Nick Picks | Is Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Really That Bad?

A lot of movies receive backlashes following a period of acclaim. Sometimes this is because the movie got overhyped upon release. Other times it’s because some movies just don’t age that well. One notable movie that’s gotten a major backlash since debuting ten years ago is Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

They’ve ruined a classic!

Today, most people consider Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be one of the worst Hollywood remakes ever made. Believe it or not, though, the reception for this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book was mostly positive upon release. The film was a box office hit and critics generally enjoyed it. The film even scored a certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which currently sits at 83%. Of course the RT audience score is currently only 51%. Even the people who liked the movie back in 2005 now look at it with disdain.

So why is it that so many have turned against Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Well for one thing, expectations for this movie were rather low when it was announced. Why? Because we already had 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder. Everyone considers the original film a perennial classic and the very idea of a new, improved version just sounded blasphemous.

So…do Oompa Loompas count as slave labor?

As much as audiences didn’t want a reimagining from Tim Burton, there was still little doubt that we’d pay to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory anyway. The colorful ads attracted children, meaning that their parents would accompany them to the theaters. On top of that, fans of the original couldn’t help but be intrigued. Even if they were against the film’s existence, the ads still managed to hook them in with the nostalgia factor. As a matter of fact, you could argue that 2005 was the year that our nostalgia craze really started to launch and this particular remake played a hand in that.

So after months of dreading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we all sat down to watch it and found the film really wasn’t that bad. If anything, there was a lot to admire. The child actors were all gifted, the production values were incredible, and it actually remained more faithful to Dahl’s source material than the Wilder film. With that said, there were still several drawbacks. To this date, we’re still not entirely sure what Johnny Depp was thinking with that Michael Jackson approach to Willy Wonka.

Even if the film had its problems, however, the public had a much better time than they expected overall. As the years went by, though, it was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that kept us coming back while Charlie and the Chocolate Factory faded from our memory. At the end of the day, the original film just had more fleshed out characters, more timeless songs, and a more fitting moral. Because of this, it was easy to simply label the remake as the bad version. Although it’s certainly not on par with Willy Wonka, is Charlie really that bad?

Personally, when I think of the worst Hollywood remakes, I think of the ones that missed the point of the original (1998’s Godzilla) or unambitiously lived in the original’s shadow (1998’s Psycho). To me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn’t really fall into either of those categories. To give Burton credit, he did try to distinguish his version with new ideas, character dynamics, and contemporary innovations. At the same time, the charm of the original story remained present. Even if parts of it are clunky, Charlie deserves credits where credit’s due.

Does that mean Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a good movie that’s undeserving of its recent backlash? Not necessarily. It still pales in comparison to Willy Wonka and the film really didn’t have to exist. For the aspects that do work, however, Charlie doesn’t deserve to be viewed as “the bad version.” Maybe it should just be viewed as “the okay version.” At least that’s more than can be said about Burton’s Planet of the Apes.