The first trailer for Wonka has arrived, and it delivers a look into the world that Willy Wonka first established his empire. A young Wonka is dead set on making his way into the chocolate industry with his whimsical ideas and break through the "chocolate cartel." The trailer gives a vibe of whimsy and that anything is possible, but I think the filmmakers are missing the point of the character. Before we go further, rewatch the preview below.
I'm not 100% sold on Timothée Chalamet's Wonka at the moment despite all we know about it, and a lot of it is grounded on just how whimsical and over-the-top the title character is. It feels very far removed from the '70s movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory it's supposed to be a prequel to, and I fear it's taking the character in a direction I don't believe he should be going down.
I Feel Like Wonka Made The Character A Superhero Version Of Himself
Willy Wonka is a chocolatier, innovator and inventor. The Wonka trailer effectively shows those parts of the character, but we also see a pretty lengthy scene in which he's flying across the city while holding onto a girl thanks to a bunch of balloons. We also see him casually do a one-armed glide down a street lamp post that seemingly defies gravity. Why does it feel like this Wonka is low-key a superhero in disguise?
Gene Wilder's Wonka displayed some mild acrobatics all in the name of a gag in the original movie, but that was the long and short of it. I get that this Wonka is a younger man, but I never got the sense he was some inherent athlete capable of impressive physical feats.
It's entertaining, but it feels like there's a weird disconnect in the increased athleticism of this Wonka that wasn't really a huge part of him prior to that. It's distracting enough to me in the trailer that I wonder if it's going to stick with me when I see the actual movie, and if I'll be able to shake the idea that I'm watching a superhero version of Wonka rather than the original.
I'm Confused On When Willy Wonka's Innovation In Candy Making Began
There's something odd about the fact that we're seeing so much experimental candy in Wonka. There's tease of some shocking type of candy, and we even see a group of men floating to the sky thanks to tasting some Hoverchocs. These make for exciting scenes that will surely justify some impressive visual effects, but is this lore accurate to the character?
This may be headcanon on my part, but I always presumed that Wonka came up with all of his wildest ideas during the years he spent in seclusion. I don't understand how Wonka had this item available way back in the day, but decades later, it's on display in the factory, with Wonka stating they're still finding a way to bring it to market. Am I to believe this brilliant innovator hasn't cracked the code to this yet?
I get the vibe that Wonka will be a story of how innovation made him one of the major players in the chocolate industry, and yet when we get to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, we only see the basic candy offerings on the store shelves. The Wonka bar is a fairly standard fare in terms of a candy bar, though it's not like we can taste the difference when watching the movie at home. Perhaps what we'll learn when watching is that Wonka was more inventive in his earlier years, and that innovation played a factor in his eventual seclusion.
Wonka Seems To Be Erasing The Negative Traits Of The Character
I'll concede that I'm making a lot of assumptions about Wonka based on a trailer, and that small chunk of footage can't possibly give us the full scope of what to expect from the upcoming Timothée Chalamet movie. With that said, the vibe I get from this Willy Wonka is very far removed from the one we see in the original movie, and I have to question if the movie is somewhat erasing the character.
For all the fun and whimsy that there is with Willy Wonka, the original film showed that there was a reckless and dangerous side as well. We're talking about a man who devised an elaborate morality test for children touring his factory. Not only that, but he subjected them to some pretty life-threatening consequences for failing, even if they did ultimately come out of it all unharmed. Those aren't exactly the actions of a man who is whimsical and harmless; they're borderline criminal.
Now, I can buy that under years in seclusion that Wonka might've been driven to a more extreme personality that wasn't exactly what it once was. At the same time, now that I've seen he's developing Hoverchocs and such in his youth and venturing in jungles for chocolate, I have to think his adventurous and reckless nature is intact. Timothée Chalamet seemed to acknowledge that in a previous interview, but balked at saying how his Wonka tapped into that.
If that is the case, I have to think that Wonka will have to point out that this up-and-coming chocolatier does have some dangerous ideas and maybe deserves to be kept in check a bit. At the same time, this feels like a movie in which Willy Wonka will stand up and dismantle the evil Chocolate Cartel. Will this movie have to overlook the more damaging aspects of Wonka's personality in order to make him the true hero of it all?
As I mentioned, these are questions that may be impossible to answer until we actually see Wonka. I'm not sure these are questions most readers will deem all that serious for a movie slated to release during the Christmas season, perhaps hinting at the feel-good lighthearted tone it'll have. At the same time, this movie is leaning on the legacy of one of the most memorable films of Gene Wilder's career. It's also a timeless children's movie that maintained its popularity despite an attempted reboot Wilder himself couldn't get behind. Given that, I think it's beyond fair to put it under the microscope and ask if the movie is truly delivering a story that will feel truly connected to the film it's based on. If nothing else, at least I won't have to tolerate the terrible Grandpa Joe for the entire film.
Wonka hits theaters on December 15th. This means there is still plenty of time for discourse as we wait on the release date and more opportunities for this movie to showcase why it's a worthy prequel to a timeless movie.
