When you hear about Roald Dahl’s famous 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, chances are that you will instead think of one of its many adaptations, most likely either the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Willy Wonka) directed by Mel Stuart or the 2005 film directed by Tim Burton that was named after the book (Charlie), if not the more recent 2019 film Wonka that serves as a prequel to the 1971 film. As someone who grew up with Willy Wonka and had read the book maybe once at some point, I was curious about the 2005 film and saw it in a theater when it first came out, only to generally dislike it in favor of the original adaptation. Following a theatrical screening of Wonka that was followed by another rewatch of Willy Wonka, I more seriously considered giving Charlie another chance, even reading the book shortly beforehand since it was meant to be more accurate, and finding that the preceding film was not quite as inaccurate to the book as some people make it out to be. After streaming the 2005 film on Max (formerly HBO Max), since I no longer owned a DVD copy, I appreciated it a little more for its attempts at book-accuracy, but still found myself overall preferring the 1971 version.
