Break a Leg

For reasons I would rather not go into, my wife and I have lately been  watching a lot of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. No, the Gene  Wilder one. We've seen it maybe 5 or 6 times in the past two weeks or  so. It sounds annoying, but it's really a wonderful break from the  usual assortment of Curious George, Caillou, and Showtime After Dark.  If you haven't watched it, or haven't watched it recently, I suggest  that you do. Gene Wilder is brilliant.

The film has sparked a lot of heated debate and analysis, and I think  that we have come to some radical conclusions about the story that perhaps a lot of people hadn't thought of.

For the sake of argument I'm ignoring the book; I haven't read it in decades, and I think a movie version of a story should stand on its  own. Besides, Roald Dahl actually wrote the screenplay to Willie Wonka, so holding the movie to a higher standard should be acceptable.

We started wondering: how did "Slugworth" know where all of the Golden Tickets would be found, and get to the children so quickly with his  nefarious offer?

Now "Slugworth" is of course not really Slugworth (I in fact have my  doubts as to whether Slugworth exists at all), but in the movie he  works for Willie Wonka. His offer to reward the theft of an Everlasting Gobstopper is really a test to see who has the integrity to be handed the Keys to the Kingdom.

But how does he get to the children so quickly; in Veruca's case even being in the factory at the moment when it is found, and in Charlie's case intercepting him on the way home immediately after he finds the ticket?

I think we've found the answer.

The obvious solution is that Wonka knows where each Golden Ticket will be  found, because he knows exactly where they've been shipped. The question of how he could have know where to send Slugworth and when is  answered simply by assuming that the tickets were not distributed simultaneously, but staggered so that Slugworth could mill about in the proper city until the ticket was found, then move on to the next place.

This holds up under minimal scrutiny, especially in Violet's case since her father had purchased such a large amount of Wonka bars.  Slugworth simply insinuated himself into the factory and waited until the proper bar was opened.

This answer does not however hold up in the case of Charlie Bucket.  How could Slugworth have known so quickly that Charlie had found the ticket, known his route home, and gotten into the tunnel to intercept him? 

There must be another solution.

We then moved onto a very elegant scenario: "Slugworth" is himself planting the Wonka bars! Willie Wonka knows exactly which children he believes he wants to evaluate for taking over his factory, and simply  dispatches his right-hand man to "deliver" the invitations.

There is other evidence for this theory in the film. Wonka has what you can only call a trap for each child, intended to trigger their most basic negative quality: greed. Each child is greedy in one way or another, but of course couldn't the same be said of Wonka? Why sell his chocolate instead of giving it away for free? No, greed alone does not disqualify any child from taking over the factory. 

What Wonka is testing for is actually not the presence of greed per se but the self control to overcome it. Is there a child in this group of five hand-selected children that can overcome their nature and take over his factory?

Why did he select each child? Different reasons. Each child has a parent that either runs a business or factory, or is in politics or otherwise well-connected, or is simply obsessive about something in the same way that Wonka is obsessive about chocolate. They all have a little of his qualities in each one of them.

Except, of course, for Charlie.

How could Wonka possibly have pre-selected Charlie, when his acquiring of the Golden Ticket was seemingly left to fate? He found some money in the gutter, bought one candy bar, then capriciously decides to buy  another. The second bar, the one containing his Ticket, is not even selected by his own hand but is taken off the shelf by Bill the Candy Store Owner.

The answer of course is that Mr. Wonka left one ticket unknown, a variable in his equation for fate to decide. He chose four children, and fate chose the fifth. Simple. And wrong. Because of Slugworth.

Slugworth was waiting for Charlie within seconds after he had found his ticket. Even if Slugworth had prior knowledge of the fifth ticket's general wherabouts, he could not have intercepted Charlie so quickly. Assuming even that Slugworth knew which candy store the ticket would be sold from, he could not possibly have known who Charlie was or where he lived, in order to meet him as he ran home to tell Grandpa Joe the good news.

Which means that Wonka arranged that ticket to fall into Charlie's hands. But how?

The lazy answer is that Bill the Candy Store Owner is in cahoots with Wonka, and hands Charlie the chocolate bar when Charlie comes back for seconds (was there a moment of panic when he realized that he forgot to give it to him the first time?). Like I said, that answer is lazy and has too many shades of deus ex machina.

My final solution (sorry, Yuri) is to propose something radical that my 3-and-a-half year-old son has been telling me all along: Bill is, in fact, Willie Wonka. Gene Wilder is a showman, a figurehead, Ken Watanabe to Aubrey Woods's Laim Neeson. 

Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, Battlestar Galactica arrived at Earth in our past, Dumbledore is gay, and Bill is Willie Wonka.

The alternative of course is that neither of them is Willie Wonka, or that they both are, depending on how you look at it. Either way, "Willie Wonka" knew exactly who he wanted to take over the factory:  Charlie Bucket. Why invite the other children? Who knows? Fair play?  Balance? Just in case he's wrong about Charlie? Or perhaps he invited them, knowing they would fail, in order to gauge Charlie's reactions to the various tricks and traps in the factory?

We know "Wonka" wanted Charlie because we see how angry he gets when he reveals that he knows Charlie broke the rules. He's not angry at all that he has to clean the Fizzy Lifting Drink room's ceiling, he's angry because he thinks that he has misjudged Charlie. He is of course proven wrong when Charlie returns the Everlasting Gobstopper.

Special thanks to my wife and son for coming up with key aspects of this theory. Now go watch the movie again and see how right I am.  It'll blow your minds so wide open your brains fall out.

Let me know if I forgot anything in my theory, so that I can make  something up to plug the hole.