candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker

[kindkit]

I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory tonight, because I adore Gene Wilder.

What a peculiar movie. I can't imagine anything like it being made today. Was the recent-ish remake awful? I'll bet it was. I'll bet they started by turning Charlie from a sweet gentle boy into a rebel with an attitude.

Anyway, I kept feeling like behind the random moralizations and the tacked-on feel-good ending, there was a dark, strange, perverse story lurking, that we see only glimpses of.

Naturally I went to the AO3 looking for fic. Oh dear. I didn't even read any of it, and I still want brain bleach. These were not the dark, strange, perverse stories I was looking for.

Comments

[genarti]

I liked the recent-ish remake because it was (mostly) closer to the book than the earlier film. (Except for adding a weird and unnecessary subplot about Wonka having daddy issues because of a dentist father.) A lot of people I know disliked it, though, and I admit that I never clicked with the Gene Wilder movie because I'd imprinted on the book first and it's so very different in some key-to-me ways, so YMMV a great deal.