If It Ain't Broke...?

So, I finally got around to watching the Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Prior to Big Fish, I'd never really been a Burton fan. I always thought his stuff was ok, but nothing all that special (aside from Beetlejuice, which is awesome even with Winona). Big Fish changed all of that, because there finally seemed to be an emotional core to the movie, a "point", if you will. Big Fish, ultimately, is about fathers and sons; it is Tim Burton's letter to his father, who died shortly before or during the shooting of the movie.

I believe Big Fish is, in fact, based on a book (hey, it is - this one). And I wonder if Burton took the same license with it that he took with Charlie. I find it interesting that Burton chose to layer the same emotional core onto the story of Willy Wonka - to give him a backstory, and to ultimately make the story as much about Willy as it is about Charlie. I wonder if all of his subsequent films will contain the same element - I can picture Sweeney Todd bemoaning the fact that his father never understood him as he slits a customer's throat.

In any event, I didn't realize what Burton was doing, and so sitting through the movie was somewhat frustrating. Many parts are truer to the book than the earlier film version, but in other parts there were definite deviations (at least, I think - I'm also filled with a strong desire to read it again, to see what was accurate and what wasn't). This leads me to my biggest beef, one I've had with countless adaptations, one I will probably have as long as there are adaptations and the reason why it took me a fair bit of time to warm up to the movie.

I hate it when adaptations stray from their source material.

Perhaps, I suppose, I shouldn't. They are, after all, adaptations. Inherent in the word is the sense of adapting, of changes deemed necessary in the move from one medium to another. And yet, there is a large part of me (perhaps the literary snob) that says, "Hey Mr. Film Director, if you think you can write a better story, go write it and leave that nice one alone." (typically I word that much more aggressively, with several expletives) This is why I find it intensely difficult to sit through parts of LotR, something I can rant about for several hours.

Yes, I am that much of a pathetic fantasy nerd. What can I say, I had a very sheltered childhood and books were important to me.

Regardless.

There are some times when I have found changes acceptable. The book Sideways, for example, is wildly different from the movie, but I found myself not minding - perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I watched the movie before I read the book. For the most part, though, they tend to irritate me. And it has nothing to do with the typical, "Movies are never as good as books," comment/observation. The reason why movies tend not to be as good as books is because in a book, the author can spell things out that need to be and leave things unsaid that don't need to be. In movies (especially Hollywood productions), directors and writers write to the lowest common denominator, saying, in essence, "YOU ARE TOO DUMB TO GET THIS IN A NUANCED WAY, SO I WILL HAVE THE CHARACTER SPEAK IT OUT LOUD."

Yes, that's exactly what they say, and they say it all in caps. How rude.

Anyways, back to Charlie. So Tim Burton's decided to give us all a backstory on Willy Wonka, to explain why he became so obsessed with candy and eventually leading to a reconciliation with his father. This is nice and all, but of course, it isn't in the book. And why did Burton feel the need to fill it in? Why did he have to create a "why"? Why does there always have to be a why? Is it societal? Is it so ingrained in us to seek prior causes (perhaps in search of someone to blame for problems) that even in our art, in our stories, there must be a why? There's a sequence in the movie (again, don't think it's in the book but it might be, and even if it isn't, no matter) where Mike Teevee says, "Why does nothing in this factory make sense?" and before anyone else can say anything, Charlie says, "It's candy. It doesn't have to make sense."

Why does Tim Burton's candy have to make sense?