’s no longer holding his cane. He falls forward! But instead of collapsing, he tucks into a roll and springs up before the crowd. With arms outstretched, he takes in their adoration.

The 2005 film has an equally grand introduction, but it’s not Wonka who provides the theatrics. Choral music plays and a crane shot pushes in on Charlie (Freddie Highmore) and the others invited to enter Wonka’s factory, rendered here in brutalist gray concrete. An intimidating voice booms over loudspeaker, “Come forward,” compelling them to walk into the building’s shadow.

“Welcome to my factory,” intones the voice. “Who am I? Well…” In answer, a factory wall opens to reveal a red curtained, brightly lit puppet show wherein the marionettes sing a sprightly ditty about the wonders of Willy Wonka! Despite the dolls’ aggressive cheer and painted on smiles, Burton and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot highlight the unsettling falseness of the puppets, underscored by cutaways to the baffled onlooker and foregrounding the fears of animatronics that would make Five Nights at Freddy’s such a Gen Z hit.

At the end of the song, the display bursts into flames, leaving everyone bewildered, save for the purple-clad Willy Wonka, who vigorously claps before moving in front of the visitors to formally welcome them.

According to behind-the-scenes legend, Wilder came up with the idea of faking a limp as a way to prepare the audience for his character in the ’70s classic. Right from the beginning, Wilder wanted to plant a seed of doubt in the viewers’ mind, making them unsure of anything his character does. To that end, Wilder plays the big reveal like he’s a magician, a consummate showman who’s never not performing for his audience.

By contrast, Depp’s Willy puts on a literal show, even though he’s not a performer. It’s a point underscored when he awkwardly greets the crowd by reading lyrics from “Good Morning Starshine” from Oliver!, a 1960 hippie-dippie take on Charles Dickens that would have been outdated to even viewers of Willy Wonka.

As with Wilder’s take, the introduction of Willy Wonka here tells the audience everything they need to know about this version of the character. He has no connection to the rest of the world. He lives in a sealed-off wonderland built around his own designs. Wondrous as this seems to the visitors, it’s clear that Wonka himself finds longing for more, even if he doesn’t know how to connect with others. Throughout the movie, his odd asides, his occasional combativeness, his general discomfort all speaks to a man raised in a world that seems to be made for him but ultimately leaves him empty—a feeling not unfamiliar to those bombarded by algorithmically-designed media and commercials promising happiness.

Dancing and Difference

Perhaps the greatest cultural legacy of the 1971 film was its songs and its Oompa-Loompas, iconography that was embraced by everyone from Marlyn Manson to Wilco, the latter of which would play “Pure Imagination” before taking the stage on their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tour.

The 2005 film matches the original with a set of fantastic songs written by composer Danny Elfman, who reaches back into his Oingo Boingo days. Elfman uses the castigating poems Dahl wrote in the novel but he wraps them around various musical genres, revealing a creativity and playfulness to the Oompa-Loompas that outpaces the 1971 film. In the 2005 movie, the Oompa-Loompas celebrate Violet Beauregard’s downfall with a dreamy bit of Brian Wilson pop. They match Mike Teevee’s end with an appropriately aggressive rock song. They celebrate the exit of Augustus Gloop with a punchy, tribal number.

Each of the songs come complete with elaborate dance sequences from Deep Roy, the veteran actor who portrays each of the Oompa Loompas. A little-person actor with credits in The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who, The X-Files, Roy finally gets a chance to show his full range in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Each of the various dance numbers allow him to embody different types of characters, from Esther Williams-style swimmers in the Augustus Gloop song to even a Freud-esque analyst in the movie’s closing. Furthermore. there’s a grouchiness to Roy’s version of the Oompa Loompas that helps offset the slavery implications that the 2005 fails to avoid.

The punchy songs and combination of similarity and difference with Roy portraying all the Oompa-Loompas allow Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to anticipate the onslaught of social media that has become a mainstay of Gen Z life. Ever since YouTube launched in the same year that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hit theaters, young people have been bombarded with flashy media demanding their attention, at once pretending to be different while ultimately feeling very samey.

Out of the Factory Gates

Some might argue that this is a cynical reading for what feels like a shiny, colorful movie about a magical candy factory. However, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, neither the novel nor either of the movie adaptations, isn’t about pure imagination. There’s always been a despair creeping in the corners of the story.

But it isn’t just despair. Ultimately every telling of the story has hope in Charlie Bucket, that he can inherit the chocolate factory and do good that Willy Wonka could never achieve. As Gen Z ages and slowly moves toward becoming the generation that runs the world, they will carry that hope with them. That hope makes the warning in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory all the greater, that they will not be fooled, like Willy was, into believing that being surrounded by all the sweet insubstantial stuff makes for a good life. Hopefully, they will make the world into something communal, nourishing, and real.