The absolute best movie villain of 2023? Step forward Paterson Joseph and his terrific turn as Arthur Slugworth in Wonka…
A few years ago on this site, I highlighted the performance of one Josh Lucas. He played what on paper was a fairly traditional antagonist in James Mangold’s terrific film Le Mans ’66 (or Ford V Ferrari, if you live in the US), the oily vice president Leo Beebe who gave Matt Damon’s Carroll Shelby a force to push against.
Movie villains of note have, to my mind, become something of an endangered species in recent years. How many of them, truly, feel like a force to push against, or an antagonist that adds genuine obstacles to a story? Even if there’s not much character to work with, when was the last time you saw an actor having so much fun with such a role?
Oftentimes, it’s just someone with a dastardly plan, there for another character to hit. I really enjoyed, for instance, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (as we must now call it, now the Part One has officially been dropped). But amidst all the running around, amazing sequences and general sense of jumping off things, Esai Morales barely made a dent as the apparent villain of the piece.
Even the casting of an actor who’s previously proven his villainous chops – Mads Mikkelsen – couldn’t turn the character of Jurgen Voller in Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny into someone for Harrison Ford’s Indy to particularly push against.
Villains are increasingly struggling to be a force of note in a story, or a character worth remembering, or – more often – both.
However, a little bit lost in the conversation about Paul King’s Wonka is a single performance that I’ve more and more convinced is the absolute standout of the movie. With written apologies to Hugh, of course. In the most unlikeliest of places, I’ve found my favourite movie villain performance since, well, Josh Lucas.
The basic premise of Wonka – a family-dressed retelling of Scarface, according to my esteemed colleague Ryan Lambie – sees Timothee Chalamet’s Willy sailing to the UK to try and open his dream chocolate emporium. Yet there’s a cartel already in place, and it doesn’t take kindly to the fresh presence of Willy on its patch.
Three chocolatiers – apologies for the brief, but necessary, piece of plot – control the market that Willy discovers. They are Matt Lucas’ Gerald Prodnose, Mathew Bayton’s Felix Fickelgruber, and Paterson Joseph’s Arthur Slugworth.
The trio are great fun, and they get a song and dance number to establish just how anti-Wonka they are. But my eyes quickly got drawn to Paterson Joseph, effectively the leader of the cartel, and a man on a mission to find more and more lavish scenery to happily chew.
Paterson Joseph is absolutely off the chart good in the film. Arthur Slugworth, fans of 1971’s Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory may recall, was a character who lurked in the shadows. Sinister, edgy and horrible, he seemed to primarily exist to give small children nightmares. The horror aspect of the character was played up, the Lucifer tempting Charlie Bucket et al to hand over Willy’s sweets, occasionally popping up and then sinking back into the murk.
Podcast: Wonka (2023) with Paul King and Simon Farnaby
Slugworth is a far more front and centre presence in 2023’s Wonka, and writers Simon Farnaby and Paul King take a different tack when approaching the character. They’re less interested in terrifying people, more interested in providing a fun, delicious villain. He’s a bit more theatrical a character than previous adaptations have made him, with the onus seemingly on making sure whoever plays him has the material to quickly let the audience know he’s trouble.
It would be fair to say that Paterson Joseph very much got the memo.
Notwithstanding the brief period where he was strongly rumoured to have been cast as Doctor Who (remember that?), Joseph’s background is actually in the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as a series of television dramas such as Casualty, Law & Order UK and Safe House. He’s got a fair few police roles to his name, and he’s ventured towards comedy too in the likes of Peep Show and Green Wing. To my knowledge, he’s not been up for a big movie villain role before.
I don’t quite know what King saw in Paterson Joseph though when he cast Wonka, but I’ve watched the film three times now, and I think he’s genius casting. He’s a proper boo-hiss villain, the kind of which I’ve not seen for ages on screen, and that’s not meant in a derogatory way at all.
He plays it in a heightened way, of course, but there’s a curl and an endearing snarl to his delivery of lines. His eyes have friendliness at the front, mischief at the back. His tongue wraps around the lines with the kind of smile that makes me think he’d have been a perfect villain for Roger Moore-era James Bond.
The cadence and tone of his delivery is exquisite. The physicality of his performance slimy and untrustworthy. I’d like to think the man was having a ball playing the role, as if holding court on a theatre stage, knowing the audience both hated him, and couldn’t take their eyes off him. It sounds like faint praise to say that he captures what works about the very best pantomime villains, but there’s a sense of family theatre about Wonka, albeit on a cinematic scale. There’s usually a lot going on, the backgrounds are dripping in details, but the presence of Slugworth has – on those repeat viewings – comfortably become my favourite thing about a film I continue to enjoy.
We overlook work like this sometimes, I think, and don’t give it due credit, because it’s playing out so candidly in the mainstream. Yet I think it’s really difficult what he’s doing, demonstrated by the fact that I struggle to recall too many people who’ve managed to do this so well. Slugworth and his cohorts don’t get an awful lot of screentime in Wonka, but I get an absolute sense of presence and villainy. And if I want my kids to brush their teeth before bedtime, Slugworth is the one I’m most likely to threaten them with.
One aside: the man wore an extraordinarily cosy-looking cardigan whilst doing UK press for the film too. A fabulous villain, and a fine purveyor of quality knitwear too.
Wonka has gone on to make over half a billion dollars around the world thus far, and Warner Bros has now fast-tracked it to premium video on demand services to capitalise on its success. I’m sure, if the conversations haven’t started already, that there’s sequel talk ongoing. And if we are to see Timothee Chalamet’s Willy again, I very much hope that Slugworth and his chums also get a repeat invite. Oh, and see if Josh Lucas is free too…
(If you’re looking to see who the 2024 candidate for movie villain of the year will be, incidentally, just pop along and see The Beekeeper. The chaps in there are going to take some beating…)
Read more: Wonka | Production designer Nathan Crowley on practical sets, chocolate, Christopher Nolan and more
