Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory - Plot

Plot

After school, kids go to a local candy shop, where the owner Bill (Aubrey Woods) serves chocolate to the kids ("The Candy Man"). Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) stares through the window as he sings, saddened that he has no money. The newsagent Mr. Jopeck (Werner Heyking) gives him some money to buy a loaf of bread. On his way, he passes the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), a local candy maker. A tinker (Peter Capell) tells him (referring to the factory) "nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out". He brings the bread back to his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson), his widow mother (Diana Sowle), and his other three bedridden grandparents. That night, he tells Grandpa about the tinker and what he said, and Grandpa tells him about Wonka and how spies were trying to steal his life's work. He closed the factory, but three years later he started selling candy again, but is still unseen to this day.

One day, the family, along with the rest of the world, learns that Wonka has hidden five Golden Tickets amongst his Wonka Bars. The finders of these special tickets will be given a full tour of his factory, as well as a lifetime supply of chocolate to the "winner". Charlie wants to take part in the search, but cannot afford to buy vast quantities of chocolate bars like other participants ("Cheer Up, Charlie"). Four of the tickets are found by: Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner), a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), a spoiled English girl; Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), a gum-chomping American girl; and Mike Teavee (Paris Themmen), a television-obsessed American boy. As they find their tickets, a sinister-looking man is observed whispering in their ears, to whom they listen attentively despite their preoccupations with their particular obsessions. Charlie's hopes are dashed when news breaks that the final ticket had been found by a Paraguayan millionaire.

The next day, as the Golden Ticket craze ends, Charlie finds a silver coin in a gutter and uses it to buy a Wonka Bar. Simultaneously, word spreads that the ticket found by the millionaire was forged and that one ticket is still about somewhere. When Charlie opens the bar, he finds the real golden ticket, and races home to tell his family, but is confronted by the same man who had been seen whispering to the other four winners. The man introduces himself as Arthur Slugworth, a rival confectioner who offers to pay Charlie a large sum of money for a sample of Wonka's latest creation, the Everlasting Gobstopper.

Grandpa Joe gets out of bed to serve as Charlie's tour chaperone ("I've Got a Golden Ticket"). The next day, Wonka greets the children and their guardians at the factory gates and leads them inside, requiring each to sign a contract before the tour can begin. Inside is a psychedelic wonderland full of chocolate rivers, giant edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper and other ingenious inventions and candies, as well as Wonka's workers, the small, orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa-Loompas ("Pure Imagination"). As the tour progresses, each of the first four children ignore Wonka's warnings, resulting in serious consequences. Augustus is sucked through a chocolate extraction pipe system and sent to the Fudge Room, having fallen into a chocolate river from which he was trying to drink. Violet transforms into a giant blueberry after trying an experimental piece of Three-Course-Dinner Gum. Veruca is rejected as a "bad egg" and falls down a garbage chute in the Chocolate Golden Egg Sorting Room ("I Want it Now"). Mike is shrunken to only a few inches in height after being transmitted by "Wonkavision", a broadcasting technology that can send objects through television instead of pictures. The Oompa-Loompas sing a song after each incident, describing that particular child's poor behaviour (Oompa-Loompa-Doompa-Dee-Doo). While in Wonka's Inventing Room, the remaining children are each given a sample of Wonka's Everlasting Gobstoppers.

Charlie also succumbs to temptation along with Grandpa Joe, as they stay behind in the Bubble Room and sample Fizzy Lifting Drinks. They begin floating skyward and are nearly sucked into a ceiling-mounted exhaust fan. To avoid this grisly fate, they burp repeatedly until they return to the ground. Wonka initially seems unaware of this incident. When Charlie becomes the last remaining child on the tour, Wonka dismisses him and Grandpa Joe and leaves for his office. When Grandpa Joe returns to ask about Charlie's lifetime supply of chocolate, Wonka irritably reveals that Charlie had violated the contract by sampling the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, and thus forfeited his prize, and Wonka furiously dismisses them. Grandpa Joe vows to give Slugworth the gobstopper in revenge. Charlie, however, cannot bring himself to hurt Wonka and places the gobstopper on his desk.

Wonka recants and begs for his guests' forgiveness. He reveals that "Slugworth" is actually an employee named Wilkinson, whose offer to buy the gobstopper (as well as Wonka's tirade) was all part of a morality test for the Golden Ticket winners, and Charlie was the only one who passed the test. The trio enter the "Wonkavator", a multi-dimensional glass elevator, and fly out of the factory in it. As they soar over the city, Wonka tells Charlie that his actual prize is not just the chocolate but the factory itself, as the Golden Ticket search was created to help Wonka search for an honest and worthy child to be his heir. Charlie and his family will reside in the factory and take over its operation when Wonka retires.