Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) - Tim Burton

By Maria Sofia Bassit Gomez.

 Willy Wonka: The worlds’ best chocolate factory belongs to a neurodivergent cynical man child.

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory is an iconic musical fantasy movie directed by Tim Burton and written by John August, based on the British novel of the same title written by Roald Dahl in 1964. The 2005 movie is an adaptation of the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. With a budget of 150 million USA, the movie made an astronomical success of 475 million USD worldwide.

The main cast is composed of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, AnnaSophia Robb as Violette, Julia Winter as Veruca Salt, Philip Wiegratz as Augustus, Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompa, David Kelly as Charlie’s grandfather and Jordan Fry as Mike Teavee. 

Warning: This review contain spoilers about the movie. Proceed at your own risk.

 The 1h55 min movie is about an unfortunate family in England. Charlie Bucket, the youngest, and only, child in the family is working rigorously in order to support his family, as his father lost his job due to robots replacing him. Meanwhile, the successful chocolate factory owner Willy Wonka arranges a competition, where only five people who find the golden ticket in Wonka’s chocolate bars can join the challenge set by the mad chocolatier. After hardships and hilarious music breaks, the winner is revealed to be Charlie. However, the movie doesn’t end there.

The movie is a classic must watch for any movie fanatic. The humor is very clever and not put all over the place. Some of the iconic lines were made into shareable funny memes like the following:

 The Battle of the Wonkas:

When the second movie was released, fans were quickly in a heated battlefield of arguments regarding which movie was the best. More importantly, which Willy Wonka was the best: Johnny Depp or Gene Wilder. {R.I.P Wilder 1933~2016}. Regardless of this debate, both of the actors put on an excellent performance in their respective movies.

Statistically speaking, the 1971  only made 4.5 million USD compared to the 475 million USD. However, the 1971 Willy Wonka was more critically acclaimed than the second one.

“The better the cheese, the bigger are the holes” ~the author:

As much as the film is close to my heart, re-watching the movie made me more aware of the plot-holes the movie or book has. Keep in mind, I only noted the ones I could remember while watching.

Starting with the first inconsistency I noticed.

During the first challenge, when Augustus was being lured by the chocolate fountain, Willy Wonka stated that the chocolate fountain's purpose is to mix the chocolate to its ideal consistency and that it should not be touched by anyone at all costs.

However, once Augustus falls in the fountain, one of the Oompa Loompas swim during the musical choreography, which goes against Wonka’s first rule of not touching the chocolate fountain.

Another plot-hole, one that might be there just for comedic purposes, are the Oompa Loompa's speech abilities. While previously shown that Wonka found the friendly civilization in a bohemian forest, they didn't have any speech ability and mainly communicated through weird sounds and hand gestures.

Does it make sense that they know how to fully sing in English while not speaking any lines of dialogue?

How do they understand Willy Wonka’s orders if they can’t speak the language?

A reason could be that the Oompa Loompa prefer not to speak to strangers but what about their boss? Isn’t it polite to speak to your boss?

Hopefully, Wonka is understanding to the Loompas.

The movie centralizes on the importance of family. As for Wonka, he cut off contact with his father during his preadolescence. His father, a famous dentist of the city,  banned his son from ever tasting sweets. Yet, young Willy's love for chocolate would lead him to disobey his father. This would result in Wilbur, Wonka’s father, to move his entire house out of the residence in the same night Willy ran from home. How was it possible to move an entire 3 story house in a few hours to a bohemian place?

Another plot-hole is when Willy comes back to meet his father, he traces him back to his original address, where his house remained perfectly intact.

During the time, Willy visits his father, he noticed multiple newspaper clippings of him and the factory alongside teenage pictures of Wonka. How could it be possible for Wilbur to own pictures of his son if he disowned him during his preadolescence? Moreover, how could Wilbur not recognize his own son while owning multiple pictures of Willy?

Nonetheless, the scene when Wilbur recognizes his own son by his teeth is hilarious and oddly heartwarming.

Another critical aspect of the movie is how no one found it odd that a middle-aged man has a child as a business partner. The age gap would be frowned upon, and legal action may be taken due to child labor. Furthermore, the movie portrays Charlie as a working child before even meeting Wonka, possibly insinuating that the film portrays the old, industrialized England whose many unlucky children had to work in order to compensate their family’s lifestyle {1760~1830}.

One last nitpicking plot-hole goes back to the Oompa Loompas once more. As seen in the movie, the Oompa Loompas are a mainly masculine aligned species. The question is, how do Oompa Loompas reproduce? How do they keep their population growing?

My explanation is the following. Wonka has one crossdressing secretary. Could Oompa Loompas have different genders that makes them reproduce but still look identical to each other?

Another theory is that Oompa Loompa reproduce asexually, similar to plants.

Psychology enthusiast looking through Willy Wonka mental health :

Willy Wonka's character trait is the cherry on top for the movie.

It is no surprise that his personality shows common neurodivergent traits.

Neurodivergent: “A neurodivergent person is defined as one whose neurological development and state are atypical, usually viewed as abnormal or extreme. The term was coined in the neurodiversity movement as an opposite for "neurotypical" - previously the term "neurodiverse" was sometimes applied to individuals for this purpose.”

Source: https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/awareness/neurodiversity/

Wonka often gets flashbacks from his childhood throughout the movie whenever he hears the lexical cluster of family and parenthood. Another sign is Wonka’s lack of social mastery, represented either in his communication with the children and their parents or his interaction to his environment. As Wonka isn’t able to fully express empathy to the children’s “death” or to Charlie’s situation, it is likely that Wonka might be apathetic, or he simply has trouble expressing his emotions. 

Wonka’s slight disgust for physical contact is also something to take into consideration. However, there is possibility that these traits are mere personality traits and Willy is a healthy man. In spite of this possibility, Willy Wonka is likely to be a neurodivergent person. My bet goes on for autism due to his immense creativity and the features described above. Yet each could interpret this character to their mind’s ideal. 

Bottom line:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a great family movie for everyone’s taste. 

While the plot-holes might bug the critically minded, between the humorous gags and the deep moral, the movie will never fail to bring smiles upon the viewers.