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!
 * "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.

1971 film
"So it seems that Wonka would have been doomed to repeat history if it hadn't been for those fortunate belches. Unless there's a scenario I missed..."
 * In the Gene Wilder film Wonka tells Charlie and Grandpa Joe that Slugworth in fact works for him. So why did Wonka make Slugworth one of his rivals to the point his business ended up in jeopardy?
 * Fake Slugworth. The real one is presumably busy.
 * His name is Mr. Wilkinson! Slugworth is a completely different person whose identity Wonka has usurped for the purposes of this test. Did nobody get that?
 * I was under the impression Slugworth was just an identity Wonka invented for Mr. Wilkinson, not an usurped one, hence my confusion.
 * No no no. Slugworth is another candy maker. Where do you think Slugworth Sizzlers come from?
 * Grandpa Joe can walk, right? As evident in his climbing out of the bed and standing up and finally dancing merrily about the room in minutes. So why did this man let himself be a burden on Charlie and his mother who are already living well below poverty level. I can understand the other elders as they're probably sick/crippled. But this guy? I thought he was being an ass when I first watch him slowly get up.
 * There's also the issue that if he did spend so many years in bed pretending to be ill, his muscles would have atrophied to the point that he really couldn't walk anymore.
 * He just wasn't inspired emough to walk. He was old and sickly and frail, and had to really get up the gumption to get over being eighty-six (or was it ninety-six?) years old with twenty years of atrophy under his belt, and posibly a history of The Polio.
 * Actually, I'm going to posit parkinsonism. Oliver Sacks talks about it some in Awakenings and also in Musicophilia: strong emotions can sometimes shake patients out of it temporarily. For reals.
 * As a side note, everywhere else he merrily jumped out of bed right away. I can chalk that off as being hilarious but...
 * Actually... he didn't magically hop out of bed, it took him a while (and falling on top of Charle) before he really got his second-wind.
 * In the book, he did.
 * The mother's song: "Be grateful for what you have." in her Cheer Up Charlie song. I didn't get that. Just what does Charlie have? Oh sure, a home and a mother and three elders that do absolutely nothing worth dick but lay there on the bed. Other than that, he's almost to Oliver Twist poverty level. >____>
 * The song was more about being grateful for being himself (i.e. an great kid), and that things will get better for him (even though they're shit now) because of his merits.
 * Wasn't it about being grateful for a loving family and [pauses] Erm...
 * There's no closure as to what happens to Agustus, Violet, Veruca and Mike. Where did they go? Were they okay? Did they get to go home? I'm pretty sure the book explains that they got sent home with huge supplies of chocolate, but nothing is said about them in the movie after their big misdeeds. When I was a child I was completely sure they'd all been killed, which terrified me no end.
 * In one of the final scenes (either in Wonka's office or the glass elevator) Wonka explains to Charlie and Grandpa Joe that all the other children will be restored to their original selves (I believe "old, terrible selves" is how he words it), but that they are hopefully now a little wiser. It's a little bit throwaway, but it's in there.
 * If anything, the book is even * more* Nightmare Fuelish than the Gene Wilder movie. The book explicitly shows the other kids survived, but with "reminders" of their misbehavior. Augustus is thin as a rail from being squeezed through the pipes, Violet is purple, Veruca is covered in garbage, and Mike is a 10-foot giant (the end result of being put through a taffy puller to de-shrink him). Personally I thought the movie's ending was a lot better.
 * Why the hell did they add the scene where Charlie and Grandpa Joe drink the fizzy-lifting soda? Surely the whole point is that Charlie's the only well behaved kid? It also makes Joe out to be a complete jerk.
 * Because otherwise Charlie comes off as a Marty Stu. He learns from his mistake.
 * Exactly. The real test wasn't whether the kids could keep their hands to themselves, it was whether they would do the right thing and keep Wonka's secret, or betray his confidence? Which makes much more sense than the premise of the book.
 * That, incidentally, was one of the biggest problems with the Depp remake.
 * Plus, they needed something for Wonka to yell at them about at the end for the final test. If Charlie didn't do anything, Wonka couldn't pretend to get angry with him and deny him the prize.
 * It also adds a more realistic moral to the story. It's impossible to never make any mistakes, but the real test in the film version is whether Charlie can get himself out of the mess he made, and then whether he's honest and humble enough to admit he was wrong, even when he seems to have an opportunity for revenge. The other kids could have done that too, but they not only couldn't resist their temptations, they also couldn't figure out how to save themselves, and then they kept blaming Wonka, their parents and everyone else even as they were getting carted off for treatment.
 * Also, many people are being too hard on Grandpa Joe. Remember this man has been confined to a bed for a long time. In many ways he's as child-like as Wonka. Can you imagine what kind of mischief Wonka would get into if he'd been bedridden for so long and now had the strenght to walk again? He'd get into all kinds of trouble, and when he got caught he'd naturally throw a tantrum.
 * Incidentally, why did they change Veruca's test from squirrels to golden geese? Not only do the geese not make sense, they've displaced the squirrels to the extent that I overheard at least four people watching cry, 'Where are the geese?' Grr- hate people who don't read!
 * Possibly an allusion to "The Goose that laid the golden egg?"
 * I heard it was an animal training problem. They couldn't get squirrels to act as directed, whereas geese, who lay eggs and are associated with the Golden Egg myth as mentioned, can easily be trained to just sit there.
 * I'm not so sure about that, since the film didn't use real geese anyway. They were puppets.
 * Maybe geese were easier to fake convincingly, then?
 * It was almost certainly because of how difficult it would be to use squirrels. If they stayed with squirrels they would have had to make dozens of fake animals that could run across the floor and tap on Veruca's head and then carry her off. Geese require a few large puppets that shift from side to side with some sound effects dubbed in. A lot easier to accomplish especially since CGI wasn't around.
 * What would have happened if Charlie and Grandpa Joe hadn't burped in time? Presumably, they would have been killed by the fan, which of course would have eliminated Charlie from the running, leaving Veruca and Mike. Veruca would then do her "I want it now" bit and fall down the chute, leaving just Mike. We see at the end of the film that (unlike in the book) Charlie didn't win the factory by default just by being the last one standing, so presumably Mike wouldn't either. So what would happen then? I can think of two possible scenarios:
 * Wonka would continue the tour onto the Television Chocolate Room with just Mike and his mother left. Mike would then pull his television stunt and be eliminated, meaning no one would be left. Wonka would either have to choose an heir another way, or hold the Golden Ticket contest all over again.
 * Wonka would end the tour when there was just one child left, just like in the version we're shown. Being one of the "bad kids," Mike in all likelihood wouldn't get his lifetime supply of chocolate. (Wonka would probably use his theft of the Exploding Candy in the inventing room as the justification for denying him the prize.) Mike doesn't seem to have a conscience like Charlie, so he probably wouldn't return the Everlasting Gobstopper. He would probably go and give to to "Slugworth." But since "Slugworth" actually worked for Wonka, he wouldn't give Mike money for it--maybe he'd just pretend he didn't want it anymore, I don't know. Just like in the above scenario, Wonka would have to find an heir another way, or repeat the contest.


 * The belching was an homage to the book. An old Oompa Loompa refuses to belch, drinks it outside, and never comes back.
 * Are you sure that Charlie doesn't win by default? Because my interpretation had always been that he did. At first, Wonka kicks him out and says he doesn't get any chocolate because of the soda incident. Then, when Grandpa Joe comes back to yell at Wonka for raising and then dashing Charlie's hopes, Wonka is reading something and muttering to himself. It's only after that that he tells Charlie he "won." I assumed that Wonka was re-reading the contract and noticed that it said something about how if none of the kids truly passed his test, the factory would go to the one who came the closest.
 * You obviously missed the part where Charlie goes in and gives Wonka the Everlasting Gobstopper back to Wonka, proving that he was a good kid at heart, even though he had made a mistake by drinking the Fizzy Lifting Drink.
 * Add to that Wonka was reciting poetry. I believe the words were about how bright one act of kindness can be in a world of darkness, meaning giving back the gobstopper, not trying to sell for profit despite his family's need for money is a selfless act beyond compare.
 * It's been explained that the Slugworth plot was put in to give a more realistic moral to the story, about learning from your mistakes. But from what I can see, it only makes things more unfair on the other kids. Yes, it was made pretty clear that Violet, Veruca and Mike intended to give him the gobstopper... but they never got a chance to give it back to Wonka. The only reason Charlie could was because his mistake hadn't got him killed, or at least taken away by the Oompa Loompas. Surely they all should have been given a chance to speak to Wonka before they left? And Augustus never even got a gobstopper! It just seems unfair that only Charlie actually got a chance to redeem himself.
 * To be fair, the only reason they 'never got a chance' to return the gobstopper was because their own greed and character flaws (and refusal to acknowledge them) got them into trouble before they could. Of course, off-camera they could have been discovered with or refused to own up to stealing the gobstoppers, but in essence, they denied themselves their own chance at redemption. No one else is to blame but them.
 * Little Charlie had to buy his Wonka Bar, but during The Candy Man song the start of the movie the shop owner was seemingly throwing away free candy to the kids, even letting them behind the counter to grab whatever they want? I doubt he could keep track of what they all owed him afterwards.
 * Yeah, I didn't get that. Might be in the clause of "Musical Numbers Don't Really Happen." It was common joke among this troper's family why he wouldn't just go in and grab a couple of candybars. The assumption being that the Candyman who owns the shop is in cahoots with the local dentist who gives him a share of his cavity profits. More money then 2-dollar chocolate bars.
 * Although that was before the Wonka Bar promotion kicked in. Presumably he clamped down on the free chocolate musical numbers after that point.
 * He knew each of those children personally by name ("A Triple Cream Cup for Christopher. A Sizzler for June Marie..."). Even as a child I presumed that he had some sort of periodic fee set up. Every day you get one candy bar of your choice. All that other candy given out was during the musical number, and really didn't happen. Charlie was not known to Bill the Candy Shop Owner, so he had to pay up front for his candy.
 * I assumed that the song was symbolic: the candy man wasn't actually giving sweets away, we were just seeing the scene through Charlie, for whom being able to afford a bar of chocolate after school every day is practically the same luxury as being able to eat all the candy in the store for free.
 * I always thought it was because candy was a lot cheeper back then. Charlie gives him a coin and gets two candy bars from it. It's not too hard to believe the kids just hand him a dollar or two at some point.
 * Love the movie, but where is it set? It was filmed in Germany, the book was set in Britain, and the actors mostly seem American. Is it just some amalgamation of the three, because that's what it feels like to me most of the time.
 * The movie seems to be set in America, based on the news reports we see. The news reports clearly come out of the U.S., based on the fact that the first golden ticket was found "while we in America slept" and the second was found "right here in America." So unless we assume that Charlie and his family live in England but watch American news, it seems likely that it is set in some American town with a serious English/German influence. Perhaps in Pennsylvania somewhere.
 * A bit of trivia is that the film-makers deliberately kept the country where the factory is located vague. "Slugworth" presents the money as "of these." Not stating if they are pounds or dollars.
 * How did Grandpa Joe manage to smuggle in chocolate bars for Charlie if none of the grandparents have been out of bed in 20 years?

2005 film
"Well why would I want to teleport a person? They don't taste very good at all!"
 * This is more to the Tim Burton version, but was the kid who played Mike Teevee chosen simply because he was repulsive-looking and it added to his character? Not to mention he's a know-it-all dipshit who Jack Thompson would use as his Exhibit #1 if he could still be a lawyer.
 * In the books, Dahl made the other children have flaws that he considered not good for children. Some of them were good (Veruca being spoiled, Augustus being so greedy, etc), but then some of them were flaws that were annoying at the most (Violet's gum chewing, Mike's tv obsession, etc). If they tried to have a child punished for chewing gum or watching tv today, audiences would probably think it was unfair or unbelieveable, so they made those children more intolerable than their book counterparts. In Violet's case, she was ruthlessly competetitive to the point of being outright nasty. In Mike's case, his obsessive tv watching made him violent, edgy, and out-of-touch with his father.
 * If you look at the red carpet pictures, the kid was actually pretty cute when he wasn't making the Mr. Grumpypants face.
 * This is sort of specific to the Tim Burton version, but...Mike Teevee's "exit song" chides him for becoming mindless due to watching television, with lyrics such as "He does not think, he only sees!" However, Teevee's flaw in the Burton film is that he seems a bit too smart for his own good. What gives?
 * The exit song was transferred word-for-word from the original book. Mike Teavee's character was not.
 * It could be seen as Mike 'saw' that he could use the thing as a teleporter but didn't 'think' further than that.
 * Playing video games (on a console, and hence on a television) has given him a false sense of invulnerability, so he doesn't appreciate the consequences of turning himself three inches tall through a one-way teleporter.
 * It doesn't make sense to portray Tv-obsession as being a hideous flaw when your target market is children who have been raised on 24-hour TV and movies. They changed the character of Mike to be more relevant to today, and either forgot to change the song or decided people would interpret it in relation to the character. Considering the ending, they seem to be working on the assumption people haven't read the book, so might either not notice.
 * The idea seems to be not that TV is bad or he's too smart but rather that his limited knowledge and lack of experience is a bad thing to have combined with arrogance. Yes, TV can teach you a lot of things... but it's not good to rely solely on it to teach you everything or assume that it's the one true holder of all useful knowledge. Similarly, his flaw was that his smarmy knowledge did not actually allow him to learn. He'd lost a sense of wonder and curiousity - he wanted to be told, not taught.
 * Like was mentioned earlier, if you consider how Mike calculated the "code" to only purchase one wonka bar which contained the ticket (instead of buying as much as he could like the others) it would have been more in character if he at least tried to figure out how the "teleporter" worked in more depth than Wonka's demostration. Not only that but I would assume with all the Nightmare Fuel-filled videogames and television he's implied to see, he'd be more wiser than to jump into a teleporter that hasn't been tested.
 * Is the Tim Burton version set in Britain or America? Charlie's family is British, but they all use American grammar and slang. Willy Wonka is American, but his origin story is British, and everyone eats candy... I can't remember what currency they use.
 * Artistic combination of both, I think, so it can appeal to either side of the pond.
 * Carried over from the book, which used British idioms and yet Charlie found a dollar...
 * This troper never noticed this until he read this. (Facepalm)
 * It's not actually wrong -- "dollar" was slang for the British coin called a crown, or five-shilling piece, worth one quarter of a pound. The slang expression originated in the 19th century, fell into disuse, and was then revived during WWII by the presence of US troops in the UK and the fact that a US dollar was worth about five shillings at the time. The book was written in 1964 and the UK didn't move to decimal currency until 1971, so Charlie probably found a crown/five-shilling piece.
 * In my version, Grandpa Joe gives him sixpence, and then later he finds a fifty pence piece. This places the book at a post-1971 date. Although sixpences are pre-decimal, and 50p is decimal, people still used sixpences for a time as 2 1/2 new pence.
 * In the second book when one of the grandmothers regresses backwards through her life the historical events she remembers - the major one is the death of Abraham Lincoln - seem to imply they're in America. It confused this (British) troper no end as a kid.
 * To be fair, I'm sure that even in Victorian Britain the news of the assassination of the President of the United States would make it across the ocean eventually.
 * Nope: I've checked the book and the events described are definitely from an American perspective, starting from crossing on the Mayflower, the War of Independence (with reference to "the dirty British"), the Civil War and then the death of Lincoln.
 * I'm pretty sure the 2005 film was set in America. My reasoning for this is because when Charlie finds the last golden ticket, two people approach him and offer him 50 dollars and 500 dollars, respectively. I would guess that there are just a lot of British immigrants in the town they live in.
 * The older film also is vague in this regard, which is addressed by Neil Patrick Harris in the Rifftrax. "Maybe this takes place before the American Revolution."
 * Maybe it makes sense in context, but it's about a chocolate factory and features television news prominently. Did pre-revolutionary Britain, or America use...? no. I'm completely stumped.
 * That's the point. It's Rifftrax. Neil was making a joke.
 * This troper always saw the characters (all of them) as being intentionally vague as to where they came from, to let the reader feel like they could possibly be one of the characters.
 * Perhaps Charlie grew up in a community of recent American immigrants to Great Britain, or vice versa. Ethnic neighborhoods are common on both sides of the Pond.
 * He'd still speak American English or a mid-Atlantic sound.
 * This troper assumes that Charlie (in the book and movies) was from an imaginary country in North America that had some British influence.
 * ...Canada?
 * When Violet becomes a blueberry, how come her clothes didn't split from the strain?
 * Probably because people would complain if the movie showed an expanding naked girl. Or maybe the gum makes your clothes expand too, since it's supposed to be magical.
 * Her clothes are made from the same stuff The Incredible Hulk buys.
 * You can see the juice soaking into her clothes, so presumably that's how the transformation also affected the clothes.
 * Probably the same reason her skin didn't rip open.
 * A lot of people complain that Depp's interpretation of Willy Wonka seemed to just be a Michael Jackson charicature, which really bugs me because Michael Jackson loved children and Willy Wonka, in every incarnation of the story, very obviously hates children.
 * I think one reason for that was the general appearance of Depp's Wonka (IIRC he had quite pale skin, like Jackson's) and the idea that that man is interacting with children. And people will never let facts get in the way of making fun of something.
 * Depp's Wonka also has a completely different hair color/haircut.
 * Since when did Wonka hate children? He specificly wants a child to take over the factory because of their enthusiasm and innocence. He loves children, but I love cake and will still throw out a stale, fungus covered cake. I will hate it all the more because I know what a wonderful cake it might have been. Wonka is the same with kids, spoiled, greedy, idiotic kids are all the worse because he knows what well raised and well cared for children can be so good.
 * Err, no. He's cold toward all five children (apart from Charlie later on). Remember his line describing what a veruca was in the book and the 2005 movie? Or his sarcastic deadpan plea for the police in the 1971 movie? He wanted an heir to carry on his legacy, and he decided on a child who still has innocence. Nothing implied, at least in the 2005 movie, that he adored children.
 * The reason he's cold to the other four from the start is because he's most likely already seen their worst sides in their TV interviews. The closest he gets with Charlie, in the Depp version, is his first line to Grandpa Joe when he briefly suspects him of being one a former spy.
 * So, uh, why the hell didn't either Charlie or Mike, who both were small enough to fit though the gate as Veruca did, do a damn thing to save her? Sure, she was a huge ass, but still.
 * Maybe because they spent a few seconds in shock first. Then when they got out of it, she was already down the chute.
 * Would you run down into the midst of a bunch of apparently intelligent, acting-rabid squirrels to save some witchy girl who stupidly put herself into that position whom you didn't even like? No thanks, I like my knees very much where they are.
 * This is because both Mike and Charlie as psychologically ready for a zombie apocalypse. Think about it.
 * Why didn't her father just climb over the gate? Oh, no, Mister Wonka has to open the gate first...
 * Maybe they were to initially shocked by the sheer what the fuckery of what was going on before their eyes; because hey wouldn't you be.
 * I honestly think they were being Genre Savvy. Think about it. If they ran down to save this witchy girl, she might have just pulled them into the mess while she escaped and not bothered going back to save them.
 * Also, while Charlie is a good kid and might've tried it if it wasn't so dangerous, Mike was never gonna risk his neck for her.
 * Marilyn Manson reportedly said, "If anyone were ever to remake Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I would audition for Willy in a heartbeat," which makes me think he thinks Willy Wonka's meant to be evil... demonic even, in reference to the boat ride in the Gene Wilder version, but, if you dig just a tiny bit, you might realize that the whole factory is a metaphor for heaven (particularly for children). So, Marilyn would've been woefully miscast...
 * So Willy Wonka is God... you know that could explain so much about both the story and reality.
 * Marilyn Manson said in an interview, "I see Willy Wonka as Satan because he presents people with the temptation of picking good and evil, and they all pick evil."
 * In the Gene Wilder version, sure, they all let temptation take them. However, Mister Dahl reputedly hated the Gene Wilder version, thus why it's called "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" instead of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". In part, I presume this is because, in the book, Charlie never gave in to temptation. He was a pure soul, and thus, allowed to enter 'heaven', ruling alongside 'God'... so, mister Manson there got it wrong anyway.
 * Not true. Dahl did hate the movie (reportedly he refused to ever see it in it's entirety, and would immediately change the channel if he ever caught sight of it on tv) because the initial screenplay he wrote was massively re-written by David Seltzer. But that isn't the reason for the name change. The movie was renamed "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" because the Vietnam War was still in full swing at the time, so the name "Charlie" would have had...UnfortunateImplications.
 * Actually, the interview in the "Willy Wonka" special features said that they changed the name because they wanted the movie to better promote the Wonka Bars that were being produced at the time. The candy had a flawed recipe and had to be pulled pretty quick, though...
 * I don't know why people automatically assume Manson (or Satan, for that matter) is "evil". Has he ever actually done anything wrong? I think he wanted to play Wonka, because he wanted to have fun.
 * Very true; despite appearances, he is a very well spoken, very intelligent, very kind and empathetic individual. This is a guy who managed to get Bill Maher to shut up with his eloquence and in the wake of the Columbine shootings where people blamed his music, stated to someone who tried to ask him about it that he did not want to talk about it because he did not want to make the shooters any more famous than they already were and that people should be focusing on the tragedy of the victims not the glamorization of the shooters. He likely would have been a different but appropriate sort of Wonka.
 * I think being a High Priest in the Orthodoxy of Satan would kinda get some raised eyebrows. As well as the burning and shredding of Bibles onstage...and allowing your drummer to stick a puppy in his bass drum, pull it out halfway through dead from the concussions, and then throw it into the crowd... Sure, Manson's articulate and charismatic, but then so was Ted Bundy...
 * You have to admit, Wonka does have a very mysterious tone to his personality, which is a quality usually reserved for villains. So even if you're correct in assuming Manson thinks Wonka is evil, why would that be a miscast? It's not like, in the end, the story would be any different.
 * Wonka's line in the TV Room:

Am I honestly the only one who is deeply disturbed by the implication of actual cannibalism in that line?
 * Because Wonka admits earlier that everything in the room (including the buttons, though they are not digestible) was "eatable", including himself. However, as he says it is frowned upon in most societies, that likely suggests to viewers that Wonka himself does not promote cannibalism, and they interpret the later comment as a joke rather than yet another clue towards the outright stated fact that Wonka is a horribly deranged man.
 * Oh. Why would he know people don't taste very good at all. Eek. An Oompa-Loompa funereal ritual, maybe? They're pygmy humans in the book and Burton film, and thus would taste pretty much like "normal" people. Except when they taste like blueberry.
 * You can taste something without eating it, you know.
 * He ate Mrs. Lovitt's pies in a alternate universe?
 * For the line you're referring to, Wonka was only thinking about chocolate and couldn't see any non-candy-related applications for the Wonkavision (or probably anything he makes, really). When Mike suggested using it on people, his line of thought was more like, "Why do to people what I do to chocolate?" As for the line in the chocolate room.... I think might've been more bemoaning how you couldn't eat people in most societies, not informing the children of it. That's what it sounded like to me.
 * What was up with that part with the sheep?
 * The implication seems to be that they're the source of Wonka's cotton candy, but if you knew that cotton candy came from sheep, would you ever eat it again?
 * Considering that lamb chops are a fairly popular food...not to mention the whole role of wool in clothing production...
 * But I've never eaten a jumper before.
 * I'm to understand it was a reference to Johnny Depp's previous role a Ed Wood in the film of the same name.
 * To me, it's a reference to an obvious (though typically British) joke about shepherds using their sheep for...um...certain purposes. So basically Wonka keeps them around to...yeah...
 * I thought it was a very sneaky little joke. Cotton candy is also called candy floss. Floss is a type of yarn, and yarn is made form wool.
 * Sneaky? I thought it was a pretty obvious one. Sheep wool looks like cotton candy, his cotton candy is actually the wool from weird sheeps. Simple.
 * The chocolate river is explicitly stated to be "hot melted chocolate of the finest quality." Think about how hot chocolate has to get just to melt, let alone keep such a gooey-but-thin liquid consistency. Surely Augustus should be covered in at least second-degree burns under all that fudge-coating, shouldn't he?
 * What, 45 degrees celsius?
 * Thinking too hard again!
 * What?
 * Why didn't Tim Burton do the 'Tunnel of Hell' scene? He's well known for the freaky shit he puts in his films, and that would've been a perfect time to do it.
 * Because it wasn't in the book.
 * Neither was the dentist subplot, so that argument is invalid.
 * Actually, if anyone paid attention to Burton's repeated explanations that his movie is NOT a remake of the 1971 movie, but "redo" of the book, you would realize that the argument is valid. Why take a scene out of a movie you've already stated is not what you are trying to make? No, the dentist subplot wasn't in the book, but some sort of padding needed to be added. Let's be honest, Dahl's book doesn't have much of a plot after Charlie gets his chocolate. They needed to a conflict and made one. Burton is generally capable of making his own "freaky shit". He doesn't need to copy a non-sequitor like that (damn you TV Tropes, you've made me defend a director I don't even enjoy).
 * I haven't seen the film in a while, but I thought he did (and it was in the book). Not to the deranged lengths the of 1971 film (just... WHY), but the scary tunnel was in the movie.
 * I think Wonka's deranged poetry was in the book too, though.
 * While there is no hell tunnel sequence, Burton's chocolate river boat shoots itself straight the hell down to get to the lower levels of the factory. Still pretty scary, if you ask me...
 * If Tim Burton wanted to do a film adaption that was more like the book, then why did he make Willy Wonka so different? Neither film adaption has Wonka like he is in the book, but at least the 1971 film has Wonka vaguely like the book (he is rather more serene than the excitable book Wonka). 2005 film Wonka, on the other hand, has almost no similarities to the book character.
 * Except that he has several lines and exchanges copied wholesale from the book (admittedly Wilder may have had as well, but I haven't seen his film for a long time). While I'd probably agree that neither are exact to the book, I think Depp is the more faithful.
 * Except Depp's version adds the excessive Man Child aspects to the character, plus the unnecessary boatload of Daddy Issues. I think the Nostalgia Critic said it best when he suggested that the 1971 movie is closer to Wonka's characterisation in the book (but the film becomes more about Charlie), whilst the 2005 film had a closer characterisation for Charlie (and yet became more about Willy Wonka as part of the standard Tim Burton/Johnny Depp thing).
 * What was Mike playing in the 2005 film? Or at least what was it based on? It looked similar to an Atari 7200 however the graphics was more PS 2 or Xbox like.
 * The SchiZtation 9100, which was made by an obscure Ameritish company back in 19exty2. I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it.
 * That company was Nygmatech.
 * Why did the other kids hate Charlie? Why did Violet and Veruca hate each other? Why did Violet and Veruca pretend to be friends?
 * Violet was shown to be very competetive, Veruca was a spoiled brat who probably didn't like the idea that other people were sharing the prize with her. They didn't like each other in the first movie either. As for the rest of it... I don't really know either.
 * The other kids are mean to Charlie because they're the kind of nasty little children who will pick on anyone they see as weaker. None of the kids liked each other, but Violet and Veruca especially disliked each other because they knew who the real competition was for the "special prize." And they pretended to be friends because, like many popular and entitled girls, they understood the concept of keeping one's enemies close.
 * Just gonna come right out and say it: Mike Teevee is more likeable than Charlie. A modern-day audience (especially children in it) are far more likely to identify with him than they are with the relentlessly perfect, naive, and saintly Charlie who seems to be from another time entirely. And the points Mike makes are perfectly valid (beyond the level of lampshade hanging to things that would make the audience go, 'hey, yeah, I want an explanation for this Fridge Logic!); Wonka just comes off as an ass for brushing them off. Is there...some way to JUSTIFY this? Did Burton just fuck up, or what?
 * He's an unsympathetic asshole with borderline Arbitrary Skepticism. Who mumbles. What is likable about him?
 * This troper would have to agree. Even if the more contemporary Mike is a little more relatable to audiences, he's still impatient, snotty, and condescending. He's a little smarter than everyone else, but he's still over-reliant on technology to the point of laziness. This is the underlying flaw the character represents, not just simply an obsession with television or video games.
 * Exactly. Since when did "I relate with this character" automatically mean "I like this character"?
 * Since Mike acts like a real person. Sure, he's a snotty, condescending arse, but frankly the same could be said about Willy Wonka. He's pretty much just a Flanderization of an average stereotypical child. He also happens to have several realistic idiosyncrasies, such as his intelligence and and deadpan snarkery. Charlie, though? Charlie is a Marty Stu. Unlike in the Gene Wilder movie, he has no character flaws. He's optimistic, kind, good to his family, unfailingly cheerful, and he never screws up or gets angry. Everyone heralds him as the only decent child in the story, not for doing something brave or clever or heroic, but for doing literally nothing the entire movie. He is rewarded for not questioning anything and staying in his proper place. And that is far more obnoxious than some smarmy kid who plays video games a lot.
 * Why was the father of the spoiled brat the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was making her to the person she is, but every other parent was that to their kids too and the punishments for them were running after their kids. Also, he didn´t even mean to make her obnoxious and dominant, he just wanted to make her happy, although he did it with the wrong, material way. The competetive girl mother was far worse, probably forcing her daughter to that hobby.
 * Mr. Salt is also shown to be an asshole to his employees, forcing them to spend hours opening chocolate bars just so his daughter can get the golden ticket. While the other parents were unlikeable, none of them did anything like that. Personally, I think the audience would have felt cheated if Veruca's dad didn't get punished.
 * I don't see what's so bad about this. They are paid to spend hours a day shelling nuts. That's their job and having them do their job doesn't make him an asshole. He puts the nut-shelling on hold and has them unwrap chocolate instead for a few days because of the contest. Surely unwrapping chocolate isn't harder than shelling nuts all day. You could say that it's unfair that he has his employees open the chocolate and then takes the ticket but he's the one who bought it.
 * While the other parents might have been able to straighten their kids out but didn't feel like it or were just as bad, Mr. Salt was the only one the book directly linked to his kid bring a brat. In the movie they did the storyline with Veruca's mom being a Sports-Mom, but in the original book, I think it was only Salt who could be blamed the most directly for what she did. While we're on the subject, look at the difference in reaction to Violet turning blue between her mom and Violet herself. Mrs. Boulregard got her own, subtle, punishment.
 * It must be a book / film disparity then, because Mrs. Beauregarde, Mrs. Gloop and Mr. Salt were all almost certainly directly responsible for the way their kids turned out in the 2005 film. Violet's mother was a parody of a Stage Mom-like personality, pushing her daughter to succeed so she could live vicariously through her. Augustus's mother (and father probably) encouraged him to eat and eat out of some kind of misguided idea that it was good for him. Mr. Salt.. well you all know what his problem was.. To me the oddest thing was that Burton didn't make the Teavees more culpable for Mike's problem. His father seems like the only one who is kind of disappointed / embarrassed about his kid's behavior from the beginning. It would have made more sense to make Mike's parents aloof or lazy to make a point about how it's bad to be a "hands-off"-style parent who lets pop culture do all the heavy child-rearing.
 * Why did Wonka use the TV machine to shrink giant-ass candy bars to normal size when he could've, ya know, made normal sized bars in the first place? Seems wasteful.
 * The shrinkage was a side-effect of transmitting things via TV. He wasn't transmitting them to shrink them, he was shrinking them to transmit them.
 * I still don't see the problem with using regular bars. Hershey's Minis are big business - if he did the regular-bar to mini-size then he'd use less chocolate for a bite-size chunk to simply whet people's appetites..
 * Probably because two-metre-long chocolate bar/boy + transmission = Six-inch-long bar/boy. Six-inch-long chocolate bar + transmission = 1.1 centimetre long chocolate bar. You probably wouldn't even see it on the screen, let alone be able to take it or get the wrapper off.
 * This above. The book explains that a giant size chocolate bar is necessary to become the correct size of an average chocolate bar on someone's television screen. These days, you'd probably need a much bigger bar.
 * Due to resolution problems with the camera/transmitter. If you sent a normal bar, important molecules may be lost due to resolution and fail to make the right taste and structure. What this says of Mike, however...
 * For (confectionery) SCIENCE!!!
 * Am I the only one who doesn't get why the Veruca Salt song ends more abruptly than the others?
 * Am I the only one who wonders how exactly Willy's dad moved the COMPLETE house?
 * Rule of Funny and Rule of Drama.
 * Why did they insert the bits about Grandpa Joe being one of the Wonka employees laid off to make way for the Oompa-Loompas and the link between Mr. Bucket being fired from the toothpaste factory and the Wonka chocolate craze? They set it up so that Willy Wonka is either directly or indirectly responsible for all of the Bucket family's misery and then didn't do anything with it.
 * The former so that Grandpa Joe could narrate what working under Wonka used to be like and the latter so that Mr. Bucket could get his job back later because of the same craze. Narrative reasons.