Anyway, that hideous scene where they all step onto the boat to get from one part of the factory to the next. The Oompa-Loompas row faster and faster while around the boat are flashing lights, scenes of worms & bugs & such, and an image of Slugworth. The children (and parents) are at first confused and then terrified; all the while Wonka just keeps singing/chanting/yelling to sort-of egg them on.
I never understood the reason for having such a hideous and disturbing scene in an otherwise uplifting and fun movie. So my question is… WTF???
I’ve come up with some ideas:
The movie was released in 1971, and in the early 70’s you had to include a scene that didn’t make any sense (to the hoi polloi, anyway) into every movie, for art’s sake.
The movie was released in 1971, as construction was wrapping up on Walt Disney World. It was the director’s way of taking a swipe at the It’s A Small World attraction; that is, Wonka’s Boat Ride of Horror is the anti It’s A Small World.
Wonka deliberately wanted to antagonize and frighten the kids, because he’s a bit of an asshole.
Wonka just wanted to equate Slugworth with confusion, fear and grossness.
And on the chance that the scene is also in the book (Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, in case you didn’t know)…
It’s a scene that makes more sense in the book (I haven’t read it).
It’s a scene that doesn’t make any sense in the book, either.
So what’s the scoop? Has the director/writer or someone revealed what it was all about?
are you sure you guys watched the rest of the movie? this scene fits perfectly, especially with wonka’s character. he is a sadistic madman. that is all.
My theory is that Wonka is trying to confuse and disorient them. He is trying to make his factory seem like a dream world that is cut off from reality. In order to do this he wants to create confusion in the minds of his guests over how long they are on the boat, how fast it went and how far they travelled. Thus when they leave the factory and are interviewed about it they tell stories that are wild and fanciful. This enhances the Wonka mystique that he uses to sell candy bars.
Great movie. Caught it last night with my kids. (My oldest is a Roald Dahl freak.) They sure don’t make ‘em like that any more. It was edgy, irreverent, and kept you guessing. Such a far cry from the over-refined pabulum that is the excuse for kids’ movies these days. In the early 70s, they were more willing to push boundaries, test new things.
Rastahomie, remember when this was made the 1960s were still raging. I was just stunned to revisit how druggy and trippy this movie actually was. The acid freakout scene in Easy Rider was pretty lame compared to Willy Wonka’s psychedelic trip! I liked the way the director wasn’t afraid to take chances and play with your head. Wonka is a timeless archetypal character, the Trickster. The greatest children’s fantasy literature always included nightmarish content, something we forget in this day and age when everything has to be so censored and people walk on eggshells for fear of offending someone. I liked it that, despite the stern moral lessons set to music by the nightmarish Oompa Loompas, not everything was so pat and complacent, it left some weirdnesses unanswered.
I think Jomo Mojo has it right. Our family watched the 30th anniversary special too. We both (wife & I) thought it very much a “psychedelic” movie. There is a very wide range of emotion presented through the whole movie. I don’t think that in a “normal” state you are much in touch with the emotion. But add a good dose of “Vitamin A”, and I think that the whole thing would be one big roller coaster, emotionally and visually. It would be interesting to try it again and see the movie, but I don’t really have the desire to do anymore psychedelics.
If you had the read book, you would have realized that the film held fairly closely to the book. The one big scene that isn’t in the book is when Charlie and Grandpa swallow the Fizzy Lifting Gas and almost get sucked into the fan.
Roald Dahl’s children’s works were all a bit unconventional. The sequel to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” is even more bizzare at points, including parts where all the grandparents regress in age and Charlie has to go fetch them out of “Minus Land”.
The only I could never understand about the film is why the Grandpa character is played by Jack Albertson, who doesn’t have an English accent, although Charlie has a bit of one.
Is there any doubt that this movie was made with potheads and acidheads in mind? That’s the point where Grandpa says, “Wow, we’re getting really high now.”
LOL!!!
That’s a very interesting and confusing part of the movie. Several of the characters within Charlie’s town have British accents (his school teacher) or American ones (his family) and then they seem to be driving German automobiles. WTF?!?!
I always thought the children met hideous deaths at Wonka’s hands. He reassures the group that the kids will be restored and returned as good as new, but do we we ever see them come back? No. WILLY WONKA is in fact a horror movie and that one scary scene was the title character giving himself away.
In the book the children come out fine, if not a little bit wiser for the wear. In the movie they don’t show that part. When the elevator flies out of the building, Charlie, Grandpa and Willy see the other children leaving the factory. My favourite part is how Mike Teevee after going through the taffy stretching machine is now seven feet tall. Hehe.
So does Charlie not lose the contest at first, like he does in the movie? Or do he and Grandpa do something even more dastardly, like gangbang an Oompah Loompah?
but the city the glass elevator flies over is Nordlingen.
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Are you sure? Rothenburg ob der Tauber just happens to be a village next to Nordlingen, and that wall and tower sure look like Rothenburg. I couldn’t find any corroboration of my theory on any of the WW sites, so you may be right, but I was just in Rothenburg in November, bought a panoramic view screen-saver of the town and it sure looks like that’s what I saw in the movie.
I saw the movie (and read the book) a long time ago, but…
Mr. Wonka’s agenda and the extent of his benevolence is one of the unfolding questions in the story. The scary scene establishes WW as a possibly threatening character and the kids/parents adventure as possibly dangerous.
No, they don’t. He doesn’t even really notice them until they are the last ones left. (I last read the book in 1988, but I’ve never watched the entire movie.)
To answer the OP, in the book the parents and children are terrified by the boatride. It’s portrayed as being hair-raising and scary. My guess is the “trippy” scene in the movie is an attempt at a “scary” scene that won’t hit the 'ol special effects budget very hard. When you think about how much more expensive it would’ve been to make a high-speed boat ride underground than it was to make the scene in the movie (where they basically just sit in the boat while colored lights flash and Wonka talks in a spooky voice), my point becomes clear.
A major book-to-movie change, just to clarify: In the movie, Charlie and his Granda try the fizzy drink and float up to the ceiling, but manage to escape. In the book, the fizzy floating drink is mentioned but no one drinks it; Charlie wins the contest because he is the only one left, the only one who didn’t disobey. The movie, by having Charlie disobey (just like all the others), makes hash of the whole idea behind the contest, IMHO.
BTW, has anyone heard the rumour that a remake is being considered with Nicholas Cage as Willie Wonka? On the grounds that the movie wasn’t “faithful” to the book (which seems sort of bogus, since Dahl was heavily involved in the movie screenplay.)