Chocolate Factory: 1971 vs. 2005 vs. the Book. Open Spoilers!

Cafe Society
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There’s a big 1964/1971/2005 difference that hasn’t been covered yet: the origins of the children. They were:

1971: Augustus: German. Veruca: British. Violet: Montanan. Mike: Arizonan. Charlie: from near the factory, wherever that was, and with an American tinge to him.
2005: Augustus: German. Veruca: British. Violet: Georgian (as in Atlanta.) Mike: Coloradoan. Charlie: from near the factory, wherever that was, with a British tinge to him.
Book: It doesn’t hint where anyone might to be from, or where the factory is.

All three of the versions tried to make it very unspecific where the factory was, and succeeded at this (though the 2005 version did make Charlie and his town seem more British than they did American in the 1971 film.) David Wolper wanted to make the town geographically nondescript, so he avoided filming it in America and settled on Munich, which worked out well. Burton lets the Britishness seep in, which works too (I mean, the factory has to be somewhere. Although Willy Wonka didn’t have a British accent…) Dahl also let this stay vague.

As to money: in the British edition of the book Charlie finds either a shilling or a half crown (I can’t remember which,) while in the American version he finds a green one-dollar bill (which would also apply to Canada in 1964.) When Charlie found the money in the 1971 film, he picked up a coin which you never get a good look at, but I understand it was a German two mark piece. In the 2005 film, he picks up paper money which I didn’t get a good look at. It could have been a British note, but I’m not sure. I’m not really familiar with what British notes look like, but I have a feeling it was just play money.

Incidentally, in the 1971 film, Wilkinson-cum-Slugworth offers Charlie a stack of bills, promising him “ten thousand of these” in exchange for an Everlasting Gobstopper™. A nice touch, when it came to keeping the geographic vagueness.
I think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a morality story. I think of it as Dante’s Inferno for kids. Everyone who is punished gets punished because of their own bad behavior, and the punishments are ironic, for the most part. (The only one whose punishment wasn’t ironic was Violet’s, but it worked just fine all the same.) Those who were punished never got a chance to repent, and probably wouldn’t if they got the chance—just like the sinners in the Inferno. The closest hint of this was in the book. After Mike got shrunken down, his parents said he wouldn’t get to watch TV anymore, and he threw a tantrum: no repentance. I bet the others would have reacted the same way to any proposed discipline, if the book followed their lives after the factory chewed them up and spit them out.

Dahl’s Wonka is… um… like God’s law according to Dante: confusing, seemingly capricious, but completely out of any mortal’s control—and extremely dangerous to ignore. (I’ve never read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, but I suppose I should, if only to find out if it’s more like the Purgatorio or the Paradiso.)

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But Charlie and Grandpa Joe weren’t rescued by Wonka. As far as he was concerned they could have gone up through the fan. But they kept their heads and saved themselves. If the other kids and parents had been smarter they could have avoided their fates as well.

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Another difference was the fate of Veruca Salt. The other kids all suffered the same fate in the 1971 movie as they did in the book. (I haven’t seen the new movie.) But in the book, Veruca was attacked by squirrels who threw her down the furnace chute. In the 1971 movie, she jumped on the platform in the room where the geese laid the golden eggs and she was dropped in the chute for being a “bad egg”.

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Meeting Willy Wonka was another scene that varied significantly:

In Dahl’s book, the children and their parents are greeted by the frantic chocolatier by the gates and whisked into the factory after he inspects their golden tickets—not a whole lot of ceremony.

In Wolper’s 1971 movie, Wonka limps out of the factory, leaning on a cane, before he greets anyone. The limping was a ruse, of course, which he terminates in a stumble and a subsequent somersault. This wasn’t in the book or even the original screenplay; this was something that Gene Wilder insisted on adding to the movie, saying he wouldn’t take the part if that weren’t added. His idea was to give the audience the idea that you couldn’t tell whether this guy was telling you the truth or not, and I think it worked very well.

In Burton’s 2005 movie, the lucky winners and their guardians are greeted by a campy mechanical singing puppet show that catches fire.
Of those three, my favorite was Wolper’s version, even though it yaws widely from Dahl’s book. In fact, for the most part, I think the 1971 picture was an improvement on the book (though Dahl himself said he hated it.) Burton’s picture was good, and while I don’t feel I wasted my ten bucks, I still prefer Wolper’s.

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Note that that does not match the book–in the book, there’s no question at all that Wonka wants the whole family there.

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To be fair, that was a technology thing–they didn’t think they could find trained squirrels that could do what needed to be done and every attempt at a mechanical or stop motion or (gad!) animated squirrel looked terrible. I saw an interview with…someone…(phear my 133t cite-ing skillz! :wink: ) involved who said after several attempts they worked with Dahl who agreed that the geese served the same purpose–although Dahl insisted that the “Is the furnace lit or not today?” thing stay.

Fenris

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Still, if you’re listing differences between the movies and the book to figure out which is closer…that’s a pretty significant difference, I’d say.

Jaws wouldn’t be Jaws if it was about a giant killer squid.

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This may be an urban legend, but I read in one review of Charlie that the reason the 1971 film was titled “Willy Wonka and…” was because the Vietnam War was going on at the time and “Charlie” is a slang term for a Viet Cong soldier.

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Quaker Oats financed the movie as a way to launch a line of candies under the “Willy Wonka” brand name. The name was changed to emphasize that. (The chocolate candy failed miserably, but there are still other WW candies on the market, at least in the US.)

Robin

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Granted, it’s a difference, but not nearly as much of one as Jaws being a squid; the point was that there was a trained animal that Veruca wanted and either way she went down the garbage chute for being bad (a bad egg or a bad nut–either way).

I agree the 2005 movie’s closer, but I’d count it as a very minor difference–along the same lines as both movies missing the fact that Wonka has a beard in the book. It’s a difference, but not one that matters umch.

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(<snip> etc.)

Having read everything that Roald Dahl ever wrote, I agree that was the most noticeable thing about the book. Stiff upper lip, old chap! Keep your dignity and sense of humor and we’ll win this thing yet!

I can honestly say that the original book was my Harry Potter and had as much of an influence on my values as anything I was exposed to as a kid. I have no idea how, but I never saw the 1971 movie til sometime in the 90s. I didn’t even know there was a movie til I was in my 20s. I was aghast when I finally saw it. I’ve come to appreciate it but the main thing to me was that Charlie and Grandpa Joe never would have fucked around with that fizzy lifting drink because they were pristine. Charlie was an absolute model. He always behaved with aplomb no matter what. I also agree that Willy Wonka in the book was detached and wise. He basically had better things to think about than who was good and who was bad: the fact that Charlie had more character than the other kids was self-evident and Willy Wonka’s main function was to be a kid’s fantasy of an ultimate reward.

I thought both movies utterly screwed up the point of the book which is that if you’re always disappointed and you always see bad kids get everything, just hang on because something better could happen any day.

The point of most of Roald Dahl’s books is the same. Encourage kids to be good by showing them the folly of being bad while promising a reward for being good. It actually was didactic as hell, but I guess it depends on what you think is normal. I think Charlie was an exceptionally good kid and that his family were great people. Everyone should try to be more like that. Didactic!

I think Roald Dahl would have hated this movie just as much as the first one. The whole thing with Willy Wonka’s dad being an evil dentist who put Willy in a torture device and threw his candy in the fire, and that the unfair deprivation led to him being really screwed up as an adult…it’s sort of the opposite of the spirit of the book which is that if you don’t have all the candy you want maybe it’s just a fleeting case of bad fortune and that if you can keep your spirits up and be good you’ll wind up with plenty of candy one day.

The 1971 movie had the thing where Charlie resisted the temptation to basically get revenge by selling the gobstopper. Maybe I was an exceptionally dumb kid, but when I was 10, that was about as meaningful to me as not watching TV all day. There are things you should do and things you shouldn’t and the whole discomfort of being a kid is that you aren’t sure why you shouldn’t do things since long-term consequences are a mystery. Oh, I know, you shouldn’t chew gum 24/7. You shouldn’t eat everything in sight. You shouldn’t commit industrial espionage in a moment of anger. You shouldn’t brag or watch TV all night. But why not? The whole point of the book is very simple. Because if you do, you’ll be fat, nobody will like you or you will shrink. Then where will you be? It’s simple. What kid understands the character arch of a man who grows up, has father issues and needs oompa-loompa talk therapy to work it out? They don’t understand it. They get it, but they don’t get it. Yeah, there’s temptation, but that’s no moment of truth when you’re a kid. It’s your bread and butter. I want this! I can’t have it! I’m sad! That test of mettle stuff is for adults. The whole beauty of Roald Dahl is that he remembered how kids think and he spoke to it. Neither of those movies cared about kids or how the world looks to a kid. They both had random scary stuff. Neither of those movies is true to the book. The book just modeled good behaviour in a simple way that was fun for a kid to read. Nothing weird or complicated.

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And a new Wonka bar is on the market now in conjuction with the new movie.

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I’ve figured out why it is that Willy’s appearance in the new film bothers me.

SPOILERS, for those who have hung on this long, and don’t wanna know

In Burton’s film, the crowd waits in expectation, and finally the three large doors at the front of the Wonka factory split apart in an unexpected fashion to reveal a sort of “It’s a Small World After All” set of overly cute dolls. These beging moving and singing the Wonka theme song (the one you hear at the end of the current commercials for the movie). During the show, fireworks go off, especially the shower/sparkler kind. The dolls’ clothing catch fire, and the burn and melt. Finally, Wonka , who has crept in unnoticed beside the winners and their parents, starts applauding the show.

In the first place, it seems a bit imitative to poke fun at a target like Disney’s Small World, which has been done over and over, and was covered in Shrek. But even more disturbing to anyone in New England was that the chorus catching fire from the shower-of-sparks fireworks is uncomfortably close to the events at the Station Nightclub Fire a couple of years ago here in New England. I’ not sure how much coverage it got elsewhere in the country (It dominated the news here for a while, but local events tend to do that), but I know that it inspired an episode of CSI.

The point was driven in later on in the tour when they go through the “Doll Hospital” with its burn unit. “It’s new”, explain’s Wonka.

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I’ve recently heard that the flashback with Willy tasting candies and writing notes was lifted from Dahl’s autobiography.