Film / Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

A Roald Dahl classic, reimagined by Tim Burton. ^note  From left to right: Mike Teavee, Augustus Gloop, Charlie Bucket, Violet Beauregarde and Veruca Salt.
Below: Willy Wonka.

"Everything in this room is eatable, even I'm eatable! But that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies."

— Willy Wonka

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is the second film version of Roald Dahl's most popular book. While Truer to the Text than the original 1971 version in many aspects, it is also subject to Adaptation Expansion, namely in giving Willy Wonka a backstory that figures heavily into the final act.

This version, directed by Tim Burton, features Johnny Depp as Wonka, a score by Danny Elfman that uses Dahl's songs from the book (instead of originally created songs like the previous film) and a supporting cast that includes James Fox, Deep Roy, Missi Pyle, Noah Taylor, Deep Roy, AnnaSophia Robb, Deep Roy, Helena Bonham Carter, Deep Roy, Christopher Lee, Deep Roy, Deep Roy, Deep Roy, Deep Roy, and Deep Roy. Plus Freddie Highmore as Charlie, the main character.

See also the character sheet.

---

This film provides examples of (in addition to many of the source novel's tropes):

• Achievements in Ignorance: Mike Teavee sees Willy Wonka's Television Chocolate setup as this on Mr. Wonka's part — Mr. Wonka was merely looking for a new way to get his chocolate to market (based on a profoundly ignorant understanding of how television works, no less) and wound up creating a teleporter - and a remarkably efficient one at that - without realizing the true significance/potential of such an invention.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • The Gloops are the only ones who find Wonka's puppet show amusing, even dancing slightly to it.
  • Willy Wonka has this reaction when Veruca suggests that Violet's mother could "put her in a county fair" after she's blown up like a blueberry.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Willy Wonka has issues with his father which need to be resolved, extending the climax past the point in the book.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Willy Wonka appears as a lanky, older man with thin hair, a zany smile, and a large nose in the book's illustrations. Here, he's played by Johnny Depp—ergo, younger, slimmer, and more conventionally attractive.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the novel, Mr. Wonka tells Charlie he's won the factory while they're flying in the Great Glass Elevator, and in order to ensure that the boy's other grandparents won't have to get out of their bed — which won't fit through the shack's door but will fit in the elevator — to move there, he crashes it into the shack to pick the family up. In this adaptation, Mr. Wonka doesn't break the news that Charlie's won the factory to anyone until after he's crashed the elevator into the shack; and to make matters worse, he doesn't intend to take anyone but Charlie back to the factory, so this just makes him look like an even bigger jerk.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Mike Teavee is turned from the excitable, television obsessed kid he is in the book to a jaded Insufferable Genius who couldn't care less about chocolate.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Depp's portrayal of Wonka. While the original book character could be a bit of a Jerkass at times, here he's more of an apathetic and self-absorbed braggart. Luckily, he gets better by the end of the film. And it's Zig-Zagged as even before that, he at least tries harder to talk the kids out of unwittingly doing horrible things to themselves than his 1971 counterpart did (compare Mike Teavee's fate, with Depp genuinely attempting to convince him that getting into the teleporter is a bad idea, whereas Gene Wilder by that point had completely stopped caring about the kids getting into trouble and only responded to it with dry sarcasm).
  • With the exception of Veruca (who's actually less insufferable here than she was in the 1971 film), all the "bratty" kids become more antagonistic and unpleasant: Augustus and Violet are openly mean to Charlie, while Mike is very rude and arrogant with Willy Wonka.
  • In the original book and 1971 film, one of Mr. Salt's workers gleefully announces that she's found a golden ticket and quickly turns it over. Here, the worker who finds it discreetly tries to conceal it for later, only to immediately get found out by Mr. Salt.
• Adaptation Expansion: The subplot about Willy Wonka's childhood and his relationship with his dentist father.
• Adapted Out:
  • Mr. Beauregarde is not mentioned at all and is instead replaced with Mrs. Beauregarde, who is implied to be a single mother.
  • The Oompa-Loompa's songs, while wholly accurate to how they were sung in the book, are all shortened due to time constraints. Mike's song probably gets the worst of it, as the moral of the song (have your children read rather than watch TV) is excluded.
• Amazing Technicolor World: The factory interior from the Chocolate Room onwards. It creates a sharp contrast to Charlie's hometown, which is presented in washed-out grays and whites.
• And Starring: "With Deep Roy and Christopher Lee", to be specific.
• Artistic License – Geography: Düsseldorf is portrayed as an Alpine wooden-house village, instead of the modern industrial capital of the Ruhr, which is far from any mountains.
• Art Shift: Music shift to be more precise, as each of the Oompa-Loompas' songs has a different theme. Augustus's is based on Bollywood spectacle, as suggested by Deep Roy. Violet's song is derived from '70s funk. Veruca's has a very Beatles-esque feel to it. Mike's is a Hard Rock song.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: The Television Room, which resembles Tipoca City, Kamino.
• Bait-and-Switch Compassion: After Augustus goes up the pipe, Mrs. Gloop asks Mr. Wonka where the pipe leads and is horrified when he tells her it leads to the fudge room. When she asks him if Augustus will be turned into fudge, he tells her that he wouldn't allow it... because no one would buy "Augustus-flavoured chocolate-coated Gloop".
• Bedsheet Ghost: In the first flashback to Mr. Wonka's childhood, he dresses as this for Halloween — the better to hide his Braces of Orthodontic Overkill.
• Belated Child Discipline: At the end, as the other visiting children and their parents are walking out of the chocolate factory, Veruca, who is covered in trash after being fished out of the garbage chute, spots Wonka flying Charlie and Grandpa Joe in his glass elevator, so she asks her father to get her a flying glass elevator like the one Wonka has. Mr. Salt, who is also covered in garbage, and normally gives Veruca what she wants, bluntly responds that the only thing she'll be getting soon as they get back home is a bath. Veruca looks at him smiling, thinking he was just kidding (or that he would get her the elevator after the bath), and Mr. Salt Responds with a silent Death Glare. Veruca stops smiling and stoically continues walking out of the factory with her father.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Mr. Wonka encounters a giant mosquito in the Loompaland flashback.
• Big Door: The Chocolate Room has an Inverted case of this — the door is incredibly tiny, likely so Oompa-Loompas can easily get in. (Mr. Wonka also claims it's "to keep all the great big chocolatey flavor inside!") The space is so small that the normal-sized protagonists are slouching.
• Big Entrance: The puppet show is setting this up for Mr. Wonka, but he decides he'd rather watch the show than, by sitting on the throne that rises from the stage at the end, participate in it. As The Show Must Go Wrong, this is probably for the best.
• Big Fancy House: The Salt family lives in one.
• Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: In a room, the Oompa-Loompas are whipping a cow. Willy Wonka explains that they're making whipped cream.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The five lucky golden ticket winners to visit Mr. Wonka’s factory. Violet is blonde, Charlie, Veruca and Mike have dark hair, and Augustus has red hair.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Between Willy Wonka and his father. The latter did not at all approve of his son's aspirations (as a dentist very much against candy), and told him not to come home if he pursued them. Well, Willy did, and it takes years and years and a kick in the pants by Charlie to get him to confront his father again.
• Brick Joke: During the initial trip through the factory via the Great Glass Elevator, one room it passes through is a "relatively new" Puppet Hospital and Burn Center, which is tending to the puppets that were immolated at the top of the tour.
  • When her father presents her with a golden ticket, Veruca (in horseback riding uniform) demands another pony. When rambling off her list of pets later in the film when she asks for a squirrel, among them are two ponies.
• Busby Berkeley Number: The Oompa-Loompas do an Esther Williams variant during the "Augustus Gloop" song.
• Camera Abuse: Subverted — Willy Wonka seems to collide with the camera twice over the course of the film, but both times it's actually the Great Glass Elevator, which is virtually see-through for both the characters and the audience.
• Canon Foreigner: Dr. Wilbur Wonka.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Grandma Georgina spends most of the film in a world of her own. Her contributions to conversations usually have nothing to do with whatever the others are discussing, to Grandpa George's frustration.
  • When Charlie learns that Grandpa Joe used to work for Willy Wonka, his grandparents all confirm this fact - except Grandma Georgina:
    Charlie: You did?
    Grandpa Joe: I did.
    Grandma Josephine: He did.
    Grandpa George: He did.
    Grandma Georgina: I like grapes.
  • When the Buckets are watching the news report about Violet's Golden Ticket, she pretends to be following the conversation, but Grandpa George knows better:
    Grandma Josephine: What a beastly girl!
    Grandma Georgina: Despicable.
    Grandpa George: You don't know what we're talking about.
    Grandma Georgina: ...dragonflies?
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: When Grandpa George learns that Mike Teavee doesn't actually like chocolate — he only sought out his Golden Ticket to show off his own intelligence — he shouts at the television "Well, it's a good thing you're going to a chocolate factory then, you ungrateful little ba-" Mr. Bucket promptly covers Charlie's ears and neither he nor the audience can clearly hear what appears to be a very profane rant that goes on for several seconds.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Charlie refuses to go back to the factory with Wonka, saying he wouldn't trade his family for all the chocolate in the world, Wonka tries to convince him by saying there's other candy besides chocolate.
• Cool Shades: Wonka first appears with a pair of very large, round shades that highlight how out-there he is compared to the others. They look very similar to the goggles later used in the Wonkavision room.
• Corporate Warfare: The covert side of this trope is discussed. Grandpa Joe tells Charlie that the reason Wonka shut down his factory is because rival candy makers, jealous of the fact that Wonka was the biggest and richest candymaker, hired corporate spies to steal his secret recipes.
• Covered in Gunge: Augustus, Veruca, and her father all leave the factory in this state. In the boy's case it's just chocolate, while Veruca and her father are covered in garbage. Likewise, Prince Pondicherry's story ends with him and his wife covered in chocolate from their melted palace.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Violet views the fact she's now probably permanently-blue as a small price to pay for the sheer flexibility her body has after getting all the juice squeezed out. In fact, she's smiling about it as she and her mother leave, which is a far cry from how the other brats (or her mother) feel.
  • On a very mundane level, Augustus Gloop leaves the factory a lot slimmer than before (but not to the extent of Mike Teavee), although he's still as hungry and is just covered in chocolate.
• Credits Medley: All five of the musical numbers are strung together into a mostly-instrumental medley for the end credits.
• Dangled by a Giant: After Mike Teavee got shrunk by Willy Wonka's television chocolate machine, his father gets him out of the TV by grabbing him by the neck of his shirt.
• Deadpan Snarker: Grumpy Old Man Grandpa George is good at snarking, as is Insufferable Genius Mike Teavee, and Veruca Salt suggesting that blueberry Violet can still compete in county fairs proves even she has a talent for it. By comparison, Willy Wonka isn't as snarky here as in the book and other adaptations, owing to his general lack of maturity.
• Demoted to Extra: Mr. Gloop, Mrs. Salt, and Mrs. Teavee are reduced to silent cameos and don't go into the factory with their children.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The "real" world (especially Charlie's hometown) looks desaturated compared to the factory's interior — or is the interior oversaturated?
• Disney Acid Sequence: The scene when the Oompa-Loompas were singing about Mike Teavee. As the TV Mike's in flips through various channels, the Oompa-Loompas appear as the killer in Psycho, the Beatles, a news anchor, etc.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: In a similar situation to that of the 1971 version, Charlie buys a Wonka Bar with some dropped money after hearing word that the final Golden Ticket has been found. Just as he's about to open it, he overhears a conversation that reveals that ticket was forged... when he does, the real final ticket is in his hands.
• Double Meaning: When Mike runs to the transporter to prove that he's smarter than Wonka, Wonka says "Don't push my button!", referencing both pressing the button to activate the machine, and "Pushing someone's button".
• Double Vision: One actor plays hundreds upon hundreds of Oompa-Loompas. (See Acting for Two on the Trivia page for how it worked.)
• Dysfunction Junction: Charlie has a loving family, but they're poverty-stricken. The four brats are all extremely greedy/selfish in their own distinctive ways, and at least two have strained relationships with their parents: Mrs. Salt has become a Lady Drunk to put up with Veruca's tantrums and Mr. Teavee clearly has problems relating to a son who's growing up too fast. What pushes this adaptation into this trope, however, is that the filmmakers viewed Willy Wonka as the most screwed-up of all the characters in this story, and thus give him an Adaptational Angst Upgrade that reveals he's long been estranged from his father.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Veruca does this when she formally introduces herself to Willy Wonka.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Whipped cream is created by literally whipping a cow.
• Eye Colour Change: In the middle of her giant blueberry transformation, Violet's eyes change from brown to blue as her cheeks swell up.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: The melting of the singing puppets by pyrotechnics.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Willy Wonka is given one of these as part of the Adaptation Expansion. Wilbur Wonka, DDS, is a dentist who wouldn't allow his son to eat candy, driving young Willy to rebel against him to achieve his dream of being a chocolatier.
• The Film of the Book: The second film adaptation, following the first released over thirty years prior. This version is notable for following the book much more closely than the original.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Wonka activates the machine that produces the three-meal-gum, a few rounder parts of the machine give a blueish glow - shortly before Violet chews the gum and turns into a giant blueberry.
• Flashback: There are several as the tour progresses, each one inspired by Charlie's innocent questions/comments, which reveal Willy Wonka's backstory. Flashbacks are also used to illustrate Grandpa Joe's stories of how the factory came to be and was later closed, the tale of Prince Pondicherry, the explanations of how Augustus and Veruca got their tickets, and Mr. Wonka's stories of 1) how he discovered the Oompa-Loompas and 2) realized he needed an heir (all of these also count as Separate Scene Storytelling).
• Flashback B-Plot: The film tells the regular story of the book while interspersing flashbacks of Willy Wonka's childhood.
• Flashback Stares: Mr. Wonka is prone to these and actually apologizes for spacing out at one point.
• Food End: The final scene has Willy Wonka joining the Buckets for dinner at their house... which has been moved into the Chocolate Room.
• Forced Perspective: Oversized furniture and props are used for some scenes to reduce Deep Roy, already only four feet high, down to Oompa-Loompa size. Other scenes use animatronics or CGI.
• Foreshadowing: When everyone is entering the factory, Wonka seems to have trouble saying the word "parents", which at first one might just assume is part of his eccentricity. It turns out to be a big plot point — what with his father issues and all.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The children at the tour: Augustus Gloop is phlegmatic (a glutton who doesn't care much for anything not related to candy), Veruca Salt is choleric (a hot-tempered brat determined to get everything she wants), Violet Beauregarde and Charlie Bucket are both sanguine (the former prideful and open to challenges, the latter polite and kind to everyone he meets), and Mike Teavee is melancholic (a critical introvert who doesn't care much for anything non-technology).
• Freudian Couch: Willy Wonka ends up on one of these near the end when talking to his therapist—who is another Oompa-Loompa.
• Genre Roulette: Each Oompah Loopah song is written In the Style of a decade-specific genre of 20th century music.
  • "Augustus Gloop" - '40s mambo.
  • "Violet Beauregard" - '70s Blaxploitation funk.
  • "Veruca Salt" - '60s psychedelic rock.
  • "Mike Teavee" - Early '80s Progressive Rock.^note Alternatively, Danny Elfman returning to his Oingo Boingo roots.
• Great Balls of Fire!: The puppet show has pyrotechnics at the end... which end up setting said puppets on fire.
• Greater Need Than Mine: When Charlie finds his Golden Ticket, he seriously considers selling it because his family needs the money that people are willing to offer for it, even though he's been hoping against hope to find one and visit the factory. Surprisingly, it's Grandpa George, the biggest cynic in the family, who convinces him that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is far more valuable than "something as common as money."
• Group-Identifying Feature: You can tell where an Oompa-Loompa works by the colour of their jumpsuit: they wear red in the edible room, black in the inventing room, yellow in the nut room, and white in the television room. Doris the office administrator wears all pink.
• Growling Gut: Violet's insides can be heard gurgling rather audibly during her transformation into a blueberry — or maybe that's the sound of the juice forming in her? Either way, it's a nasty sign that something horrible is happening to her body.
• Grub Tub: The Oompa-Loompas do synchronised swimming in a river of molten chocolate.
• Hollywood Natives: Before Willy Wonka brought them to his factory, the Oompa-Loompas were a typical grass-skirt-wearing, jungle-dwelling tribe of dwarfs.
• Horrible Housing: Compared to the book, Charlie's family's poverty is exaggerated with their house being a run-down, wooden dump in the middle of an otherwise normal city. It's so shabby that there aren't even any actual rooms, and his grandparents all sleep in the middle of the house.
• Humble Pie: In the late going, Willy Wonka has to cope with this after Charlie refuses to become his heir. His creative drive and business suffer, ultimately driving him to ask the boy — whose fortunes have actually been turning around without him — for advice.
• "I Am Great!" Song: "Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! The amazing chocolatier!" It's sung by the puppets, before their accidental immolation.
• Ignorant About Fire: When the singing puppets catch fire due to some fireworks, Willy Wonka does nothing to put the fire out. Thankfully, the fire puts itself out.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Despite mentioning this trope, Wonka is quick to make it clear he has no interest in using humans as ingredients.
  Mrs. Gloop: Then he will be made into strawberry flavored, chocolate coated fudge?! They'll be selling him by the pound all over the world?!
  Willy Wonka: No, I wouldn't allow it. The taste would be terrible. Can you imagine Augustus flavored chocolate coated Gloop? Ew, no one would buy it!
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: It does not occur to Mr. Salt to vault the safety railing in order to keep his daughter from being dragged to her doom.
• Irony: Because of the increase of demand for chocolate due to the contest, the toothpaste factory Mr. Bucket works at makes extra money and decides to modernize — which results in Mr. Bucket losing his job. Later, he gets a better-paying job at the same factory repairing the machine that replaced him!
• I Taste Delicious: In the end, Augustus is rather reluctant to stop licking the fudge coating off of his body, despite his mother's insistence.
• I Warned You: Wonka advises Prince Pondicherry to eat his chocolate palace immediately that Wonka made for him, but he refuses even after Wonka tells him it will melt. It's only a matter of days before one hot sunny day causes the palace to melt on top of the prince and his bride.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Grandpa George is very cynical at the chances of winning the ticket, but there are moments where he's in the right. When Mike Teavee announces on television, that he hates chocolate, George goes on a swearing rampage. While most was muted, it started with him rightfully calling out a chocolate hater for winning a trip to a chocolate factory (depriving thousands of far more eager children)^note Though Mike probably didn't want to go anyway, but was forced to by his dad, thinking it would do him some good instead of playing video games all day.. Later, when Charlie wins a ticket, he talks Charlie out of selling it: no matter how poor the family is, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Charlie comes first.
• Job-Stealing Robot: The toothpaste cap-screwing machine that makes Mr. Bucket obsolete. He gets the last laugh, though, when the factory hires him again, as a toothpaste cap-screwing machine repairman.
• Key Confusion: Provides the tropes page image; When Veruca climbs through the gate to the room with the squirrels, and is attacked by them, Willy Wonka casually takes out his huge keyring and starts to search for the key that opens the gate so he and Mr. Salt can rescue Veruca. He fails to find the right one before Veruca is thrown into the garbage chute, but considering how he was taking his time going through the keys and what kind of man Wonka is, that was most likely his intention.
• The Kids Are American: Inverted with regards to Charlie's hometown, which is subject to Where the Hell Is Springfield?. He and his family are among the few who speak with British accents as opposed to American ones.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Mr. Salt remarks on how choreographed the Augustus number looks, and Charlie asks how the Oompa-Loompas knew the boy's name and personality, a Plot Hole that the book doesn't address with regards to any of the kids. Mr. Wonka claims it's skilled improvisation, but the whole exchange implies that Mr. Wonka researched his guests/potential victims, planned traps for them, and trained the Oompa-Loompas to celebrate their downfalls in a masterpiece of planning.
  • When Mr. Wonka sizes up the kids for the first time, he remarks that Charlie's "just lucky to be here, aren't you?"
• Letting the Air out of the Band: Happens at the end of the welcome song, after the set catches fire.
• Licking the Blade: During the flashback to his visit to Loompaland, Wonka does this after killing a giant bug. While it's already been established that he's kind of crazy, this ties in with him originally going to the country to find new candy ingredients.
• Lighter and Softer: Certain aspects of the movie are toned down from the 1971 movie. Specifically, the bad kids are seen coming out just fine in the end, and the tunnel scene looks more like a cool theme park ride than whatever the hell was going on in the other movie.
• Living Out a Childhood Dream: Willy Wonka's motivation for setting up his chocolate factory portrayed to be the fulfillment of a childhood dream his dentist father had denied him.
• Logo Joke: The Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow logos emerge in an overcast, snowy sky, setting up the long tracking shot around and into the factory that most of the opening credits are run over, and Danny Elfman's score substitutes for the "As Time Goes By" music.
• Lost in Imitation: While this film mostly avoids this trope with regards to the 1971 version, it does keep the same nationalities that film established for the children, while also giving most of them hometowns — Augustus is from Düsseldorf (which suffers from a bad case of Hollywood Geography), Veruca is from Buckinghamshire, Violet is from Atlanta, Mike is from Denver, and Charlie is still ambiguously British/American. Keep in mind that in the book all the characters' nationalities are ambiguous — most subsequent adaptations have picked up on the 1971 precedent — and since the tickets were explicitly said to be available all over the world, this is a relatively realistic touch in any version.
• Ludicrous Gift Request: Veruca Salt demands a golden ticket, another pony, a squirrel, and a flying glass elevator. Her dad gives her the ticket and tries to give her the squirrel but doesn't give her the pony (as far as we know) or the elevator.
• Lyrical Dissonance: In a gentle Beatles-y rock ballad:
  Oompas: Veruca Salt, the little brute, has just gone down the garbage chute!
  And she will meet, as she descends, a rather different set of friends!
  Oompa: A fish head, for example, cut this morning from a halibut...
• Magic Pants: Violet's track suit swells up along with her when she becomes a giant blueberry. Which is quite a feat, as in this version, she grows to 10 feet tall!
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Even Wonka admits how weird it is that the experimental gum turns the chewer into a blueberry.
  Wonka: I've tried it on like, 20 Oompa Loompas and each one ended up as a blueberry. It's just weird.
• Malignant Plot Tumor: Thanks to Mr. Wonka's backstory needing resolution, the entire denouement is substantially altered.
• The Mel Brooks Number: Danny Elfman turns the Oompa-Loompa songs into a gorgeously orchestrated game of Genre Roulette, but Roald Dahl's original lyrics about naughty kids getting their comeuppance are (mostly) kept intact, and the visuals spoof everything from Busby Berkeley numbers to heavy metal videos.
• Mining for Cookies:The Oompa-Loompas are seen mining chunks of chocolate from Cocoa Mountain, a literal mountain of solid chocolate caught in an icy blizzard inside the factory.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Mike Teavee regards Mr. Wonka's Television Chocolate setup as this, since he's using a teleportation device on simple chocolate bars.
• Monochrome Casting: All major characters aside from the Oompa-Loompas, who get a Race Lift from Caucasian to Indian thanks to the casting of Deep Roy, are white. The only other minority characters, both of whom get one sequence each, are the Indian Prince Pondicherry and his wife and the black shopkeeper. Both the novel and the 1971 film have all-Caucasian casts, but there's more emphasis in this 2005 version on the Wonka Bars (and thus the tickets) being available worldwide, with crowds of extras in Asia and the Middle East hunting for them, so it's more noticeable. Tim Burton admitted that they had considered doing a Race Lift for some of the other major characters, but since four of the finders are brats, that might have caused problematic racial stereotypes.
• The Monolith: Featured in a demonstration of Wonka's matter transmutation device... as part of a clip straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, no less.
• Mood Motif: Danny Elfman again uses The Celesta of Warped Childhood Innocence in a movie score!
• Mouth Cam: Used in the climax, no less, as Dr. Wilbur Wonka examines his son's teeth.
• Musical World Hypothesis: Diegetic. The Oompas' "improvisation" is lampshaded.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The main titles briefly incorporate some music very similar to "Pure Imagination" from the 1971 film.^note Audible at 2:29 on the soundtrack.
  • During the tunnel boat ride, there's a door labelled "Jelly Beans", referencing a wordplay gag in the book's version of the scene that's otherwise left out.
• Narrator: Geoffrey Holder narrates the film.
• Narrator All Along: It turns out it's one of the Oompa-Loompas.
• Never Trust a Trailer: A few trailers and several promos feature a snippet of the puppet song, which viewers would assume was sung by the Oompa-Loompas.
• Noodle People: Mike's appearance (crossing over with Paper People) after he's been stretched upon the taffy puller, and Charlie's appearance in the Game Boy Advance video game tie-in.
• No OSHA Compliance: Pretty straightforward. The overhead railings in the Inventing Room are particularly egregious. Amusingly, the one time the trope is (partly) subverted is in the Nut Room, with its so-inconvenient locked safety gate - that is barely waist-high, still easy to fall over. Also that five foot wide hole in the floor leading to the incinerator which could have easily been covered with a screen that had holes big enough for bad walnuts to fall through - but not a ten-year-old girl or her father.
• Not His Sled: There's some pretty crazy Adaptation Expansion here: Charlie is the last kid standing, but initially has to refuse the offer to become Mr. Wonka's heir because he won't let him bring his family with him. Only when he helps Mr. Wonka reconcile with his father is the happy ending free to commence. Also counts as Malignant Plot Tumor.
• Not So Above It All: Mike spends most of the movie looking bored or surly. When the Wonka Television machine causes him to float in the air, however, he does some silly karate and dance moves, then smiles and waves at the others.
  • To a lesser extent, when Veruca approaches the squirrels—everyone else looks worried while his posture is more "ooh, this should be entertaining."
• Object-Tracking Shot: The making of a Wonka Bar is the basis for the opening credits sequence.
• Oktoberfest: One scene in caused unintended hilarity in German cinemas, when it showed a tiny South German village^note Specifically, they used Gengenbach, in Baden-Württemberg fitting the trope and subtitled it "Düsseldorf, Germany" - the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, a completely different region, which is known for its huge urban sprawl.
• One-Book Author: This is the only acting credit for Julia Winter (Veruca). She later became a doctor.
• Pac Man Fever: A strange example comes when we're introduced to Mike Teavee. While the game he's playing looks contemporary (and in fact falls into a completely different stereotype), he's shown playing it on a very old-fashioned joystick reminiscent of an Atari 2600. Given the film's Retro Universe setting, this was likely deliberate.
• Palette Swap: The machine guns (which are black) in the Exploding Candy scene in the elevator show up in the very next sequence in white as the cameras in the Television Chocolate room.
• Placebo Eureka Moment: Willy Wonka has one while on the Freudian Couch, realizing that him feeling terrible is what's making his work terrible.
  Wonka: You're really good!
  (The Oompa-Loompa therapist, who has not said a word, nods.)
• "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: The Mike Teavee song has an Oompa Loompa making stabbing motions at Mike in the shower in black-and-white.
• Re-Cut: The version seen on the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray releases has a few added moments originally cut from the theatrical and DVD releases:
  • There's a small exchange added between Mr. Teavee and Mr. Salt as they walk towards the Chocolate Room's entrance.
    Mr. Teavee: Is it me or does Wonka seem a few quarters short of a buck?
    Mr. Salt: I'm sorry, I don't speak American.
  • Mike shouting "back off you little freaks!" at the Oompa-Loompas as they build up to the Augustus Gloop song, which was first seen only in the trailer.
  • An extra verse is added for Augustus Gloop's song.
  • A brief keyboard solo is added back into the Violet Beauregarde song, complete with Oompa Loompa.
• Recycled Trailer Music: The final stretch of the trailer uses "Flying" from the 2003 Peter Pan. Five years later, an excerpt from this score ("Up and Out") was used in the trailer for Alice in Wonderland (2010).
• Red-Flag Recreation Material: Mike Teavee is changed from being obsessed with television to being a gamer whose interview after he pulls the Golden Ticket takes place while he's playing a very violent shooter game. And apart from being an Insufferable Genius, he's just as much of a disruptive, selfish Bratty Half-Pint as he was in the original story.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: In the book, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine are Charlie's paternal grandparents and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina are Charlie's maternal grandparents; But in this film (as well as the 1971 film) it is the other way around.
  Grandpa George: Such as "I feel like I've eaten nothing but cabbage soup forever".
  Mr. Bucket: Now, Pops.
• Resized Vocals: When Mike Teavee uses Willy Wonka's television chocolate machine in the belief that Wonka's created a teleporter, he ends up emerging at the other end of the machine as a miniaturized version of himself with a high-pitched squeaky voice.
• Retro Universe: Burton likes making his settings more symbolic than realistic. Therefore, to see Charlie Bucket's family living in near Charles Dickens-style poverty in one scene and Mike Teavee's video games in the next is a tad jarring for some, despite the Buckets having their own TV. And Charlie's grandpa gives him a Peace dollar — an American, silver, 1920s/30s dollar.
• Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: Mr. Wonka performed one when he opened his factory (providing a Shout-Out in the process — see below).
• Robotic Assembly Lines:
  • Wonka Bars are created on these, as shown in the opening credits sequence.
  • Charlie's father is fired when a robotic arm takes over his job of screwing toothpaste caps on.
• Rockers Smash Guitars: Part of the "Mike Teavee" song involves an Oompa-Loompa rocker smashing a guitar almost right on top of Mike's head.
• Roll Out the Red Carpet: The Chocolate Room is reached by walking down one.
• Rube Goldberg Device: The flamboyant presentation of the piece of chewing gum to the group.
• Rule of Three: Grandpa George says the first kid to find a golden ticket will be "fat, fat, fat".
• Scenery Porn: The 1971 film had its moments with regards to this trope, given its modest budget, but with Tim Burton, CGI, and a mega-budget brought to bear upon this story...
• Secondary Character Title: Charlie is a Supporting Protagonist in this adaptation, which is ultimately about Mr. Wonka's character development more than it is Charlie's triumph-by-virtue. Ironically, the reverse happened in the original film adaptation.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Each of The Four Bratty Kids represents at least one of these:
  • Gluttony: Augustus Gloop. He just can’t have enough of sweets. He eventually falls into a river of chocolate, his favorite type of candy.
  • Pride: Violet Beauregarde. She always wants to show that she is the best in everything. She shows that she isn’t afraid of chewing the three-meal-gum despite Wonka’s warnings. She turns into a blue thing because of it.
  • Greed: Veruca Salt. She always wants more and more things, and thanks to a rich dad who does everything for her, she has gotten used to always getting what she wants. When she tries to take one of Wonka’s squirrels, all of them attack her and cause her to fall into the garbage.
  • Lust: Mike Teavee. He enjoys video games and think they're a lot of fun, but he wants to apply video-game action to real world. So much so, that he sends himself through Wonka’s TV system, or ”teleporter” as Mike likes to call it, and he becomes very, very small as a result. As the Oompa-Loompas point out in their song, he lets his brain indulge in his games to the point that he cannot even separate video games from reality.
• Setting Update: To the Turn of the Millennium, most obviously with regards to Mike Teavee (see Technology Marches On below), though Charlie's town doesn't seem quite as tied down to that time period as the rest of the world is.
• She-Fu: Violet's movement after the events, as her de-juicing by squeezing leaves her quite flexible! Foreshadowed by her introduction as a talented martial-arts student.
• Shoe Shine, Mister?: In the late going, Charlie encounters Willy Wonka once more when the former (earning a little more money for his family) is giving the latter a shoe shine.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are several to previous Tim Burton films: The toothpaste factory Mr. Bucket works for is called "Smilex" and Wonka's throne is the same one used by The Joker during the parade scene. Johnny Depp holding a very large pair of scissors for the ribbon-cutting of the factory looks familiar too.
  • Mr. Wonka introduces himself to the tour group by Waxing Lyrical: "Good morning, starshine! The Earth says... Hello!"
  • Mr. Wonka's demonstration of the teleporter is this to 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with The Monolith and "Also sprach Zarathustra".
  • The five musical numbers each provide shout-outs to something or other in their styles and/or visuals.
    • "Wonka's Welcome Song" = "It's a Small World"
    • "Augustus Gloop" = Bollywood and Esther Williams musicals
    • "Violet Beauregarde" = The Jackson 5 song "Dancing Machine"
    • "Veruca Salt" = The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
    • "Mike Teavee" = Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
  • The score for the "Loompa Land" scene, most notably the "Hoo Haa!" chanting, recalls Danny Elfman's own score from Forbidden Zone.
  • It's very, very brief, but when the Oompa-Loompa in the TV Room that's seated in front of the TV first changes the channel, you can hear a brief snippet of the Macarena.
  • When Mike's dad rescues the now-miniaturized boy from the TV set: "Help me! Help me!" (It's actually the second time Burton has used that gag.) Rather appropriate to reference another famous pop culture Teleporter Accident, that!
  • The animatronic puppets catching fire and melting seems to be a nod to the dramatic opening of House of Wax (1953), where wax figures melt in a similar fashion.
  • The Oompa-Loompas putting their arms over their chest in an "X" shape is taken straight from Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, where the aliens do the same thing as a form of greeting.
• The Show Must Go Wrong: The animatronic puppet show starts off well, but it's supposed to reveal Mr. Wonka at the end and he's not there. Then the pyrotechnics go awry, the puppets are destroyed, and the soundtrack grinds to a halt. As it turns out, Mr. Wonka wanted to watch the show rather than be in it, and he seems to think this ending's better anyway.
• Signature Style: Tim Burton likes to create a contrast between places of wonder, which are bright and colorful, and mundane places, which are dark and dreary. In the context of a Roald Dahl adaptation, it works.
• Skewed Priorities: After Violet turns into a blueberry, her mother's first concern is how she will be able to compete.^note  "You could put her in a County Fair."
• Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification: Type 3. Unlike the 1971 film and 2013 stage musical, which are Pragmatic Adaptations, this version has the luxury of Turn of the Millennium special effects technology and a nine-figure budget to stay quite close to the text in terms of the visuals and events. Had it simply done that it would be a Type 4... but the Adaptation Expansion Backstory and resultant Adaptation Personality Change for Mr. Wonka throw a spanner into the works.
• Smash Cut: Used to great effect to introduce Augustus Gloop right after Grandpa George correctly predicts that the first person to find a golden ticket would be "fat, fat, fat."
• Sniff Sniff Nom: Young adult Willy Wonka (in the Loompaland flashback) seems willing to taste anything as a potential candy ingredient, including mashed caterpillars and the purple goo left on his machete after cutting a giant mosquito in half. (The former also counts as Tastes Like Friendship.)
• Something Only They Would Say: A variation; the dentist Willy Wonka goes to comments that he hasn't seen "bicuspids like these" since those of his son, and that's how he finds out that Wonka is his son.
• Souvenir Land: A small-scale parody, as the factory's introductory puppet show is a spoof of the Disney Theme Parks favorite "It's a Small World".
• Spared by the Adaptation: The toothpaste factory where Charlie's dad used to work. In the book, it was said he lost his job because the factory went bankrupt. In the film, the factory fired him and bought a machine to replace him. And then in a second example of this trope, Charlie's dad is spared from joblessness when the factory re-hires him to maintain the aforementioned machine!
• Spoiled Brat: Pretty much all of the non-Charlie kids are this to an extent, but Veruca — DEAR GOD — takes this up to the prime maximum.
• Stage Mom: Violet's mother is this. It becomes obvious that she's trying to force her daughter to be the success that she wasn't when it's revealed during her TV interview that she only ever won one trophy herself (for baton twirling).
• Stage Money: The setting was designed to look like America to Britons and like Britain to Americans, so it makes use of "guinea" notes that don't look quite like either a $10 bill or a £10 note.
• Stalker Shrine: A non-creepy example in the late going is the wall of Dr. Wilbur Wonka's office, which contains photos and newspaper clippings chronicling his son's success as a candymaker.
• The Stinger: Audio only — as the end credits wrap and the Warner Bros. logo appears, the sound of the Oompa-Loompas giggling can be heard.
• Summer Blockbuster: A triple-digit budget and the huge production values that implies, a big-name star, a big-name director... and it was released in the U.S. and U.K. in July 2005.
• Supporting Protagonist: Charlie Bucket. He has no character development over the course of the film and once the flashbacks to Mr. Wonka's childhood start, it starts to become clear that this adaptation is really about him learning to come to terms with his past and connect with other people again. Charlie is only a catalyst for this. (In the novel and other adaptations, Mr. Wonka is a Deuteragonist instead.)
• Surprisingly Mundane Reason: When Mike Teeve and Charlie are the only children left on the tour of the chocolate factory, Wonka takes them to the Television Room, where he showcases his latest invention, and to demonstrate how it works, several oompa-loompas place an oversized chocolate bar, as in weighing dozens of pounds and with a surface area of several square feet onto a machine that zaps it. The chocolate bar then travels across as a tv signal, and reappears in a nearby television, and when Charlie reaches into it at the insistence of Wonka, he picks up a normal chocolate bar and eats it. Wonka says that this new invention will allow people to eat his chocolate without stepping outside their home and going to a store. Mike then calls Wonka an "idiot" for his Mundane Utility for a matter teleporter, and jumps inside the machine to showcase the true potential of such an invention. After Mike comes out the telvision just a few inches tall, he and his dad ask Wonka to just put him in the other way so he'll recover his size, only for Wonka to reveal "there is no other way".
• Suspiciously Prescient Planning: Unlike the original film, it's heavily implied that Willy Wonka either orchestrated the horrible fates of the first four children on the tour of his factory or, at the very least, correctly predicted what the kids would do and didn't take any action to stop it. For example, the Oompa-Loompas have intricately choreographed and well-rehearsed song and dance numbers for each child and what happened to them, and while Wonka tries to pass it off as simple improvisation, it's clear that he's lying (as Mr. Salt lampshades, "I must say—that all seemed rather rehearsed"). In another example, Wonka has giant and elaborate paintings of Mr. and Mrs. Salt ready to toss down the garbage chute when Spoiled Brat Veruca is thrown into it—how could he have possibly known they'd be needed in that room at that time unless he was planning it?
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: Comes into play in the final stretch in that Charlie turns down Mr. Wonka's offer so he can stay with his family; soon afterward his father gets a new job at his old workplace and their living conditions improve, so they're noticeably better off than they were at the beginning. In the meantime Mr. Wonka's fortunes take a turn for the worse, compelling him to seek Charlie out — setting the endgame in motion...
• Thicker Than Water: Charlie is devoted to his family — hence his Greater Need Than Mine dilemma regarding the Golden Ticket — and this is why he initially turns down the chance to be Mr. Wonka's heir, as he'd have to leave them behind.
• Too Upset to Create: When Mr. Wonka goes into depression, his creativity goes downhill, and the chocolate factory faces harder times.
• Totally Radical: Played for Laughs. As a side effect of having isolated himself from the rest of the world for so long, Willy Wonka tends to speak this way to the children, using slang and references that wander from The '50s to The '70s. For example, in explaining his hair-growing candy to Mike Teavee, "Are you hip to the jive? Can you dig what I'm layin' down? I knew that you could. Slide me some skin, soul brother!"
• Travel Montage: Subverted/spoofed — in the last flashback to his childhood, it appears young Wonka is travelling the world, passing the flags of many different countries, upon running away from home, but he's actually walking through a "flags of the world" exhibit at a museum not far from his house. (Hey, he's just getting started with being on his own...)
• Truer to the Text: This film adaptation of the original Roald Dahl book is notably more faithful to the source material than the 1971 film adaptation. For instance, the squirrels sorting nuts are restored when the previous adaptation replaced them with geese, plus the Oompah Loompah songs' lyrics are closer to those given in the book rather than the original lyrics used by the 1971 film.
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Once all five tickets have been found, the scene switches between the five winners each reading the instructions on their Golden Tickets out loud as the fateful tour draws near.
• Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000: It's hard not to wonder whether Tim Burton read this. Having Mike be from suburban Denver, Colorado was most likely just the icing on the cake.
• Understatement: Willy Wonka notes that cannibalism "is frowned upon in most societies."
• Unishment: Once squeezed back to regular size, Violet finds the fact that she now pretty much bends like rubber to be pretty cool, doing gymnastic flips the whole way out of the factory. Only her mother seems to be bothered by the fact that she's now purple.
• Unimpressive Progress Reveal: After young Willy Wonka decides that he will go out and explore the world, we're treated to a Montage of flags, to symbolize the countries he has visited. Then a museum guard tells him it's time to close and we see that he had been walking through the museum's "Flags of the World" exhibit.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Grandpa George says this word for word, in response to Mike Teavee's hatred of chocolate, despite the fact that Teavee is going to a chocolate factory. Luckily Charlie's father covers his ears just before he gets that far.
  • Mr. Salt goes out of his way to get Veruca a golden ticket. When he finally gets her one, instead of thanking her father, Veruca just says that she wants another pony.
• Values Dissonance: In-universe example. While in the Chocolate Room, Wonka points out that modern societies look down on cannibals.
• Villainy-Free Villain: invokedMike Teavee. Unlike the other kids, he never antagonizes or mistreats Charlie, and he's relatively nice to his parents (though in a deleted line he tells his father to shut up). His main role in the film is to point out instances of Fridge Logic that don't make sense, or questioning Wonka's methods and logic behind some of what he does, and most of the time he is correct in doing so. He'd come off as the Only Sane Man, if only he wasn't a bitter and cynical Insufferable Genius, which frames his points as him being arrogant and disrespectful towards Wonka.
• Vocal Dissonance: While some of the Oompa-Loompas have high-pitched voices that would fit their size, a number of them instead have very deep voices.
• Voice Changeling: Wonka does a very good imitation of Mr. Salt's voice when Veruca is denied a squirrel from the nut room.
  Wonka: [as Mr. Salt] I'm sorry, darling. Mr. Wonka's being unreasonable.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: It's very heavily implied in this adaptation that all of the tour mishaps were expected, nay, engineered by Wonka, but it's also clear that he wants to teach the awful people a lesson and, despite his pessimistic certainty of the accidents taking place, it's hinted at that he hopes they won't have to.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mike Teavee really lets Wonka have it for inventing what amounts to a teleporter and being so utterly chocolate-obsessed as to have never even contemplated the billions of other ways it could revolutionize human life. He's so pissed off with Wonka for this, in fact, that he forces his way past the Oompa-Loompas and uses it on himself just to demonstrate there are more important ways it could be used, completely forgetting the very obvious and unfortunate side effects Wonka just demonstrated the process had.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Due to the book never being clear on whether Charlie Bucket and the Factory are located in England or America, Burton purposely made it ambiguous in the film; The general architecture of the town appears to be that of the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 20th century, but English and American accents are thrown around indiscriminately, people drive on the right in some scenes and the left in others. Paper money consists of bluish-pink "guinea" notes yet they're referred to as dollars, while Grandpa Joe owns a silver Peace Dollar among the money he has, indicating that American dollars are used in the local area. And, despite the entire population of the town (apparently) speaking English, the motorized bicycles used in the opening are uniquely French.
• Yodel Land: By placing the city of Düsseldorf there, Burton and company practically declare all of Germany this!
• You Are Fat: Augustus Gloop has to put up with the Oompa-Loompas' song about him, which is full of insults about his weight and greedy nature, while he is temporarily stuck in the pipe. (In the novel, he's already on his way to the fudge preparation room when they perform it for the other guests.)
• Zerg Rush: Veruca's attempt to grab a squirrel from the Nut Sorting Room leads to this, with every single squirrel in the room piling on top of her before unceremoniously hauling her to the garbage chute, resulting in her elimination.

---

"In the end, Charlie Bucket won a chocolate factory, but Willy Wonka had something even better: a family. And one thing was absolutely certain...life had never been sweeter."