Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

What I just remembered is this movie has been remade. The movie that has not been made is Roald Dahl's follow up to The Chocolate Factory which is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Why couldn't they just have Johnny Depp do that one instead of a remake? It's lazy enough that nearly every movie is made now with a sequel in mind, but now that we're remaking movies that came from the 70s how can Hollywood get any lazier? There's a sequel right there! The Elevator man, MAKE THE ELEVATOR!!!

I say this with extreme excitement because no book did to me in elementary school what this one did. Sure Choose Your Own Adventure, and Encyclopedia Brown had their moments, but this one was a treasure. It was so much more of an exciting story than it's predecessor. Sure I barely remember the actual story now, but I remember the thrills of it and how I just needed to know what was going to happen next. This manic story telling of the book was indeed the greatest influence I had as a child towards the writer I am today, and yet still ... no movie.

What does The Chocolate Factory have instead? Let's see. Charlie has a paper route to get money for his bedridden grandparents who use the money to buy cigarettes. Nice. Something else I noticed is Willy Wonka wasn't just an eccentric guy trying to teach kids a lesson, he WANTED that little tubby kid to get sucked into the tube of chocolate. You know how I know? The next part they go on that scary boat ride that traumatized me as a child. When they get on the boat, there's only enough seats from everyone still left in the party. If tubby didn't get sucked in the tube, someone was going to have to go. Wonka knew this and he provoked fatty to drink the water. It's what people do.

In the hopes that one day The Great Glass Elevator will be made into a movie by George Lucas so that yet another positive memory of my childhood can be erased, I'll do what the movie could do so well, and that's jump from here to there with the blink of an eye.

I'm sorry this keeps coming back to munchkins versus monkeys, but now we have new competitors, which are of course the Oompa Loompas along with mixing in the monkeys from 2001 and this thing may turn into a full fledged battle royal.