"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" Topic

Interesting review. How do you feel about the theory, which seems to have a lot of very valid points, that Willy Wonka in the movie was a serial killer?

Note that the novel was called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the film people realized the INTERESTING person was Wonka and changed the title.

I've heard they're making a Young Wonka movie.

(The author thought Charlie was more interesting, and wrote a sequel about Charlie that nobody cares about.)

The child actors said that the scene where the boat goes through the tunnel as Wonka sings was very scary! But the lines were pretty much straight from the novel. Gene Wilder gave it his unique spin, which I think was an improvement from the hyperactive, rude old man in the novel.

A serial killer? Really?
It to is supposed to look like he was a old crotchety man but at end we see it was only to weed out all but the pure heart.
My take anyway.

At the end (in both novel and movie), Wonka says he is getting old; in the novel, which portrays him as an old man, he says he is older than he looks!

Willy Wonka is not really a character (nor really that interesting). He is a personification of man's moral fragility. He is a plot device that moves the protagonists (Charlie and grandpa) and the antagonists through different situations that foce them to be tested against the temptations of man's own society. He is the mechanism for both the creation and exposure to the author's Deadly Sins, simliar to (and partially overlapping with) the classical Seven Deadly Sins, but with unique modern elements (obsession with television) and modern interpretations (classical Greed vs modern bratty "I want it now!"). Embodied as Willy Wonka, the Universe forces man to face the inherent evil in man's own constructions, then extension of man himself.

Now, since I consdier the Universe to be the original serial killer … yeah. It tracks.

The premise is false, and thus the responses are not valid. None of the children die, in either the novel or the films. They have to be "treated" for the consequences of their choices, but they don't die. The treatment is implied to be very uncomfortable, and it's also implied that not everything can be returned to normal— a lifelong reminder of their various sins. Wonka isn't the Universe, he's God. He is the creator of all that is good, and the good he creates can be used wisely or unwisely, and his rules can be followed or ignored— the children are allowed their free will, and it is their own selfishness which results in their fates. Yet the God of the story doesn't leave them to their fates; he acts to heal them and offer them an opportunity to reconsider their choices and their lives for the future— though for now that future is "the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth." But Charlie, who uses his free will to honor the rules and respect Wonka, is granted the Keys to the Kingdom, to be a son and heir to God, and welcomed into Heaven.
And that works across novel and film.

Wow I never new it was so deep. Now the reboot with Johnny Depp was creepy!