It can’t be denied that Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was an unqualified success, earning $475 million at the box office back in the summer of 2005, while it was greeted warmly by critics and wound up securing an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%.
However, over 250,000 users have seen its audience rating drop to a middling 51%, and even now people can’t seem to agree on how they feel about Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka. While the shadow of Gene Wilder was always going to loom large over his performance, many people were left feeling cold by the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s eccentric turn.
Depp claims to have taken the haircut from Anna Wintour and the voice from how he imagined George W. Bush would sound if he was high on drugs, but plenty of folks failed to see past the obvious Michael Jackson comparisons. The leading man did nab a Golden Globe nomination for his performance, though, but the discussions over the merits of his Willy Wonka continue to rage to this day.
The everlastingly polarizing reception hasn’t dented the popularity of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the slightest, with the visually striking and tonally bizarre family film rocketing up the Netflix most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol. The Roald Dahl adaptation has jumped 35 places since yesterday, and if it continues on that trajectory it’ll be in the Top 10 by the end of tomorrow.