# Thinking about Willy Wonka **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [June 8, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455 "2017-06-08T20:53:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2017, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/41 "2017-06-09T20:26:06Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > 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. I like to think that Wonka never planned on giving his factory away to a kid- he was a misanthrope who saw no hope in the world and just wanted to punish some of the kids he hated so much- Charlie was the statistical anomaly he wasn’t counting on, and that made him change his mind. Of course I know that’s not true. Roald Dahl just wrote this kind of oddly sinister books. But I like to think it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2017, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/42 "2017-06-09T21:01:09Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#): > > I like to think that Wonka never planned on giving his factory away to a kid- he was a misanthrope who saw no hope in the world and just wanted to punish some of the kids he hated so much- Charlie was the statistical anomaly he wasn’t counting on, and that made him change his mind. > > Of course I know that’s not true. Roald Dahl just wrote this kind of oddly sinister books. But I like to think it anyway. I’ll split the difference - Wonka’s plan was to find a kid to run the factory, but if none of them worked out, he’d just say the tour was it, and maybe try again some other time. Charlie: “I’m a goddammed statistical anomaly.” Note: I never read the book. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/43 "2017-06-09T21:26:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > How would he choose the kids, any more than the Powerball gets to choose who in America draws the right lottery combination? > > Unless the chocolate bars were specially tagged with some unseen label to make sure they got to certain stores, but even then it would require 9/11-conspiracy-type levels of oversight to make sure the right customers bought the bars, and didn’t give the bar to someone else, and the cashiers would have to be in the know, etc. > Edit: Also, Wonka has no control over whether those 5 kids or their families even go candy shopping in the first place. That is one thing no amount of bureaucratic oversight can control. I think some people are forgetting that this is a universe with a flying elevator, and kids shrunk to the size of a paper doll. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2017, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/44 "2017-06-09T21:56:25Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > How would he choose the kids, any more than the Powerball gets to choose who in America draws the right lottery combination? He had oompa-loompas making his chocolate, giant geese laying golden eggs, candy that never disappears, anti-gravity, teleportation, trained attack squirrels, and a magic boat. And the idea that he could arrange the distribution of five candy bars is where you draw the line on your suspension of disbelief? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/45 "2017-06-09T22:01:49Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#): > > I like to think that Wonka never planned on giving his factory away to a kid- he was a misanthrope who saw no hope in the world and just wanted to punish some of the kids he hated so much- Charlie was the statistical anomaly he wasn’t counting on, and that made him change his mind. > > Of course I know that’s not true. Roald Dahl just wrote this kind of oddly sinister books. But I like to think it anyway. Maybe Wonka did plan on giving the factory to Charlie. But he wanted to make sure Charlie would keep running things his way. So he invited four other kids along to serve as warnings to Charlie about what happens when you don’t follow the rules. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2017, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/46 "2017-06-10T01:48:01Z")
What’s Adam Sandler up to these days? (Ducks and runs) ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/47 "2017-06-10T02:16:23Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > He had oompa-loompas making his chocolate, giant geese laying golden eggs, candy that never disappears, anti-gravity, teleportation, trained attack squirrels, and a magic boat. And the idea that he could arrange the distribution of five candy bars is where you draw the line on your suspension of disbelief? Well, it’s not really about suspension of disbelief. All you can go on, for any work that moves even a little bit into the realm of fantasy, is the evidence that’s actually in the book. (Or the movie, since some of your examples come from the movie, but I’m much more familiar with the novel…) There’s plenty of evidence, in the novel, of little people called Oompa-Loompas who make up somgs about rude children on the spot and sing them in unison; we see them, we hear them, we hear their backstory, we are told they are central to running the factory. Are they realistic? Not in our world. But they’re definitely a part of the novel’s landscape. There’s plenty of evidence, in the novel, of large trained squirrels which see Veruca as some strange kind of a nut. Realistic? No, but we see them, hear about them, and they’re a given in the world of the chocolate factory. Same is true of a bunch of other things–sending Mike Teavee through the air to be reconstituted in a television set, Violet swelling up to impossible sizes, an elevator that flies. Not in your experience, or in mine. But they’re described in the novel, and because we have good imaginations, we’re fine with it. But arranging the distribution of the tickets is different. There’s no indication, in the novel, that any of the children have been singled out in any way by Mr. Wonka to receive a golden ticket. None at all. Could it have happened like that?–Sure, in the twisted and mysterious world of Wonka, it could have. But we don’t see it happening, we’re not given any mechanism (magical or otherwise) in the book by which it could have happened, and we’re not given any reason to believe it would have happened. The best evidence in the book is that Wonka sent out five tickets at random and was ready to deal with whoever happened to get them. Yes, just like the government with Powerball. So it’s not suspension of disbelief; it’s what makes sense in the context of the book. (The trouble is, once you start saying “Well, x happened and it’s not realistic, so y could have happened as well” is that literally anything goes. Hey, maybe Wonka deliberately kept Charlie’s family poor; maybe he closed the toothpaste factory to throw Charlie’s father out of a job! Hey, maybe the chocolate factory doesn;t exist at all, it’s just an illusion created by Wonka for reasons we’re not privy to. Or maybe Mr. Teavee bullied Wonka when he was a kid, and the whole story is an elaborate plot on Wonka’s part to get back at him all these years later–Charlie’s just a foil. Or maybe Wonka is a mass murderer who has secretly poisoned the chocolate he feeds the kids and their parents, and within a year they will all die in terrible pain. Thing is, there’s no evidence for any of these things in the text; just because there are some magical components doesn’t mean everything is magical. A flying elevator does not imply that anyone can tesser; sentient squirrels don’t imply the ability on Wonka’s part to look seventeen moves ahead. We can only go with what we see.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/48 "2021-06-29T16:28:00Z")
Bumped. A nice interview with the three of the original cast members, a half-century later: > **[50 Years Ago, A Group Of Child Actors Helped To Make Movie History](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010832592/50-years-later-cast-members-discuss-willy-wonka-and-the-chocolate-factory)** > > "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was released in theaters on June 30, 1971. To celebrate the film's 50th anniversary, NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with some of the actors who were in the film. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2023, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/49 "2023-01-25T21:00:30Z")
_Gotta_ share this: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/7676ivbWaMo/maxresdefault.jpg "Weekend Update: A Proud Gay Oompa Loompa on Timothée Chalamet - SNL") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7676ivbWaMo) ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/50 "2023-01-26T11:18:56Z")
Marlon Brando? ‘I’m gonna make him a gobstopper he can’t refuse’. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/51 "2023-01-26T18:04:47Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > What’s Adam Sandler up to these days? Just picking up a Mark Twain award, he might free up after that. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.winston_oboogie/32/2945_2.png) [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Winston_OBoogie)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/52 "2023-01-26T19:09:34Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > How would he choose the kids, any more than the Powerball gets to choose who in America draws the right lottery combination? I give you [the McDonalds Monopoly scandal.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud) (my favorite part of that was that McDonalds didn’t even suspect anything until the FBI came to them and said “You have a problem. If you don’t believe us, your next winner is going to be this guy.” ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/53 "2023-01-26T19:38:55Z")
Two indicators in the movie that more is going on than pure luck. How come Charlie didn’t hear the tinker coming up behind him? He certainly made a lot of noise leaving. Did you notice that each conveyance had the exact number of seats for those that were left? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455/54 "2023-01-26T20:28:24Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Did you notice that each conveyance had the exact number of seats for those that were left? While I like to imagine that Wonka knew Augustus was going to gloop up the chocolate intake, I think it is really that the artists who made the boat had read the script and knew how many seats to add without realizing the _plot_ didn’t know at that point two fewer seats were needed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-about-willy-wonka/788455.md?page=2)