Every Roald Dahl Movie Adaptation Ranked Worst To Best

Nigh on a decade after producing James and the Giant Peach, Tim Burton once again turned his hand to another Dahl adaptation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and given the director’s bent for quirky fantasy it looked as though he might just breathe fresh air into what is possibly the writer’s best known and best-loved book.

In shifting the focus back to young Charlie, as per the film’s title, Burton’s film is more in line with the book which presumably, given Dahl’s dislike for Mel Stuart’s 1971 adaptation Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for straying from source too much, would have pleased him.

But despite conjuring up a weirdly wonderful world thanks to some very imaginative and elaborate set designs, there’s something kind of garish and off-putting about the film. Case in point? Johnny Depp’s interpretation of Willy Wonka as a bizarre man-child and the introduction of a new backstory crammed with more daddy issues than an essay on Freudian theory. Just one of several issues that makes it feel like an assault to the senses, especially after the warm-hearted sentiment of Mel Stuart’s original adaptation.

While it’s a good thing to introduce Dahl’s works to a new generation and Burton’s film was certainly a commercial success, more than tripling its budget at the box office and ranking as the eighth best performing film of 2005, the movie was always going to suffer by comparison to its 1971 counterpart which is – despite Dahl’s objections – the better of the two.