Spoilers I suppose but, come on, even the most recent movie came out twelve years ago. And the book was written in 1964.
We saw the story pretty much from the point of view of the kids (mostly Charlie) and their families. So we can only speculate on what Willy Wonka was thinking.
Did Wonka somehow choose the five kids who would get tickets or was it really random? Was Charlie his favorite all along or was he equally willing to consider the other four kids as possible candidates? Were the other kids even in the running or did Wonka just bring them along in order to mess with them?
Charlie apparently screwed up but then redeemed himself by giving the everlasting gobstopper back to Wonka rather than selling it. Did the other children have a similar opportunity to redeem themselves?
What was Wonka’s backup plan if Charlie had just walked out and the other kids were already disqualified? Would he have tried again with another contest and a new batch of kids?
I’m mostly basing this on the 1971 movie (which, as you might guess, I just rewatched) but feel free to also offer insights based on the novel or even the 2005 movie.
Right, I found the movie very unsatisfying compared to the book for exactly this reason. In the book, Charlie wins because he doesn’t do anything wrong. Augustus drinks from the chocolate river against Wonka’s orders, Veruca goes into the squirrel cage after being told not to, Violet is instructed not to chew the stick of gum but does so anyway, Mike hears “I suppose it COULD e done” and wrongly takes that as permission to try…and Charlie follows the rules and doesn’t disrespect Mr. Wonka.
In the movie, they ALL do something wrong. Charlie wins only because he has the chance to redeem himself afterwards–a chance that was not given to the other kids, who are whisked down drainpipes and taken away to be dejuiced and the like and so cannot make amends. There’s an unfairness about that which leaves a sour taste behind.
As for the other qs–in the book it has to be random that those five kids would get the tickets. Remember that Charlie buys the candy bar only because he finds a dollar bill in the slush–and then has to decide to buy not one but two candy bars with the dollar. That would take an awful lot of planning, and an awful lot of luck. Wonka isn’t shown ; the book to have any henchmen, so he would have to plant the bill, hope that Charlie sees it, and sees it before anyone else; hope that Charlie buys not one but 2 candy bars in the right store and of the right kind before anyone else happens to buy them. It would be a deus ex machina that even the ancient Greeks wouldn’t be buying.
IIRC, most of the kids who win in the book win because they’re terrible in ways that lead to purchasing prodigious quantities of candy. Charlie (and possibly TV Mike) are the only ones who purchase only a few bars.
Augustus buys huge amounts of candy because he is a glutton encouraged by his parents; Veruca’s dad reassigns his workers to buying and opening Wonka bars to give his precious girl a chance to win. Violet switches from gum to candy in hopes of getting the golden ticket… I think you’re right that we are never really told how or why Mike gets his. unlike the others, he doesn’t seem obsessed.
But it is sooooo in keeping with the semi-menacing, passive-aggressive Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka, who is rather different from the crazed-mad-scientist of the book. I really liked that exchange. Without that scene we’d never have “I said GOOD DAY!”
Really, if you want to talk unfairness we can start discussing a random lottery to select five kids based on spending money on candy bars, with the best odds going to the biggest spenders.
Was that from the movie? Because he never said that in the book. Gandalf says something similar in the book, asking which of several meanings for “Good Morning!” Bilbo is intending.
in the extras on the DVD release, Gene Wilder said he suggested/pushed for two scenes:
the scene where we first see Wonka; he walks slowly with a pronounced limp, then shows off with a somersault. He said his reason for that scene is so that from then on you wouldn’t know whether Wonka was being honest or devious.
the “I SAID GOOD DAY!” scene. I don’t know if they cooked up the whole Gobstopper sub-plot to accommodate that or not, but the whole shouting, ranting scene was Wilder’s idea.
“I said GOOD DAY” is a good line, though I like “So shines a good deed in a weary world” better, even if it was cribbed from Shakepeare.
It’s a good scene, but again, it could’ve happened to any of the kids. It happened to Charlie only because he was the only kid not whisked away by his mistake.
In effect: The book functions as a modern morality play. The “repulsive little beasts” who have an overabundance of entitlement, no manners, no respect, and Ado Annie parents–they act in character (and sooner or later, mostly sooner, pay for it). Charlie, who has no sense of entitlement, plenty of manners, plenty of respect, and was raised right despite the difficult circumstances of his life–he acts in character too and is rewarded for it.
Yes, in the movie he gives back the gobstopper; the other kids probably wouldn’t have done the same, but we don’t know, because they weren’t given the opportunity. The message is muddled and becomes rather random.
You’re right of course about the unfairness of rewarding those with more money to buy more candy bars. The cute thing about the book, though, is that it doesn;t matter how many candy bars Augustus wolfs down or Veruca’s dad buys for her, because given their characters they have no shot at winning the contest anyway.
I never read the book, but my impression from the movie is that the whole thing was an act set up as “training” for Charlie.
Slugworth was always there to talk with the winners at their first public announcement. He must have known in advance who they were; there wouldn’t be enough time to get to them otherwise.
They were always going to lose for obvious reasons, but they served as a show for Charlie. Charlie might have failed the redemption, and I suppose in that case Wonka might have set up additional contests (or just given him the lifetime supply of chocolate, and not the factory).
Charlie lived in the same town as the factory; that’s how Wonka knew of Charlie in the first place. Maybe the Candy Man was a spy, too.
It was random. It is also a horrible story. A kid that comes from abject poverty with 4 grandparents laying in the same bed all day ever though only some were disabled. Charlie’s father was a world-class screwup. If you can’t figure out how to do something better than screw caps on all day, there is something wrong with you. We can skip the torture and slavery aspects for now. Those are included in my former review. “Poor” Charlie decided to try the ghetto way out and won to some degree but did he really? He knows nothing about slaveholding or running a large business. It is doomed to fail because he doesn’t have the background for it.
For three of the children (Augustus, Violet, and Mike) he showed up with the press. That’s not implausible for a supposed powerful businessman.
But when Veruca’s ticket was found, Slugworth was there in the factory. And when Charlie’s was found, Slugworth was waiting just a few block away. Neither of these could have occurred unless Slugworth had advance knowledge of who was going to find the tickets. And it was revealed that Slugworth was actually Wilkinson, so he would have been getting his advance knowledge from Wonka.
But Wonka knew all about running a slave-based industry and had set up a business that ran itself. What he was worried about was the possibility some adult would take over the business and try to make changes. So he wanted a child who would keep running things Wonka’s way even after Wonka was gone. So Charlie didn’t need to have any background; he just needed to stay on course.
Don’t forget: Augustus, Veruca, Mike, and Violet all chose to commit their transgressions on their own, with no encouragement from their parents. Charlie wouldn’t have stolen the Fizzy-Lifting Drink if he hadn’t been encouraged (in an extremely out-of-character manner that always pissed me off) by Grandpa Joe. As a child who respected his elders and doted on his Grandpa, Charlie chose to go along with him. Maybe Wonka took that into account.
I loved the “Good DAY!” scene. One of my favorites in the movie. I fell in love with Wilder’s Wonka from the moment my 6-year-old self saw him do the cane-and-somersault routine.
I look at the Johnny Depp version in the same way I look at Highlander 2: it didn’t exist.
