The further we get from it the more I find the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be the more interesting film. The original is still probably a better film, but the 2005 one is just... haunting, and somehow becomes more relevant with time?
Like as much as people like Elon Musk want to project themselves as Tony Starks, the fact is he and all the other Riches are really Willy Wonkas. But not the cool, confident, mysterious Gene Wilder Wonka, or the overly sugary schmaltzy nonsense Wonka Timothy Chalamet is sure to give us. No, they're the socially inept, completely insane selfish assholes with Daddy issues Johnny Depp Wonka.
It's so immediately apparent from the moment he appears onscreen that his years and years of being completely sheltered and cut off from the real world has turned him into a Weird And Fucked Up Person. Instead of making sly jokes about the kids that fly over their heads, he stares them in the eyes and says shit like "I don't care" and "I always thought a Veruca was a kind of wart you got on the bottom of your foot. HAHAHA."
One of my favorite moments is definitely the short exchange between Wonka and Mr. Salt just outside the nut room. Salt is a normal rich person, as normal as one can be anyways, and tries to get into a serious business discussion with Wonka about the nut industry. Wonka stares at him like an insane person and says "You're really weird." I can never stop thinking about this characterization.
And the fact that it's more true to Dahl's fucked up little gremlin from the book. I love it.
All I'm really upset about is we never got Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, one of the most deeply insane, disturbing, and hilarious children's books I've ever read. We were robbed in never getting to see Tim Burton's envisioning of shape shifting, man-eating hellspawn in space contort their bodies to tell the characters to RUN, or see Wonka and Charlie go to Actual Hell to rescue Charlie's grandma who Wonka just killed.