Beyond Wonka: 6 cinematic origin stories that should also star Timothée Chalamet

Cut to the Feeling is a monthly column by Anne T. Donahue about the art and pop culture that sparks joy, grief, nostalgia, and everything in between.

It's Timothée Chalamet's world, and we're just living in it; whether hosting Saturday Night Live or confessing his undying love to Saorsie Ronan, the decade's Boy Wonder has proven himself far more than a young man with the hair of a cherub and the bone structure of a baby bird.

So with his talent and range in mind, I've chosen to use Wonka as a means of finally fulfilling my destiny: to pitch Timothée Chalamet as the star of several origin stories we didn't necessarily ask for, but need. After all, not a soul asked to know anything about Willy Wonka, the worst and likely most lawsuit-ridden man to have entered the world of confectionaries. And yet here we are, charmed by a young man's lust for chocolate who carries with him the voice of an angel.

Though I maintain that Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa is a frightening and unnatural thing.

William Thatcher (Notting Hill)

Considering Hugh Grant acts like Wonka press junkets are a violation of his human rights, I'd love to see the way he'd react to news that our wee Timothée is slated to play William Thatcher, the male lead of Notting Hill.

After all, the public has a right to know. Why, out of every book genre, did William favour travel literature? How did he meet his first love, and how did it implode so spectacularly that he had to live with Rhys Ifans, who, despite now being two decades older than he was in the original Notting Hill, would still somehow play himself? The hair: did it always fall so spectacularly, or did it come from nervously rifling his own hands through it over the course of his twenties? And again, why travel books? How? In this economy? ("This" being any economy, at any point in history.) And who, I beg you, who is the original Oopsie-Daisies?

Neo (The Matrix)

We're all aware that Neo is a stand-in for Jesus Christ, and that The Matrix is an analogy for many theological things, all of which have nothing to do with my pitch.

Enter: Neo, in his 20th-century computer-hacking form, and played by Timothée Chalamet. The story would be a deep dive into what drew Neo to computer scenes as a teen and twenty-something, and how despite his brilliance, he ended up working for the same company I'm pretty sure Office Space is also set in.

This premise might seem bleak, but hear me out: montages. Dozens of montages, all of which include Timothée typing with purpose, logging in with enthusiasm, and explaining "the mainframe" to his father who refuses to upgrade the family computer to Windows95 because it already "works too slow." Think of the computer boot-up sound and the whirl of the CPU fan, often threatening to burn out. The computer room — my God, the family computer room. Here is where the familial strife comes to a head, as Young Neo™ finally discovers ICQ chat and connects to an equally-young Morpheus — only for the connection to be lost when his father picks up the house phone, hoping to call and order a pizza. A hacker is born.

Charlie Swan (Twilight)

While the Twilight series gave us valuable insight into Bella Swan, all we really gleaned about her dad was that he had a mustache.

And we deserve to know more. We deserve to know why Charlie chose to grow that mustache, and whether it was difficult to do so at the time. (It was.) We deserve to know why he chose Forks. (It's a terrific name for a town.) We deserve to know how he met Bella's mom, why they divorced, and whether he could ever love again. (Details TBD, but it all comes back to his mustache.) The story sounds weak, but so is the entirety of the Twilight saga. And if a story about sparkly vampires necessitates three books and four movies, it also necessitates a two-hour drama about a sad young man who stares out the window and at the rain, trying to grow a mustache.

Cocaine Bear (Cocaine Bear)

I told you the man has range. Put him in a bear suit, film him in a forest, and set up a narrative about the dangers of drugs, and the way he hoped his straight-edge ideologies would guarantee him as the successor of Smokey the Bear, played by Brian Cox.

Waldo (of Where's Waldo? fame)

Picture this: on a crowded beach on a hot, summer day, a young Waldo (no last name) joins his family for an afternoon of tanning, swimming, and whatever else people do at the beach. (I hate the beach.) Upon arrival, Waldo, still clad in his red-and-white work uniform, sets down his towel before running back to the car to fetch his swim trunks. When he returns to the beach, his family is gone.

But not gone, just . . . extremely hard to find. Impossible, even. And as the beach gets more and more crowded, Waldo roams the water's edge until nightfall, chasing what he believes are the calls of his parents, "Where's Waldo?!"

No one could bring humanity to this character like Timothée Chalamet, whose big, brown (?) eyes could seamlessly convey the fear of a young man who must trod through sand and fog in the same full-length pants and long sleeve shirt. Where was Waldo, but also who was he? Rest assured we'd find out as he mutters "I've never liked crowds" in the midst of a crowded karaoke bar, a cloud of cigarette smoke wafting out of his mouth.

Batman (Batman)

Because quite frankly, there just aren't enough Batman origin story films!