S01E14 — Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

This children’s book has been a memorable classic for decades. The family discusses the (somewhat minor) differences from book to both the 1971 and 2005 films — but don’t worry, we mostly stick to the original. The Tim Burton version is just…creepy.

We also share our thoughts on Wonka, which we saw just a few days before recording this episode, as a prequel to the 1971 adaptation.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie adds whimsical charm, catchy songs, and a bit of moral complexity that the book skips over. The book is simpler, focusing on Charlie’s journey, while the movie expands on the world, the characters, and Wonka’s unpredictable nature.

Tim: The movie was better

Donna: The movie was better

Rebekah: The movie was better

Josiah: The movie was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:01:03] Rebekah: Welcome to the Book is Better podcast. We are a family of four comparing book to film adaptations. Um, this is a clean podcast and we’re actually going to be discussing one of the. children’s books of all time today. Uh, the book by Roald Dahl is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has been adapted into two movies, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which, uh, we’ll be discussing most of all, and then a 2005 version called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well.

So here’s your spoiler alert. We are going to be starting. Spoiling Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, both the book and the film. And we will have some light spoilers for the 2023 film entitled Wonka, although it is not an adaptation of a book, so we won’t be discussing it in great detail.

Before we get started, I would love for us to introduce ourselves to you and share a little fun fact. We’ll So today’s fun fact prompt is, what is your favorite chocolate sweet? I’m Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the family. And, uh, my fun fact is that I actually don’t love chocolate that much.

Um, if it’s doused in peanut butter, it’s cool. And like, I’ll eat a s’more or a Hershey’s barbie once in a while, but I would say my favorite chocolate is, is probably either Peanut M& M’s or Reese’s Pieces, both of which are very, very, uh, broken by peanut 

[00:02:34] Josiah: flavor. Mmm. Well, I am Josiah, the brother slash son of the family group, and my favorite chocolate sweet is Well, my, right now I’m having a real love affair with the blue Twix, the cookies and cream Twix.

Love the blue Twix. Not everywhere has it. And I’m very sad. But perennially, I always love chocolate with a little crackle in it. The crackle chocolate, the crunch chocolate bar. Um, those are the main two I’m thinking of right off the top of my head. Crunch and crackle. Yeah, love Crunch and 

[00:03:14] Tim: Crackle. Well, my name is Tim.

I am the husband and the dad of our crew. And let’s see, I kind of have two. I really like, um, like the mints and chocolate, um, in a few different flavors that are a few different types. Junior mints as well as, um, other, other famous ones. That’s what I like to do. But then I also like. Peanut butter and chocolate.

So Reese’s and recently it’s the peanut butter M& Ms that all of that kind of runs in the same vein. So that’s what I like. 

[00:03:53] Donna: Hi, I’m Donna. I’m the wife, mom of our crew, and I love a lot of different chocolate. Um, I enjoy. the flavor of white chocolate. I know some people say that’s not real chocolate, but I still like it and it is sweeter and has a little different ache than brown chocolate, but I enjoy it.

As far as a true chocolate sweet, I suppose I would just rather Take a piece of Hershey bar, just plain Hershey bar in my mouth and just let it set and melt and, and enjoy it and try not to just chew it up and swallow it. I love that a lot. And I, I like a lot of the things like the, the, uh, rochette, uh, Truffle, are they called truffles?

The right term. Um, but the Roche candies that you get that are chocolate. I don’t know if 

[00:04:46] Josiah: they’re truffles or not for sure. Oh, I like Roche too. 

[00:04:49] Donna: Um, some have crunchy in them. Some have just a solid chocolate or caramel in them. I think those are pretty awesome as well. 

[00:04:58] Rebekah: Well, before we get into reviewing the major differences, Josiah, would you like to give us a brief plot summary of this story?

Oh, sure. 

[00:05:07] Josiah: I could do that. Well, off the top of my head, we follow the story of Charlie Bucket, a poor boy who finds one of the five golden tickets hidden in Wonka Chocolate Bars, granting him a tour of the mysterious Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Charlie, along with four other children, experiences the wonders and dangers of the factory, as the other children, all obnoxious and disobedient, Succumb to their vices, they experience comical yet cautionary mishaps.

Ultimately, Charlie’s kindness and honesty impress Willy Wonka, who bequeaths the entire factory to him. Off the top of my head. 

[00:05:54] Rebekah: Oh, yes. Off the top of your head, obviously. Um, so this was actually the 1971, uh, Willy Wonka film was a very faithful adaptation to the book. So when we discuss changes, we often will divide them into three types.

And so one of the change types that we discuss is on the setting of the book. The second type of change we talk about is characterization and how that differs in the movie. And the third type of change, which is typically the most significant, is on how the plot or timeline were changed from the book to the film.

So one of my most notable differences as I was reading the book, because I had, I’ve seen the movie several times. I only read the book when we decided to do it for this podcast. I listened to the audio book recently. And, um, I was kind of astounded by how for the Bucket family was like the poverty that they experienced.

It was very pronounced in the book to the point where it felt like I was wondering, would I want to read this? If I had small children, would I want to read this to my small children? And I honestly was not sure that I would be able to do that because it made me so sad to think of how little money they had and just what.

completely impoverished, uh, circumstances they were living in. So I definitely noticed that. The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, I haven’t seen it recently, but I think that that was supposedly pronounced a little more in that movie than in the 1971 film, but definitely, 

[00:07:23] Tim: yes, the poverty is very obvious, very evident in both of them, although, um, in the Burton adaptation, it is even more 

[00:07:33] Josiah: pronounced.

Obviously, I’m the only one of us four who does not have children, but I think it’s okay for kids to be sad sometimes. 

[00:07:43] Rebekah: You know, I’ll allow it. Well, 

[00:07:45] Tim: sad, I understand sad. It is, it is a far stretch though. Their, their poverty is not just, uh, not just a sad part, but seems to be a depressing part. Yeah. But it, it is reflective of of a Victorian, uh, type of class difference.

And some people have a lot, some people at least can work for something, but they never seem to get ahead. So those differences are, are pronounced. 

[00:08:17] Rebekah: Was the, sorry, was the 1971 film, the book I believe released in the mid sixties, does it seem, I, This is going to sound very ignorant of me, but does it seem like that film was based essentially in the mid 60s?

I know it’s kind of a vague location and stuff, but do we think that the timeline was 1964. Was the, do you think the movie was also intended to look like it was, you know, of a family in that time? 

[00:08:43] Tim: It was intended to look like a nondescript city, so there are aspects that Are different kinds of cities, uh, different cities around, uh, Prague, Paris, London.

Yeah, I’m just referring to 

[00:08:58] Rebekah: specifically timing. Do you feel like they tried to make it look a little like it was maybe in the 20s or 30s, or was that more like, you know, this would make sense for the 1960s in, in kind of worldwide technology and different things like that? 

[00:09:12] Tim: I think they try to be a bit nondescript with that as well, although there are machines and things, so it’s within the industrial age and the modern era, but it’s this thing or that thing kind of skews it.

Some of the, some of the costuming looks like it’s probably from the 30s, the 1930s, and some of the costumes look like it’s from the 70s, you know, or late 60s. So. Yeah, I think they purposefully try to blur those lines. I think you also 

[00:09:42] Josiah: see that in the new prequel, Wonka with Timothee Chalamet, the setting is very mishmash, vague, Paris, London, sort of Germany, Belgium sort of area.

Vaguely European. Vaguely European, precisely. It is a little steampunk, I will say. That’s a, I think that’s a pretty consistent theme in all the adaptations and all the, uh, all the store, all the versions. But another thing about the setting is that the book focuses strongly on Charlie Bucket’s experiences.

It’s told largely from his point of view, so you don’t go around the world like in the film. Charlie is living poor, learning of the contest, seeing various children featured on the news, finding the golden tickets. That’s all through his eyes. The film does something that I like that broadens the setting, including news broadcasts, not through Charlie’s perspective, a therapist appointment, just random cutaway jokes.

It was almost like a family guy episode of, uh, individual children’s discoveries. There was a hostage negotiation where The wife didn’t want to give up her box of Wonka bars for her husband to be returned. I had 

[00:11:02] Rebekah: forgotten a lot of that from, like, until we watched it the other day. 

[00:11:05] Josiah: It’s very funny. It’s very funny and charming.

And it doesn’t, it doesn’t really change the pace because as an audience member, you know, There is a set limit of what we’re doing. We are finding five golden tickets and then we’re going to the factory. And so we don’t mind that there are these 30 second scenes on the way to the golden ticket because we know there’s only five golden tickets.

It’s not going to take, you know, That long to find them. So I thought that that was a really good book to movie change. Not that the book was bad, but it was a good adaptation choice. 

[00:11:41] Rebekah: I also will know that when we were watching it the other night, I felt like a lot of those additional scenes felt very Monty Pythonesque.

Mm-Hmm. like the. Particularly the therapy appointment where the guy’s like dreaming of the chocolates and then his therapist is like, where were they in the dream? You know, and then, and it’s like very silly. And the hostage negotiation, all, both of those felt very like Monty Python to me. 

[00:12:05] Josiah: Yeah. Right around the same time, 1971.

So it works out. 

[00:12:10] Tim: I think that’s one of those things that we’ve discovered as we’ve been going through, uh, the podcast. We like the addition of other POVs, points of view, um, when you adapt it to film. In the book, it’s perfectly fine to simply listen to the character’s, um, thoughts and things like that. Or, in this case, it’s not his thoughts so much as we’re focusing on Charlie, whether it’s the omniscient narrator or whatever.

But to add those other points of view makes it more interesting visually as well as, um, the plot, the moving of the plot. It’s really nice to have that. 

[00:12:51] Donna: As we move on into differences in characterization, we find Charlie’s father, Mr. Bucket, which I thought it was interesting he was not in the 71 film. It would have been a pretty simple addition, but for whatever reason, It was the mom and the four grandparents, which makes it even more pitiful because the mom is trying to do laundry for people to make money and take care of four grandparents in the bed and nobody ever addresses the fact that though they state the parents are bed fast, have not been out of that bed in 20 years.

Nobody asks how all four parents go to the bathroom. Yeah, I thought it was kind of, only when it came up in our conversation the other day, you know, it’s, it’s that kind of unmentionable question that you really want to understand, how did they not say something about that? 

[00:13:46] Tim: But in the scenery of the film, they actually do show it when Uncle, when Grandpa Joe jumps out of the bed, when he gets out of the bed, puts his feet on the floor.

covers of the bed are pushed back and you see the bedpan under, on the floor. So they don’t mention it, but it is, visually it’s there. 

[00:14:08] Donna: So in that respect, it’s part of life that people live in poor circumstances. Yeah. And that they’re willing to represent it and show you that Charlie can still be a good, kind boy.

caring about his grandparents, caring for his mother. 

[00:14:26] Josiah: I think the film works without Mr. Bucket. I think it adds another level of poverty and I think people understand, oh, single parent makes Charlie even more sympathetic, but also it increases Grandpa Joe’s role in Charlie’s life as The father figure that had to step into that role makes that main character even stronger.

[00:14:52] Rebekah: I do think that the, the thing I noticed in the book was the dad had this like thing where he had to, basically Charlie had to decide who to take. To the factory. Yeah. And so then there had to be this conversation. And in the book, I think the dad just says that it should be Grandpa Joe. ’cause he’s the one that you know, is so excited about the factory.

And the dad, he’s like, I gotta take care of the family. But I do think that taking that out of the 1971 film just removed a scene slash conversation that we didn’t need to see. 

[00:15:23] Tim: In the late 60s and early 70s, people were thinking more about non traditional family units and the way they would be put together and a, and a single mother being able to take care of her family, albeit, you know, they’re very impoverished, but they, she could take care of them all, um, was a new societal goal.

Norm that was coming into fashion. 

[00:15:51] Josiah: One of my favorite changes in the film is that there’s only one companion per child. Whereas in the book, there’s two companions. And I don’t understand if Charlie is only bringing grandpa Joe and Roald Dahl knows that, why would he have two companions for the other children?

Because I know that the dad said I need to take care of the family, so I can’t go. And the mom kind of said something similar, if I remember. But come on, how long is the tour? A day? Can the mom and Grandpa Joe not go together? So honestly, there being two companions as an option made me dislike Charlie’s parents in the book.


[00:16:33] Rebekah: also really liked just as far as we’re talking about characterization, I liked that there was very little about the character’s personalities that got shifted. Um, the book, part of why it felt so charming in the moment when I was listening to it was that I loved Grandpa Joe’s, like, excitement and I loved Charlie’s, like, Cautious, hopefulness, and I loved Willy Wonka’s work and oddities, and I loved the way that the mom was portrayed, and all those things.

The children were so obnoxious, whatever. Honestly, almost everyone in the film was portrayed, essentially, essentially. from the book. I mean, it was very, very close and I did a little appreciate 

[00:17:16] Tim: different. Yeah, there was very little difference there. 

[00:17:20] Rebekah: Like Charlie had a newspaper route. That was the only thing that was different from book to film.

[00:17:25] Tim: Um, which showed that he was helping take care of the family. Just another layer to his character that he always wanted to take care of the family as much as he could. 

[00:17:35] Rebekah: It also helps him be the save the cat character. You really want him to win. 

[00:17:40] Josiah: I thought it was very sweet, a save the cat moment in the beginning of the factory, when Charlie is the only one who tries to save Augustus from the river.

[00:17:50] Rebekah: Oh, wow. I don’t think I noticed that. 

[00:17:53] Josiah: Not even his mom. She’s just screaming. 

[00:17:56] Rebekah: Yeah. They also do the school scene, um, Where Charlie’s called like they he asks him for the number of bars of chocolate that he’s had and he’s like 200 and Charlie’s like no just two and then the math teachers like I can’t do the math on that to convert it to a percentage and like it’s not exactly a save the cat moment but it also makes you feel bad for him in a way that’s kind of like this kid needs a break you know 

[00:18:24] Josiah: yeah and it’s a very Monty Python moment 0.

2 percent is too high brain for that guy. Well, talking about Augustus falling into the river, the first time the Oompa Loompas appear in the movie, I was actually surprised at how sudden and no buildup there was. If I’m, if I’m not mistaken, in the book, Grandpa Joe sets up the Oompa Loompas as the mysterious reason that Willy Wonka’s factory works, but I don’t think they did that in the film.

[00:18:55] Tim: And also, at least in one of the films, um, at least the Burton film, uh, Willy Wonka tells them, That the factory is, is run by the Oompa Loompas. He said, I have to keep it hot in here because of the workers. They need to need it hot. They would freeze to death if it was cold. He doesn’t describe them. He just says, calls them Oompa Loompas first time.

To try to introduce them a little bit before they appear. Uh mm-Hmm. around the chocolate river 

[00:19:27] Rebekah: it looks like in the book. I just opened it up just to see if I could find it. Um, and it looks like it’s very close to the 71 film where you see Oompaloompas as they walk into the, the big room of the factory.

That first place they enter with all of the, you know, well with the chocolate river and stuff that Augustus Group falls into, they see the Oompa lumps and then, um. Charlie points them out and Charlie says, but they can’t be real people because in the book it says that they’re no taller than your knee.

Like they’re much, much smaller, which is actually reflected in the way that the new Wonka movie was developed, by the way, which I thought was interesting. Wonka says, of course, they’re real people. They’re Oompa Loompas. And so he talks about how they came from lump of land. He gives them all the backstory, which actually the backstory of the Oompa Loompas.

is given in the 2005 film in a way that it is not in 71. And then, um, then Augustus Gloop falls in to the river in the book. And I think that that’s how it was in the 71 film, save he doesn’t share their history. Right. 

[00:20:32] Josiah: So, I did want to mention the, uh, what some might call problematic nature of the Oompa Loompas appearance.

I see in the 1964 text, they were dressed in jungle clothes and their skin was almost pure black. So, they changed that! And I’m gonna just go out on a limb and say, for the better, uh, in 1973, nine years later after the film came out. They made a small change so that their skin was rosy white, but they still wore what some called jungle clothes, including deer skins and leaves.

And so in the 2023 text, which I believe was released as Wonka was being promoted, the new prequel with Timothee Chalamet. They just took out their physical description altogether, so they are no longer wearing the deer skins and leaves and etc. 

[00:21:34] Tim: I liked the way that the 71 movie portrayed them, the very unusual way, and that’s repeated in the new prequel, the Wonka movie.

They’re, you know, orange with green hair. They’re completely, you know, don’t say they’re this race or I’m saying they’re this or whatever. They’re fantastical and they’re completely different. I like that about them and I think that’s appropriate to the story. 

[00:22:07] Donna: But as far as going into plot and timeline, um, one change that I’ve noted is there’s no subplot in the book of Charlie or the other four children being sought for chocolate secrets.

And I will say in the movie, I thought it was really kind of a mystery moment to see Slugworth In every single setting of the five children, you would just be there like he could be anywhere on the planet at any time. And I thought that was kind of added a little bit of intrigue to it. And he would just whisper a little bit.

And oh, you know, You know, you could tell he just looked like a bad dude, um, but that does not happen in the book. His name comes up, but that’s not, that’s not a part of the book. 

[00:23:00] Josiah: Just at a cursory read, the Slugworth subplot was an invention of David Seltzer, the other uncredited screenwriter. . 

[00:23:11] Rebekah: One of the other really small changes that I noticed was that there was a machine both in the book and the 1971 film Mm-Hmm as they are kind of searching for the golden tickets.

And this is all before we arrive at the factory. The machines were different from the book to film. So in the book there was a machine that was supposed to be scanning bars for golden tickets. It was, uh, dangerous, like. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but it, it spit out something that hit a person that was important.

It pulled out, 

[00:23:41] Tim: it pulled out somebody’s gold filling. 

[00:23:43] Rebekah: Right. Yes. And so a crowd of people destroyed it. In the film, it was a computer program, which the funny part of which was that it really 

[00:23:52] Tim: That was probability stuff. 

[00:23:54] Rebekah: Yeah, it well, it felt more like what we now have gotten to know of like AI and chat GPT because they built this computer program to predict the location of the final tickets.

But then the program was like, no, that would be cheating and refused to share its answer. Yeah. 

[00:24:10] Tim: And said, I’m telling the computer now that it needs to do this, you know, and the computer basically says, what does the computer need with chocolate? You know, 

[00:24:19] Josiah: another. change that I enjoyed was that there was a falsified ticket in both, but in the book, it was found second, not fifth, right before Charlie’s real ticket.

So in the film, the falsified ticket serves as a As a twist that, oh, you think that Charlie, the main character is going to get a Gordon, Charlie doesn’t. Yeah. Whereas in the book, it’s just a piece of world building that, yeah, someone would try and do that. It’s not that big a deal as far as the emotion of the reader goes.

[00:24:54] Tim: That is such a small change and yet it has such a big impact in the, in the book. It’s almost just also there was a falsified ticket and that’s about all there is to it. But in the, in the movie, it allows for the disappointment for Charlie. He’s missed every opportunity. You feel bad for him. And then you just, you know, and while he doesn’t yet know that that was falsified when he goes to buy the next piece of the next bar of chocolate.

Yeah. You know, we do, the audience already knows. Well, they, uh, they did change, uh, another thing in the, in the timeline. In the 71 movie, uh, the tour date when they had to be at the factory to start the tour was October 1st, while in the book, uh, and in the 2005 movie, it was February 1st. Um, it’s, it’s a little strange, The October 1st for the 1971 movie meant that they didn’t have to add snow, but the February date for the book and then for the 2005 movie, uh, saw the addition of snow.

So maybe, maybe in the movie producers minds, they were already spending so much to make the factory snow. Uh, trying to add artificial snow, uh, was a little tough. It was cold, they were wearing coats and things, but, uh, I don’t think there was any snow in the 71 movie. 

[00:26:19] Rebekah: That makes sense. I looked up the dates because I thought, well, maybe the 71 film was like released in, um, October or September or something.

So it would feel timely. Now. And it’s like, no, it wasn’t. It just, it, there had to be another reason. But that’s a really good thought process. 

[00:26:36] Tim: In the book, Wonka does not pretend to be lame, though at the end of the book, he does tell Grandpa Joe and Charlie that he is much older than he appears. That’s, that’s a slight change with the entrance of Wonka.

Wonka in the 71 film. 

[00:26:57] Donna: Well, I love that that came up because one of my favorite scenes in the movie Is him walking out of the factory with that cane and all that and then the whole role forward role thing And so then as I was studying a little doing a little research on on fact fun facts, uh, I came across this Wonka Accepted the the role on one condition now.

They wanted milder 

[00:27:24] Rebekah: Yeah, sorry. No, you’re good. 

[00:27:26] Donna: Apology. Uh, they wanted Gene Wilder, like, you know, he didn’t have to beg for this part, but they wanted him, but he said, I’ll accept the role in one condition. When I’m making, this is a quote, when I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door, carrying a cane, then walk through the crowd with a limp.

Once the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple. They whisper to themselves and they become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on. I stand straight up. It stands straight up by itself, the cane. But I keep on walking until I realize I no longer have my cane.

I start to fall forward and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up to great applause. When asked why he wanted that to happen, Wilder replied, from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth. Wow. 

[00:28:28] Rebekah: And that’s exactly what they chose to do.

That’s brilliant. Wow. And 

[00:28:32] Donna: it’s funny because, uh, as I read more into that fact, he said, I will not do the movie if I can’t do that. Which I thought was interesting, such a seemingly. frivolous little thing to put in there, but he was, for whatever reason, that just was super important to him. I was, I loved that.

[00:28:54] Rebekah: That is something Josiah would absolutely say. I read that and thought, oh, that sounds like Josiah. Yeah. 

[00:29:00] Donna: Another plot change that, I’m not sure why they added it, but it was interesting enough in the movie was when they did the contract signing with the children, uh, that, that, that, that wasn’t in the book at all.

That was added to the 71 film. Um, 

[00:29:19] Tim: I think the reason is because in the movie, or in the book rather, Charlie does not steal the fizzy drink. They added that to the 71 film, that he and Grandpa Joe steal the fizzy drink, so they’ve misbehaved. They’ve done what they were told not to do. So by the end of the film, Wonka says, You signed it.

Here it is. It said you wouldn’t do these things. And so. No, no prize. You get nothing and all of that stuff. So it’s part of that plot change, I think. 

[00:29:52] Josiah: For 

[00:29:52] Tim: me, the 

[00:29:52] Josiah: contract signing being added to the film actually It quiets the cynicism in me as a movie viewer, where in the book I was reading and my suspension of disbelief was a little shaken when horrible things were happening to these children.

And the parents were just like, oh, okay, where is he? Where do I go get him? And Willy Wonka’s like, yeah, go this way and maybe you’ll catch him before he’s incinerated. Not exactly a litigious 

[00:30:22] Tim: society. 

[00:30:23] Josiah: The comical contract was a very magical way to fill a plot hole while still keeping my suspension of disbelief.

[00:30:32] Rebekah: And, as I mentioned, we will do some light spoilers for the new Wonka movie. I did read that that was specifically created as a prequel to the 1971 film, not the book and not the 2005 film, which we’ll understand. We’ll talk a little bit about that later, but it couldn’t have been a prequel to that film.

Um, but I love that when Wonka first arrives in said nondescript town and ends up staying somewhere his first night, he has to sign a contract. And the girl, Noodle, tries to pull it out and show him how long it is, and then Wonka pretends to read it. Read the fine print. Says that it’s all fine, you know, even though there’s tons of fine print.

Signs it and basically signs his life away, but then you realize, like, he can’t read and all that stuff. So I think it’s funny that they used that from the original film because Wonka basically was redoing something that was done to him to protect himself in one way or another. I thought that that was a really, really clever add to the Wonka film.

Yes. 

[00:31:31] Tim: Yes. Yes. What other differences did we see in the plot and timeline? 

[00:31:35] Rebekah: There wasn’t much. In the factory, once they get to the factory, other than the whole, like, Charlie not taking the fizzy lifting drink, which we already mentioned, the contract, there were very few things that changed. 

[00:31:47] Josiah: I remember there were squirrels instead of golden geese.

There were squirrels in the book. And there were golden geese in the 1971 movie. They went back to squirrels in the 2005. I thought that was an interesting book to movie adaptation, that we went from squirrels saying that verruca salt is a bad nut, to golden geese, the device saying that verruca salt is a bad egg.

[00:32:16] Tim: In the Burton adaptation, they go back to squirrels and that’s creepy because the squirrels jump on her very, very much like the book describes, you know, 100 squirrels, 25 on her leg, 25 on the other leg and, and all, and they, they drag her down the hole. It’s pretty creepy. Oh, in the Tim Burton, there’s like a bunch of squirrels.

In the book, are there a bunch? The book says a hundred. And in that, in the 2005 film, it looks like there could be about that many. 

[00:32:46] Donna: In the 2005 film, I saw two after she’s drug away, which it is weird. Then her dad is like, oh, I have to go get her. Where is she? And he’s, he walks over and looks over into the hole in the floor when they, where they drug her and a squ it shows a squirrel jumping up and literally hitting his behind, his butthole in to the hole, like he leaps through the air and hits him and knocks him in the hole.

It’s really crazy. So, I’m gonna jump into some, Just a couple of facts. I only pulled numbers for the 1971 movie. I didn’t want to, wasn’t going to go into the other, uh, to the other two. But the book release of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was in 1964, the year I was born, a special. 

[00:33:38] Tim: Aww. 

[00:33:40] Donna: And I was a toddler.

Oh, 

[00:33:42] Rebekah: you 

[00:33:43] Donna: were 

[00:33:43] Rebekah: a hot little sweet toddler year 

[00:33:45] Tim: old 

[00:33:46] Rebekah: toddler. I think she can only say that because she was a baby that year. So, 

[00:33:50] Donna: yeah. So the movie release was June 30th in 1971. That was a summer 

[00:33:57] Tim: blockbuster. 

[00:33:58] Donna: It was. I guess that was the intention at that point. Um, the book rating on Goodreads is 4. 8 out of 5.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie got a 91%, which is, uh, really fresh. Uh, IMDb rated the movie 7. 8 out of 10, and the Flixster audience score is also 91, which I thought was pretty cool. 

[00:34:20] Rebekah: I will point out, similar to what Josiah has said in the past, the Rotten Tomatoes score Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t around people that review it from like in the present.

They only review things that are like really good or cult classics or whatever or really bad. Like it’s very rare that they just go back and and rate average movies. So it may be a little bit inflated, but honestly the movie’s become a classic for a long time. So. The movie cost 3 million to make, it totaled 4.

75 million worldwide, okay? So it made, you know, over what it cost, theoretically, it 

[00:35:00] Josiah: may not have 

[00:35:01] Rebekah: made a huge profit. 

[00:35:02] Josiah: As a reminder, by today’s standards, they usually spend the production cost. Again, in marketing, so you may have actually 

[00:35:11] Rebekah: lost money. 

[00:35:12] Josiah: Yeah, but I don’t know what kind of marketing costs there were back then.

[00:35:16] Donna: But if you think about the fact, you didn’t really need a ton of CG like the factory, and you had, I’m sure, a few things of backdrops or CG. But a lot of stuff, they built these sets. It was all practical 

[00:35:28] Rebekah: pretty 

[00:35:29] Donna: much. Yeah, it was, it was practical. 

[00:35:31] Rebekah: So what I thought was interesting was the movie had a re release in 96 for the 25th anniversary and it made 21 million.

So it made far, it far exceeded the original cost. Okay. Wow. So that gives you a nearly 25 million Um, box office take home for a 3 million film. So it did definitely profit at that point. 

[00:35:52] Josiah: I’m sure VHS sales, DVD sales are in the millions. Oh, absolutely. Doesn’t include any of that kind of stuff. 

[00:36:00] Rebekah: But I just want to put this all in perspective because the original movie from 1971 has made something like 25 million ish, maybe a little more.

Um, The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie had $150 million budget, and it grossed over $475 million. It was the eighth highest grossing film that year. 

[00:36:20] Tim: Wow. And well, Johnny Depp’s a, a, a very popular actor, and so he carried that one. Um, can I, can I say at this point that the 2005 Burton film with Johnny Depp is more faithful to the book in a lot of small details, although the 71 movie didn’t diverge a lot.

There are a lot of things that are in the book that you do see. in the 2005 film, but the 2005 film loses it for me in two points. One, it, the color palette is, is just dismal. Um, and I just, I think it’s supposed to be that the world is a dismal place and inside the factory is so much nicer. And the makeup for Johnny Depp, I think was completely off.

It made him look like a freak. It made him look crazy. And not, not just, not like Wilder wanted them not to know if I was telling the truth or I was telling a lie. This just looks like he’s creepy. He’s creepy all the time. Everything he says is creepy. And the backstory that they added for him was, was super uncomfortable to watch.

I actually watched the movie with my grandson. Um, this week, so in preparation once again, and I remember thinking when we left the theater, ooh, and thinking at the end of watching it this time, ooh, there’s just so many places where it misses and yet it’s so much more faithful to the book in the details, but it just misses it for me in, in those two things that just kind of make it a cringe.

[00:38:07] Rebekah: And I did want to. Sorry, I wanted to go back to finish the money thing. I was looking something up. I also adjusted for inflation to take the 1975 and 1996 box office numbers into 2, 005 compare with the Charlie film and it still is only 54, 000, 000 in 2, 005. So it made so much less money by insane leaps and bounds.

It was probably a box 

[00:38:31] Tim: office flop as far as the company was concerned. 

[00:38:34] Donna: Okay. So I found DVD sales. So DVD sales, it was released on August 12th, 2012. And between then and they have cumulative sales up to April 2nd, 2017. So DVD sales, uh, total 13. 1 million and which is great. And then they also had some Blu ray sales.

Uh, with a total of that show a total of like, I think this is blu ray added to the DVD took the total from 13. 1 million to 16. 2 million 

[00:39:12] Rebekah: and that doesn’t include any VHS and stuff before DVD. No, it’s made, it’s made money. It has not been a runaway success and arguably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kind of was like.

You know, it well exceeded its budget. It profited well, like I said, it was the eighth highest grossing that year. So it’s interesting. 

[00:39:31] Josiah: Let’s move on to some interesting trivia. There were some other children in early drafts of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that I just wanted to mention. This is according to several sources, mainly.

An author, Lucy Mangan had released a book about 50 years after the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory release. It’s kind of a, like a bookumentary. I don’t know. It’s nonfiction, I guess is what you call it. Gotcha. Uh, talking about the writing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And some of the characters she mentions were cut, include Miranda Grope, who eventually turned into Augustus Gloop.

[00:40:15] Rebekah: Nice. Elvira 

[00:40:16] Josiah: Entwistle, who turned into Veruca Salt. There was Violet Glockenberry, who changed to Violet Strabismus, who finally turned into Violet Beauregard. Uh, there were some who didn’t. Oh, there was Herpes Trout who turned into Mike TV. Wow. I did read that Roald Dahl cut out in later versions all mentions of Augustus being fat.

He wanted to reduce the use of that word. 

[00:40:50] Speaker 7: Okay. He 

[00:40:51] Josiah: occasionally referred to him as enormous or, or words like that, but he didn’t want to use the word. Yeah. Yeah. Fat In later editions. There were some other cut characters who didn’t turn into other characters. In Charlie, in the Chocolate factory though, role doll occasionally reused them.

In other stories, there was Marvin Prune, Wilbur Rice, commie Trout, Beck, Miranda, Mary Piker, Clarence Crump, parents roper. It’s into fish. 

[00:41:20] Tim: I found the names that he did end up using interesting because they all have some, some bearing on the character, whether, whether they truly point to the character. Um, Augustus Gloop doesn’t sound like a thin person.

It sounds, you know, it makes him sound, you know, Big and kind of clumsy. 

[00:41:44] Speaker 7: Bloopy. 

[00:41:45] Tim: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it does. I mean, even if it, you know, Veruca is a wart and interestingly in the, in the book and in the 2005 movie, when, uh, Wonka is first introduced to Veruca. He says, I always thought that that was a contagious wart.

You’re such a beautiful girl. I think the names were supposed to mean something. I think a lot of times authors want the names to be evocative of the character, especially in this type of work and some of the other things that we’ve, that we’ve reviewed. 

[00:42:24] Rebekah: I thought it was really fascinating that the guy who played Charlie, I looked him up because I was like, Oh, have we ever seen him in anything else?

No. The actor who played Charlie name is Peter Gardner Ostrom. He was 12 when selected by talent agents to portray Charlie in the Willy Wonka movie. He was born in 1957. He is an American veterinarian. He never acted again. It’s the only role he’d ever acted in, and all of the other children featured in the film were actors with previous experience.

Oh, wow. But Charlie was, like, essentially an unknown and never went on. Do it again. Another piece of trivia that we had found, which was that the director, um, Stewart, he wanted people’s reactions to be recorded on film. And so a lot of the unusual scenes that they had to act out, the rooms they would enter and all of those things, they would, like, get the scenes.

And then shoot them like, or they would, they’d never seen the set and their reactions were caught on camera, which I thought was also adds to that. 

[00:43:27] Donna: And the scene where, uh, where Willie comes out of the factory, that was a huge one that I, I, if I remember correctly, even Gene Wilder was a part of that that said, we cannot let people see me do that.

I want, we want the actors to act, react like they would. Don’t, we don’t want it to be fake. And I thought that was very cool for, uh, for, for the effect that they were trying to get of wonder and, and excitement and just awe over everything that was going on around them. 

[00:44:00] Tim: So, Wilder was one of the last actors to audition, and when Stewart and Wolper, uh, saw his audition, they knew immediately that he was the one.

Uh, Wolper remarked, the role fit him tighter than one of Jacques Cousteau’s wetsuits. And Stewart, Stewart said he loved the humor in his eyes and inflections in his voice. So, you know, we look at it and say, well, who else could have played it? But there are lots, lots of times where we think the actor brought life to the role and we can’t really imagine other people doing that.

And I’ve seen a number of movies in recent years where I would say it was the actor cast in the leading role that ruined the movie, which was a great book and the adaptation was like, eh. 

[00:44:53] Josiah: Did you know that all six members of Monty Python expressed interest in playing Willy Wonka in the 1971 film. 

[00:45:02] Donna: Oh, 

[00:45:04] Josiah: that’s really 

[00:45:04] Donna: cool.

John Cleese, 

[00:45:06] Josiah: Eric Idle, and Michael Palin were also later considered for Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s version. Wow. Not big enough names in 1971 is what the producers thought. As we said, it came down to who was the biggest draw. But yeah, in the later, I assume Tim Burton just loves Johnny Depp and the Monty Python guys were a little old.

[00:45:29] Tim: They were, they were getting a little long in the tooth at that point, honestly. Roald Dahl is listed as the screenwriter in the film, which I noted when we were watching the film, that apparently all the changes were approved by him and all of that stuff. However, he only provided outlines and referenced some of the chapters rather than actually presenting a screenplay.

Uh, he had some creative differences and eventually walked away from the project and he was replaced by David Seltzer that Josiah had mentioned earlier. Uh, producer David Wolper reached out to Seltzer for an uncredited rewrite and as repayment for not Having credit, Wolper agreed to produce Seltzer’s next film.

[00:46:16] Donna: Dahl was so infuriated by the changes to the plot, he hated the attention placed on Willy Wonka as opposed to keeping it on Charlie, and he was mad that the role wasn’t given to Spike Milligan. 

[00:46:30] Josiah: I will say, what I read, Dahl did write more than half of the screenplay, and Seltzer just made big changes, including the Think from what I was reading, it said that he added in the imagination song.

[00:46:47] Donna: Oh, oh, and the 

[00:46:49] Josiah: handyman. 

[00:46:50] Rebekah: Oh, both of those are nice. 

[00:46:52] Josiah: Beautiful. Yeah, 

[00:46:53] Rebekah: they’re my favorites. 

[00:46:54] Josiah: Also famous choreographer Bob Fosse for you theater geeks out there. He was angry on several occasions because he was filming. The film adaptation of Cabaret on the same stage, what good is sitting alone in the factory?

[00:47:12] Donna: As we wrap up the fun fact section, I found a couple of websites that listed the movie in some of their top rankings of this year or that year or this Genre of, of movie trivia, the website slash film. com said that the tunnel scene during the boat ride was one of the scariest in any film for children due to the surreal visuals on the walls as they flew down through the river.

The scenes also been interpreted as like a psychedelic trip, like they were trying to represent some drug trip. But director Stewart denied vehemently denied. I think that that was his intention 

[00:47:59] Tim: was probably an homage to that popular drug culture at the time he may not have wanted it to be interpreted that way.

I think it was easily interpreted that way, still is. 

[00:48:13] Josiah: I think the scariest thing in that tunnel scene is when a chicken is beheaded. 

[00:48:20] Tim: It’s 

[00:48:20] Rebekah: horrifying. 

[00:48:22] Tim: If you watch it slowly, you may find a lot of things that were horrifying. Yeah, for sure. Once again, this isn’t the horror version of the film, of the book.

[00:48:34] Donna: But with everything else that had been going on before it, crazy things, and the children being punished or taken away, and Augustus being sucked up the tube and all that stuff, this does take a turn to scary versus just fantastical stuff. But I will say, 

[00:48:50] Tim: and I just finished listening to the book recently, so, um, when I was listening to that scene in the book, I wondered how close it was to what was, what was in the film.

And actually, aside from the pictures on the wall, Um, it’s supposed to be this frightening, Uh, this frightening look, Uh, this trip, it’s getting faster, And a lot of the words that Wilder uses, you know, There’s no way of knowing which way we’re going and all that, That’s from the book. And there is a very creepy, scary kind of thing about it, Even in the book.

So Dahl meant for it to be a little creepy. unnerving, if nothing else. As far as reviews go, different people viewed it very differently, and even, uh, the, the team of Fiskell and Ebert had two very different ways of looking at it. Um, Ebert said it was probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz, uh, and Ebert, uh, said the anticipation of what Wonka’s Factory is like is so well developed that its eventual appearance is a terrible letdown.

[00:50:02] Speaker: Wow. 

[00:50:03] Tim: Sure, there’s a chocolate river, but it looks too much like the Chicago River to be appealing. The color of the photography is just flat. So even though they, they reviewed together, they had very different opinions. So I imagine that’s probably what most people have. Very different opinions about it, and probably very strongly, firmly held opinions.

[00:50:24] Rebekah: I thought it might be interesting to do a little bit of a mini game together. First of all, I’d like to know what you guys thought of the 2005 adaptation, because I think it was very controversial. And then I thought we could just talk briefly before we give our final verdicts. On the, you know, 71 film, in terms of, Um, I wanted to just hear your thoughts on the new movie as well that we just saw together a few days ago.

[00:50:49] Tim: Well, I’ve already, I’ve already started my review of the 2005 movie, so I was a little creeped out by it. Didn’t care for the color palette and I felt like it missed on a lot of things, although it was so much more like the book than even the 71 film, but I did like the new Wonka film. It goes back as if it’s a prequel to the 71 film for sure, not the 2005 film, and it, it opens, opens the pathway for a lot of the things that happened in the 71 film, the look of the Oompa Loompas, although the size is different because now we have CG and we don’t have to do it practically with it.

Little people, um, and, but I think, I think the 2005 movie for me was less, less full of wonder. When I, when I watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, there’s a lot of wonder involved in that for me. So, I like that aspect to it. 

[00:51:49] Donna: As far as my thoughts on the 2005 adaptation, my greatest issue. was with the styling and costuming of Johnny Depp.

I thought the page boy haircut and the strange teeth, they were straight and white, but hugely pronounced. Along with the rest of the styling, it didn’t work for me. I didn’t feel like he endeared himself. And even when he described the, the, the sad background where he grew up and the things with him never having sweets and that kind of all that that went on, it didn’t make me feel for him where Wilder’s quote, Quirkiness worked for me.

The curly, crazy hair and his, even his facial expressions that were kind of silly and goofy. Wilder’s not particularly handsome. He still came across with a strong character. He wanted to use his gift for chocolate making to change the world, to make the world happy. And I love that he had a consequence for bad actions.

I think that’s important in a fun way to show I had some very particular guidelines and you stepped over those. When I offered you everything, You still found ways for four of the children, they still found ways to break those things. So I love the fact that he said, I’m sorry, but your choices have consequences.

Maybe as a parent, that looked different to me too. As far as my review of the new Wonka movie, unfortunately, it’s colored because I’m a huge fan of Timothee Chalamet right now. I’m So when I saw the trailers back in the summer, I was immediately thrilled. I think they delivered the music’s new and old.

It stayed in line with the 71 version. The storyline. built a good Wonka. Casting, I thought casting was great. And the whole thing just rolled along for me. I, I really, I really enjoyed it. For 

[00:54:06] Josiah: the 2005 adaptation being less than enjoyable in a lot of ways, I thought the music was pretty good, kind of classic Danny Elfman, and that song from, and I was a kid when the trailers were coming out, and when we were re watching the movie the other night, the 2005 adaptation, and Augustus Gloop got sucked up into the river.

And the Oompa Loompas started singing Augustus Gloop. Ninkum Poop. I was like, it unlocked a memory in my mind. Like, oh, that song is so catchy. And that’s not the only example, but the music was pretty good in the 2005 adaptation for being pretty brand new. You know, you have all this classic music that you didn’t want to use from the 1971 film.

I thought, I think it’s Danny Elfman who made most of the music. I think he did a pretty good job, but overall it’s probably too creepy. It’s, it’s not as enjoyable and magical as the 1971 version. The new Wonka movie that just came out, the prequel, very fun, very magical. Just have a few problems with the plot, but if I have two problems with the plot, it’s a pretty darn good movie, so I give it an A.

It’s certainly, it’s, it’s honestly something I might re watch. I don’t like re watching a lot of movies, but I like Timothy Chalamet and I like how weird the movie lets itself be. It’s not so cynical. So many modern movies are so cynical. Everything has to be logical, but he just has a candy that you eat and you hover.

You can fly now. It’s like, oh, how did he do that? Oh, he put, he put clouds in the chocolate. That’s how he did it. 

[00:55:48] Rebekah: Well, my final verdict was mostly that, I don’t know, this I guess is controversial, but I would say I think that now that I’ve read the book, I understand why it spurned such a following and why it became such a classic, um, like why the movie became a classic.

And I would say, I think the movie’s probably better. But if I were a parent of small children, I would honestly put them at the same level. Because I think the enjoyment of reading this book to small children could be a lot of fun. I don’t know that I’ll listen to it again a ton. It’s pretty short. It’s a good book.

definitely a children’s book. And I, but I don’t like put Willy Wonka on to rewatch either. So it’s not like I’m, you know, I love the movie, I love the songs and all those things, but it’s not a rewatcher for me. So I would say I would put them pretty close to equal, especially if I had a way to enjoy it with like little kids.

Maybe I’ll read it to my grandkids. I don’t know. And so I think that. For me, they’re pretty close. I would say the movie definitely is the thing that became the uber classic, you know, and I, I will probably rewatch the new Wonka movie more than I would rewatch the original Willy Wonka, which again, I don’t know what that means or says, but that’s just, you know, how I felt after, after that experience.

So I enjoyed them all. Quite a bit. 2005 one, not as much, but again, it’s still classic in its own way. 

[00:57:12] Tim: I thought the 71 film was better. Um, listening to the book, there are a lot of details in there. It sticks pretty close. The movie sticks pretty close to it. But, the movie was just magical, and the addition, the addition of all the music, which made it a musical, something a friend of mine would hate, um, but the fact that it was a musical just made it all very magical and nostalgic, and I would, for me, it’s the movie.

[00:57:42] Donna: Well, I won’t, I won’t add a lot to what you just said, Tim, I agree with you. I think the movie was, uh, and still is a timeless. story and concept, the colors and the music, which I’m a sucker for a good musical. They drew me in. It was funny and fun and all those things. But also, every time I watch it, it evokes incredibly strong emotions of, of happiness and some sadness as well.

But the ending is so unbelievably beautiful where he just says, Charlie, you know, you’re a good little boy and I, I’m going to do this for you because I need to pass it to somebody who will carry on me. And I just, I think it’s just unbelievable. I, I, I’m, I’m starting to cry just talking about it. So we’ll go on.

I like the movie better. I 

[00:58:42] Josiah: think that the movie was better. I think the book was great and magical. For some reason, it really bothers me that All of the kids in the book were allowed to bring two companions. That really messes it up for me. It’s so clean. You get five golden tickets, and then you get to the factory, and for the kids, you have four scenes where the kids are ruined by their own vices.

And having the two parents there just messes with that clean formula. And I will say the movie expands on the book so much. And I think all the expansions, all of the expansions work and they’re fun and they contribute to the themes of the story and they contribute to the enjoyment of the audience. The fizzy lifting drink in the movie?

makes you think about, well, Charlie isn’t perfect, you know, he, he has his own things that he needs to deal with it. He has too much wonder. He’s, he wanted to have too much fun, but he did disobey. So then you have to like deal with that as an audience member. What does it mean about Charlie? What does it tell you about Charlie?

But then he gives the everlasting Godstopper. I just think the movie is more nuanced and more magical. and better constructed. 

[01:00:08] Rebekah: All right, well, I believe that wraps us up. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review. It helps us a ton. You can find us most places online at bookisbetterpod.

If you want to send feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, email us bookisbetterpod at gmail. com and until next time, imagine,

[01:00:36] Speaker: say bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye 

[01:00:44] Speaker 7: bye 

bye.

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