So last night I caught an advance screening of “Fantastic Mr. Fox“.

I waltzed up to the movieplex and was all like “Hi, I’m press.”
And they were like, “Oh, really? Who do you work for?”
Then I said: “I am the founder and writer of the beloved pop culture website Popfessor.com. Please, get out of my way. You are bothering me with your presence.”
To which the 14-year old usher quickly replied, “Oh yes, of course. Right this way, sir.”

It was just like that, except my friend had found a coupon for it and I don’t talk to people I don’t know in real life.
Also, I went to the bathroom before the movie started.

Anyways, the movie lived up to it’s title adjective. Seriously, go see it when it comes out November 25. It’s dope. I will throw in the trailer just because it’s nice having videos in my blog:

So seeing the movie had me waxing nostalgic for all previous Roald Dahl film adaptations. There was “Matilda“, the 1996 child abuse classic starring Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman I didn’t see.

Also from 1996 was the CGI “James and the Giant Peach“, which I saw years ago but don’t remember much of. It was pretty cool, I guess, but I think I remember them changing the second half of the story considerably.

The second best Dahl adaptation, however, has to be 1990’s “The Witches.” “The Witches” scared the crap out of me as a kid, with its overall creepiness. On top of children being imprisoned inside of paintings and other things of that nature, you had shit like this:

After seeing that movie, I never accepted candy from witches again. Anyways, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
” is the most famous of Dahl’s stories by a country mile.

And I mean “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” movie version not “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“. While his old stuff is awesome, I still believe Tim Burton should’ve been put out to pasture in the mid 90’s. That “Alice in Wonderland” shit looks fucking awful, and represents everything that’s terrible about Burton’s aesthetic since he discovered CGI instead of actually, you know, making actual things that are there.

So “Chocolate Factory” was famous enough to receive 2 film adaptations. The story is classic. 5 children go to chocolate factory, only one survives. A timeless story of good triumphing over evil.

We go through the motions, learn some lessons, Charlie wins the factory etc. But do you remember how it ends? After all is said is done, what’s left to do?

BLAST OFF INTO SPACE

Totally natural conclusion.

Well, after that, the story continues in the book “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
.” Despite the popularity of the first 2 movies, this sequel has never been adapted for film. What gives?

Well, according to two statements on Wikipedia marked with “citations needed”, Dahl wasn’t happy with the first adaptation of “Chocolate Factory” and refused to sell the rights to the sequel. I don’t understand why, because that movie is awesome. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have no plans for a sequel, but that’s OK, because it’d blow. I tried to find a glass elevator clip from the movie and found one with Depp, and it reminded me how fucking annoying his Wonka was.

Anyways, there is a much more important reason the book was never made into a movie: it’s totally whack.

Did you like the Chocolate factory? Was it your favorite part? Well, tough shit, kid. It ain’t in this one. But it does have:

• Not just one but FOUR old people
• Aliens called “Vernicious Knids” (totally has a ring to it, right?)
• A “Space Hotel” secretly run by the sketchy-as-fuck American government
• Anti-aging pills, which causes one character to temporarily die from aging backwards too much
• Hell, which in this story is called “Minus Land” and is creepy as shit

At the end, the president invites them to the White House for dinner, and a helicopter comes to pick them up. That’s the end. There was supposed to be another sequel, “Charlie and the White House”, but apparently only one chapter got made. Good. This story didn’t really need to go in a political direction. Anyways, thought I’d share that with you.

The edition my class read in elementary school wasn’t illustrated by Dahl’s usual whimsical illustrator, Quentin Blake. Instead, the drawings were really disturbing, and I will end my post with some samples:

I like to think that every picture symbolizes death. Did anyone else read this book? What’d they think of it? Better than I made it out to be? Haven’t read it in awhile, the plot recap makes me think it could actually be really awesome or really terrible. Hey, let’s just make this movie ourselves.

Tags: Reviews, books, movies // 9 Comments »