Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Headscratchers

General

• Both movies show that millions of people were buying Wonka at a very fast rate, that made lots of shops run out of candy very fast. Anyone who understands economy would very well know that the price of the candies would skyrocket. How did Charlie buy a chocolate bar with a dollar? It would be impossible for him to buy candy with that amount of demand with just a dollar.
  • In the first movie at least, the chocolate craze had started to die down when he bought it. Perhaps by then prices had also begun to go down.
    • To add, Charlie buys the bar when he gets the Scrumdiddlyumptious. That's AFTER the 5th ticket is supposedly found, but immediately before the papers reveal the Paraguayan gambler made up a phony ticket. Cue music.
  • Wonka has a monopoly on Wonka bars, so he can sell them to select distributors and, just like any real life promotional contest, place strict validation rules on the golden tickets to make sure the chocolate bars aren't getting scalped. The real question is why the stores didn't run out, but Wonka's got enough crazy technology and production methods that we can assume he actually can keep up with that level of demand.
  • The 70s film does go into this somewhat. It's mentioned that while Wonka is cranking out Chocolate Bars, they aren't coming out quickly enough to meet demand. Also, while Wonka can control the amount of money he sells the bars to the distributors too, he likely can't control the price they choose to sell them for. The bars likely ranged in price from ten bucks to fifty apiece depending on the store (that auction had British aristocrats buying a single case for hundreds of pounds). Assuming the guy who owned the shop Charlie bought the ticket from was a nice guy and didn't try to stick it to the kids in the neighborhood by raising his prices.
    • Wonka could set up a distribution contract: You gouge, you LOSE. Or he might just drop a Great Glass Elevator on them.
    • In the book and the 1970's film, he is a nice guy. When people swarm Charlie and make offers for the ticket, he shields Charlie from them and tells him to run straight home and not give it to anyone, and says he's glad Charlie found it.
    • Charlie lives in the same town as Wonka's factory. Wonka does his own distribution, at least locally. Thus the candy shop would almost certainly not risk annoying Wonka by price gouging. Also, the demand would have died out almost instantly when the 5th (fake) ticket was found.
• What would Willie Wonka have done if he had gotten two or more well-behaved children out of the test? Have them fight to the death?
  • In the book, he said he'd just pick the one he liked the best. And since there was no "YOU LOSE" contract plot device, it'd still be a happy ending. But then you'd have two characters who didn't do anything in the factory and miss out on an extra Oompa Loompa song and some good ol' Dahl Nightmare Fuel.
  • Deathmatch
    • To be precise, Thunderdome.
      • Come on, can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?
    • What, not a Gumballdome or somesuch confection?
  • I'm pretty sure the whole thing was rigged from the start so that only Charlie could win. He only let the other kids in to teach them lessons.
    • Setting up everything so that each kid gets the one specific chocolate bar? That goes way beyond a Gambit Roulette and into insanely impossible. Besides, Charlie bought a random chocolate bar from a random shop at a random time. Got any way to set that up?
      • Willy Wonka was fucking magic.
      • You realize you're talking about the same man who invented a (flawed but still working) teleportation device, an elixir of youth in pill form, exploding confectionery, the everlasting gobstopper, a not-quite-perfect food-in-gum format, a food to regrow hair (also not quite perfect but still)... if Wonka wanted to set something up, Wonka could set something up.
      • What's more, he MEANT the teleporter to be flawed. Hey, hang on, what if Wonka actually had the inventions perfect but modified them to teach the kids a lesson?
      • The chocolate bar was random. The shop was not—there only seems to be one in Charlie's area. And the time was not—Charlie could only get a chocolate bar when he or his family could afford one, which was very rarely, and he could afford that one because someone had dropped cash in the street and left it there. Still Gambit Roulette, at least for that ticket, but maybe worth the risk for Mr. Wonka—especially since Charlie found it the day before the tour. Imagine what would've happened if only the first four tickets had been found in time...
      • He could have got a stooge to plant the winning bars. Maybe even the shopkeeper was in on it. The first film even has his agent on hand to meet the winners with the Secret Test of Character; he must have known where they'd be. And the cover of a phony ticket, conveniently exposed as a fake just as Charlie found his.
      • In the Gene Wilder movie, the final ticket's discovery must have been rigged. How else could Slugworth have been in the right place at the right time to tempt Charlie on his way home from finding the ticket? The other kids were already on the news when he approached them, but not Charlie.
        • In the 1971 film, at least, Slugworth/Wilkinson was talking to Veruca within seconds of her grabbing the ticket from the factory worker.
          • Mr. Salt had bought about a million chocolate bars, so Mr. S/W was probably on the alert for Veruca already.
      • Charlie's discovery of the ticket very could have been rigged in the old movie—Charlie didn't pick out the bar that contained the Golden Ticket; the store owner (Bill) picked it out for him and said "Why not try a regular Wonka bar this time?" (The first bar Charlie bought was a Scrumdiddlyumptious.) Therefore, Bill could have been in cahoots with Wonka and Wilkinson to make sure Charlie bought the bar—one of them might have even planted the money for him to find in front of the store.
  • Presumably he would have extended the tour until one of them did something wrong. Or he could have had them both/all be his apprentices and heirs (after all, a company can be run by more than one person), or just chosen one.
  • Also, what would have happened if an adult had gotten one of the tickets?
    • He'd find a child to take with him. The tickets were transferable—that's why Veruca Salt had one.
      • What if a childless adult found one?
        • Oh come on. Adults are worse than children when it comes to things like magic. Children accept that magic explains all the strange things going on. Most adults go out of their way to find out how card tricks work, never mind apparent "real" magic. They'd have gotten themselves into trouble long before they came close to the end of the tour.
        • That may be, but adults can spell the word "lawsuit."
      • Okay, now I'm wondering if the "forgery" of the fifth ticket wasn't a hoax, after all! If the genuine fifth ticket had fallen into the hands of an adult criminal, via bad luck or botched delivery, then Wonka might've had it declared a fake to ensure he'd only have kids to deal with.
  • It's pretty obvious the chocolate bars with tickets were planted considering his right-hand man Slugworth always happened to be near the child discovering the golden ticket. Coincidence? I think not.
    • My answer is that the bars with the tickets are sent out randomly, but Wonka has some kind of satellite tracking them, possibly via some fictitious element in the paper he created. The fake Slugworth shows up at the factory because he's noticed that its been there for several days unreported, so he arrives in time for it being opened. He shows up at the store near Charlie's because it's the last one left.
    • Slugworth appearing near all the children after they find the tickets doesn't necessarily mean the bars were planted (or tracked). Augustus, Mike and Violet all heard from Slugworth during their post-ticket-finding televised interviews, so Sluggy had plenty of time to get into position in those three cases. With Charlie, Wonka's factory is right near Charlie's home after all, it's not totally unfeasible that news would have spread to one of Wonka's employees who could have cut Charlie off before he got home (or perhaps Slugworth just happened to be in Charlie's way purely by chance, since they probably live in the same town). Veruca is the hardest one to explain, but her father probably did at that point have the largest private collection of Wonka bars in the world, so Slugworth might have just spent his down time hanging around the factory, awaiting the inevitable; and, since we don't know where exactly Wonka's factory is, Mr. Salt's might not be very far away, either.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: Since we don't know how big the factory is, Wonka could have kept the tour going as long as necessary.
    • In the sequel book, Wonka reveals to Charlie that he only showed him a fraction of the factory with the other naughty children and that it will take 3 weeks to cover the entirety of it. Make what you will of that.
  • It's kind of shown how he planned it all in the 2005 film. Think about it, each kid's behavior was showcased during their television interview. No doubt Wonka would watch each newscast to see who is coming to his factory. He could tell that Augustus was a glutton, Violet was overly-competitive, Mike was arrogant and Veruca was greedy. It's too easy then to test them based on this if even in public eyes they exhibit this behavior.

• On a related note, what was Wonka planning to do if all the children were rotten?
  • Kill'Em All, determine which parts of each child he felt were the cause of their particular trespass, and sew a flesh golem out of the remaining parts, using a fraction of a drop of Wonka-Vite to de-age them all to before they died and use the remaining, perfect, potentially unaging child to train as his successor. That, or mope around until he got another idea or decided to hold a new version of the Golden Ticket contest.
    • You sir, should write the Horror Movie version of the Chocolate Factory.
• How is Wonka not the most hated man in town? Think about it. First, opens a big factory providing lots of people with jobs. Then, he shuts it down, leaving all those people without jobs. Then, a few years later, he reopens the factory, but none of the former workers gets their job back. When he gives the tour, he tells everyone how he smuggled a bunch of immigrants over to work for him. I don't see any of the laid-off former workers caring whether Oompa Loompas have the proper documentation or not. And if the Johnny Depp movie is to be believed, Wonka was also responsible, in part, for a big lay-off at the toothpaste factory.
  • • When did that happen in the Burton film?
      • All the people eating more candy made them brush their teeth more. They bought more toothpaste and Mr. Bucket's job was replaced by a robot. It's in the movie.
  • Ask Steven Jobs. He probably has some haters, but he is bloody freaking rich and immeasurably brilliant.
  • Probably because the chocolate is Just. That. Good. Or possibly contains euphoriants.
    • Doesn't most chocolate? I seem to recall that chocolate can give the same sensation as love.
  • The Depp movie is not to be believed in book continuity...
  • Also, in the book, the layoff happened a long time ago. It could be that most of the people who remember it clearly in that town have died off or moved away.
    • This makes sense considering that Grandpa Joe, now in his 80's, worked there. Of course, that leads to Just Bugs Me that Willy Wonka doesn't seem to be in HIS 80's (or at least 60's.)
    • Wonka does outright state near the end that he is considerably older than he looks.
      • ^ I believe I recall the actor who played Wonka saying the point of him being agile at his first appearance was meant to be surprising, as he should be an old man.
    • I'm sure Wonka is quite capable of inventing candy that delays the aging process, and using it for his own benefit.
      • In the second book, there actually IS candy that makes you younger, called Wonka-Vite. There is also candy that makes you older, which is called Vita-Wonk. Presumably Wonka has been taking Wonka-Vite?
        • No, Mr. Wonka explicitly says that Wonka-Vite was much too important to waste on himself. Besides, if he did take it, we'd have no story, now would we?
          • Actually if you read into the Great Glass Elevator, perhaps he did take it but doesn't want to live forever.
  • Weren't there spies? You might as well play safe and not have any spies.
• How did Willy Wonka prevent health and safety inspectors from coming into the factory, since it's stated that no one has come into the factory in years?
  • You're reading way too much into a children's book. The United States is run by someone's Nanny in the same continuity.
    • Except that Wonka's factory is in Britain.
  • Easy. Let them in once, give them everlasting gobstoppers, and tell them to come back only when the candy was completely eaten.
    • But hasn't he just recently invented the Gobstoppers around the time he holds the tour?
  • Probably bribes. Wonka seems the type to pull that off.
• Mike running into the teleporter seems completely out of character. I know, we never actually got to see much of his character beyond "obsessed with TV and guns", but he'd clearly been shown to be quite intelligent. You'd think he would stop to think before running into a teleport machine that makes things smaller. Also, I can't help but feel that he'd have been better off if they'd left him as a tiny person (it's made worse by the fact that in the book his mother thanks Wonka when he says he can get him back to normal size). At least he'd have been able to fit in his house then.
  • In the RD book and Wilder movie, I think Mike just got overexcited about appearing on television (or doing some sort of out-of-world activity) and forgot about the fact the teleporter shrinks people. In the Depp movie, Mike is somewhat of a smart-alec and thinks he knows more than the average person. His ego drives him to subject himself to the teleporter. (said Mike to his father before he teleported himself, "You think [Wonka]'s a genius, but he's an idiot. But I'm not.")
    • I don't think so, I mean it makes sense for the first movie and the book, but Mike in the Depp movie seemed to be too intelligent, calculating, and aloof to fall for something like that. Not the type to just jump into something like the others. Especially when you consider how he got the bar (by taking the time to crack the code and buy one bar), in contrast to the other children [bar Charlie] who bought as much as they could. Jumping into the teleporter seems like Violet would have done had she not have gotten the gum.
    • It seemed to me, that he wanted to prove it was "just a trick"

• Wonkavision- Assuming Wonka can magically teleport tangible chocolate to your TV, and isn't selling you some kind of device to do it, how does he expect to make any profit when millions of people just need to wait for his commercials to get free Wonka bars?
  • I'm sure Wonka has a method of limiting the amount of bars to use as samples (like how some supermarket vendors offer people food samples). Perhaps the ads are limited to once a month or so. Also, he probably does not use Wonkavision for every single one of his products. For example, I doubt that Everlasting Gobstoppers will ever appear on Wonkavision.
    • It gets worse. What if people with DVR could simply rewind the commercial as much as they want for the candy bars to keep popping out?
• Is anyone else worried that Wonka may have damaged or even destroyed the food chain of Loompaland?
  • How? He took a few hundred humans (and in the 1970s movie, about six).
    • The reason he took them was because they were the food source of other species.
    • There's a trope there. You're supposed to assume that Predators Are Mean. The OP has a valid point!
    • The OP is a sociopath who apparently cares more about preserving the integrity of a jungle ecosystem than about preserving the lives of sentient beings.
  • "That horrible horrible man! How dare he take all these midget hippies away from a place apparently designed to make them miserable before killing them!" Yeah, sure.
  • Some species don't eat just one thing, it's possible that they have other food sources
• Mike's fate in general. It's hard to explain my problem, but I'll try. All the other kids brought their fates upon themselves, and Wonka cured them as best he could; Violet, for instance, was purple as an aftereffect of being a blueberry, and there was nothing they could do to get her regular colouring back. But Mike... how can you overstretch someone by like six feet? Why couldn't Dahl just have had him walking out looking ridiculously thin? Seriously, I can't believe the oompa loompas overstretched him by accident.
  • Taffy pullers are hardly gentle nor precise, as I remember.
• Shouldn't the Oompah-Loompahs hate Wonka by now? I mean in the book, it says that one was forced to suck on candy for over a year (and still is), another had his hair grow out so fast that they needed to cut with a lawnmower, another probably floated into space...not to mention all the ones that got turned into blueberries testing out his gum, yet they love him. I know they're getting paid with their favorite food, but that doesn't seem like enough for the kind of abuse they're taking. Why don't they leave or go on strike or something?
  • I'm not sure about the sucking on candy, but the rest were through their own fault presumably knowing the risks and Wonka even warned against the one that became like Violet.
  • In Violet's case, she took it when she wasn't supposed to. The Oompa Loompas are supposed to and test out Wonka's candy for him on a regular basis. Even if they're given informed consent, forcing your illegal-immigrant scab-workers to taste potentially-deadly candy to see if it's safe has some weird implications, Mr. Wonka.
    • This Troper believes Wonka was testing the children and intentionally made the candy flawed. Come on, this guy made the elixir of life, flew into space on a magic elevator and built a teleporter. Methinks it would be a doddle to make a blueness-antidote.
• Why wasn´t the girl a competetive athlete and chewed bubblegum? Wasn´t it as widespread of a concept to have the children of a wannabe-sportler being grown up to train in a specific sport or of a wannabe-musician to teach their kid piano, or did the author just happen to hate bubblegum?
  • Huh?
    • I'm pretty sure the OP is asking "Why wasn't Violet a competitive gum-chewer, especially considering her father was such a sport-enthusiast.
  • OP, I think there's a very important point you're missing: The children correspond to a Deadly Sin. Augustus Gloop represents Sloth, Violet Beauregard represents Pride, Veruca Salt represents Greed, and Mike Teavee represents Wrath (in the Burton version, at any rate; in the Wilder version he seems to be an even mix of Wrath and Pride). Bubblegum chewing is a character flaw, nothing more.
    • I'm pretty sure Augustus represented Gluttony. He's not lazy, he's a pig.
    • Yeah, Augustus is definitely Gluttony. I would also submit that Mike could be an example of Sloth, even in the 70's version (hear me out). Sloth doesn't necessarily mean laziness, although that is certainly the most common form, but rather that you are wasting your talents and time on trivial matters. In all the versions, Mike is someone who has devoted his existence to television (and videogames in the latest film) which we are certainly meant to see as an unworthy use of his time. In the newest film, the point is driven home much more forcefully by having him be smart enough to crack Wonka's worldwide candy bar placement algorithm and yet all he does all day is play videogames and watch TV.
    • Making Willy Wonka the devil, the chocolate factory into hell and Charlie into the antichrist.

• That goddamn tunnel scene. Seriously, what the hell was up with that?
• Willy Wonka shuts down his factory because he's sick of spies stealing all of his ideas. Why can't he just patent his invetions? Then it won't matter how many recipes his rivals steal because they won't legally be allowed to sell them. Closing down his factory seems a little drastic in light of a much simpler solution.
  • Wonka is probably too insane to give his formulas to a patent office and let a bunch of grown-ups see them.
  • A patent can only go so far. You can patent the first design for a cell phone, but then other people can go make their own cell phones. His rivals might have to make slightly different recipes, but a patent wouldn't give him a monopoly on the candies he invented.
  • In order to patent something, you have to reveal how it works, and the patent only lasts 20 years. After it expires, any one can then copy it. If you want a permenant monopoly on a recipe, you can't patent it - you need to keep it a secret, and hope no-one manages to find it out (and none of your workers leaks it).
• If Wonka could make ice cream that never melted, why couldn't he make chocolate that never melts, especially when he made the chocolate palace?
  • The chocolate palace incident was mentioned to have taken place a long time ago. Quite possible befory the business with the unmelting ice cream started.
• The boat scene. I usually read that the one in the 2005 film was so much sacrier than the first and I just need to ask, why? The first one had a lot a creepy images in a tunnel that was pretty dark. If I remember correctly, the 2005 film had a boat basically go on a rapids ride through a well lit tunnel. Can someone please tell me what was so terrifying about that?

• I watched a DVD of a middle-school production of Willy Wonka Junior last night. In that version, Charlie faced temptation in the room with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. At the end of the play, Wonka told Charlie that even though he failed to resist sneaking a drink, he still won the factory by admitting his mistake, and even offering to make up for it by declining the lifetime supply of chocolate. If Charlie just decided not to take the drink at all, how would Wonka know that he passed his test?
  • Process of elimination, same as in the book.
    • I don't think so. In the Wilder movie, resisting the candy temptations weren't the real test. The real test was giving back the Gobstopper, and that's what made Charlie a winner. If he'd kept it, Lifting Drinks or not, Wonka probably would've either run the contest all over again or figure out something else.

Book

• When reading the book I got a nasty "don't have independent thought, or question things" especially when Willy Wonka says outright he chose a child for an heir over an adult because a child wouldn't change things. None of Dahl's other books have advocated this (hell Matilda celebrates the opposite). So I'm left confused, and I'm also bothered by how I've never seen this picked up on.
  • I got the same sort of vibe, but later figured it's not so much independent thought as it is a life philosophy. When you become an adult, you have your own idea of how the world should work and that's very difficult to change. Many adults are actually incapable of considering doing something different—sure they have their reasons based on life experiences, but they will poo-poo questions. Wonka wants to prevent two things: One is to have to live forever to see his candy continue to be produced, and the other is to make sure his philosophy for candy making is carried on, but allowed to mutate in another child's imagination. Thus it won't be destroyed by being contaminated by an adult's "That won't work" but gain new life by a child's "Why not?".
  • Maybe R. Dahl thought this was different because Wonka himself was very much nonconventional—you know, in the way some nonconformists feel they can look exactly like each other and still not conform. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of R. Dahl's early children's books; Matilda was the last one he completed, about twenty-five years later. Much room for authorial change in that time.
  • Might not so much be an Aesop as that Wonka saw himself as identifying more with children than with adults, and a child would be more likely to continue doing things the way he did.
  • Personally, this troper believes that Wonka meant a child wouldn't change the "atmosphere" of the factory. Think about it: Wonka is mainly Doing It for the Art, something that no sane adult businessman would do. Considering how Dahl normally portrays adults in his stories, an adult would probably have turned the factory into a soulless corporation that makes sweets in the cheapest, most generic way possible.
  • If things were changed, the candy would be different, and probably not as high in quality, which would presumably affect sales, so the heir would owe it to their own success to do things Wonka's way. After all, mixing chocolocate by waterfall is the only way to get it just right.
• In the sequel- which is set in the 1970s, as the characters mention- they're building a space hotel, and ordinary people are going to stay there. Um, how are they going to get there? Send the guests up three at a time in Apollo capsules?
  • That is what the Great Glass Elevators are used for.
  • Perhaps we should assume space travel is more advanced in their world. In reality we don't even have space hotels...well not smart ones like in the book anyway.
  • A lot of people in the 1960s assumed that space flight technology would keep right on developing, and did not foresee the long periods of stagnation we've seen since. If they'd been right, it would have been at least possible to get tourists into a space hotel using reusable SSTOs or something by the late '70s or early '80s. Tickets might have been a hundred thousand dollars a person or more, but it would have been possible.
  • The ship they sent the staff up on had 150 people on board.