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Credit: Warner BrosA career as an actor has brought Johnny Depp everything from critical acclaim to indie idol status to blockbuster box office receipts. At various points, he has been famous as an arthouse actor, a sleazy Los Angeles rocker, a beloved childhood clown, and that one guy who gets turned into a fountain of blood by Freddy Krueger in the first Nightmare on Elm Street.
However, one movie stands above all of Johnny Depp’s weird decisions: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Tim Burton‘s much-touted “faithful” adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book that still managed to change pretty much everything but the idea that chocolate exists.
With the Timothee Chalamet Wonka prequel scheduled to be released later this year, there really is no better time to examine exactly what went wrong with Burton and Depp.
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Johnny Depp Was Tim Burton’s Only Choice For Willy Wonka
On its face, this makes sense. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton had achieved great box office success prior to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Sleepy Hollow (1999). as well as overwhelming critical acclaim for Ed Wood (1994)
The actor’s success with the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) made Johnny Depp a viable commercial draw for a family movie.
In the years that Warner Bros had been trying to remake the Gene Wilder-led Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), the studio had considered (and sometimes been in active discussion with) stars as widely varied (deep breath) as:
- Bill Murray
- Christopher Walken
- Steve Martin
- Robin Williams
- Nicolas Cage
- Jim Carrey
- Michael Keaton
- Robert De Niro
- Patrick Stewart
- Brad Pitt
- Will Smith
- Mike Myers,
- Ben Stiller
- Various members of Monty Python
- Adam Sandler
It is fair to say that is a list without a lot of connections other than “Warner Bros really wants to make money off this IP.”
When the studio itself has no particular interest in the direction a movie could go in, it’s not surprising that things could get weird.
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Tim Burton Wanted To Be Faithful to the Book, Except When It Didn’t Matter
Reportedly, director Tim Burton wanted his movie to be as close to the book as possible and demanded his chosen screenwriter not rewatch the 1971 adaptation so as not to be unduly influenced by it.
August and Burton then created an entirely new character, Wilbur Wonka (Christopher Lee), to explain why Willy is such a reclusive weirdo, as though Roald Dahl could not have done so if it was actually necessary to the story. Similarly, they added other scenes whole cloth to the narrative, figuring it added emotional realism to the story of a man who lives in a chocolate factory with Oompa-Loompas.
Johnny Depp Brought in His Own Ideas
In an effort to not be compared to Gene Wilder, Johnny Depp made the novel decision to base his version of the chocolatier on a combination of American TV personality Captain Kangaroo, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and then-U.S. President George W. Bush, as the actor imagined he sounded while stoned.
Additionally, Tim Burton made Johnny Depp wear latex gloves from a BDSM fetish company, mostly just because.
In many ways, Johnny Depp can’t be blamed for what his portrayal of Willy Wonka became; he had just been commercially successful beyond his wildest dreams for portraying Captain Jack Sparrow as a combination been rock guitarist Keith Richards and cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew.
Why shouldn’t Wonka be the same?
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‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ Was Wildly Successful
Because the early 2000s were a weird time, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was hugely successful, raking in almost $500 million at the box office and getting largely positive reviews from critics for its exaggerated set design and Danny Elfman’s music.
However, time has not been as kind to Johnny Depp’s portrayal of the candy maker, especially as the actor because increasingly known for his tumultuous personal life and reclusive, vampire-like conduct. Now, it is difficult to separate the behavior of the emotionally repressed, rage-filled Wonka with allegations of misconduct on the part of Depp.
But more than that, it is simply a performance without a center. All of the wild charisma that Johnny Depp brought to Captain Jack Sparrow is absent here, replaced by a cartoon idea of someone who doesn’t know how to talk to other people.
Sadly, Johnny Depp began to let his wigs and costumes do the acting for him in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and has rarely emerged from beneath them in the years after.
The diminishing qualities of his performances in Pirates of the Caribbean can be directly tied back to the hundreds of millions of dollars this movie made, as well as his increasing reliance on caricature-like characters in movies like The Lone Ranger (2013) (bird hat), Mortdecai (2015) (mustache), and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) (everything).
In the end, Johnny Depp’s performance as Willy Wonka was so bad, yet so successful that it made each of his following performances that much worse. Hopefully, Timothee Chalamet can bring something else to the table (along with a grumpy Hugh Grant, of course).
Do you think Willy Wonka was Johnny Depp’s worst role? Speak up in the comments below, and don’t mumble!