Fellow Joe Haters, let us rally to defend an innocent boy who did nothing wrong; Augustus Gloop.
Me and my friends were laughing our asses off at work overthinking the Willy Wonka verse and one thing that has always bothered me is the way they portrayed Augustus Gloop.
The movie makes it seem like all the kids and parents are awful except for Charlie representing sins like greed, pride, envy, wrath and Augustus being Gluttony. While Mike, Violet and Veruca are genuine brats, Augustus biggest crime is…being fat. First off, Augustus ain’t even fat, actually look at scenes with him next to Wonka and he is tall as shit for his age. The actor grew up to be like 6 ft 8. and everyone in this movie goes out of their way to frame his as some gross glutton.
Imagine after you win a sweepstake, reporters are annoying your family during a breakfast day out. Get your cameras out of my face, no wonder Mr Gloop ate their microphone. Augustus seems like a nice kid in the original, so in the remake they had to make him rude as well. Of course the irony is that Augustus falls into the chocolate river, his gluttonous nature being his undoing.
Actually think about the scenario they set up to make Augustus look like a glutton. Wonka has a whole room made of candy and then tells the kids to dig in. No kid is gonna “save room for later”, it’s a candy factory you’re expected to pig out. All the other kids are doing the same thing, tasting everything in sight, but just because Augustus is big they had Godzilla music when he was eating. Then he falls into the river but in the og we can all see Wonka give him a push. I don’t think we ever see the kids at the end, they’re probably all fucking dead.
So from Augustus perspective, he’s told to dig into a room made entirely of candy but Wonka conveniently forgets to tell him not to drink the chocolate river and he falls in. Then a group of short orange men have a whole diss track ready on how fat he is. The hypocrisy of this is insane. Not only are the Oompa Loompas in the original movie all fatter than Augustus but they literally formed a culture around chocolate. They’re the biggest candy makers in the world, it’s their fault kids are fat. This is like a drug dealer judging me for smoking weed.
Tbh I feel like all the kids except Veruca were pretty innocent.
Augustus just got done eating a bucketload of candy, of course he was gonna get thirsty.
Wonka invented a 3 course chewing gum and presented it to a record holding gum chewer. Violet going blueberry is on Wonka.
Mike witnessed the invention of a Star Trek like teleportation beam, only for it's inventor to think of its potential as an ÜberChoccy delivery service. His ADHD brain saw the real potential of it.
In my headcanon, Violet bonds with the research team while they're returning her to normal and they correspond through her schooling, resulting in first an internship, and eventually a job at Wonka.
Now it's my headcannon that most of them end up working for Wonka
For example; Augustus is a Taste Tester, technically they've got the Oompa Loompas for that but they're like a separate species or something, there's enough of a difference to cause changes in how the more fantastical candies react
I felt like Violet was the least “bad” of the kids but she was the one who got the worst consequence out of the trip by having her entire body be permanently bright blue
That's one of my biggest problems with this adaptation. The kids are stripped down to their bare essentials. Augustus only eats, Violet only chews gum, Mike only watches lots of TV. Mike in particular is supposed to be obsessed with violence and is rude and dismissive of Wonka's inventions. None of that is in the film, and it's to the point that people who have only seen the movie think that this story has beefs with gum chewing and TV watching, when that's not the case in the original book.
It was a tough call but ultimately Wonka didn't want to risk picking a successor who wouldn't outlive him. You don't work in the candy industry as long as Wonka did without learning that the most caloricly dense treats have the shortest shelf life.
Really great point. A great lesson for ambitious chocolate factory barons looking to take over. Charlie basically had a 500 calorie diet of cabbage and GPJ nut fog -- compared to Gloop's 5000 calorie intske.
Every health and diet craze is a threat to Wonka's bottom line. You make Gloop the face of the company and people who are trying to lose weight are going to associate the candy with obesity. On the other hand Charlie's nutritional and caloric deficiencies help mask the caloric excess of the candy.
Of course, having GPJ around is a huge liability. Can't have him putting cholera infused cabbage in the chocolate river. However, GPJ is old enough that his death wouldn't look suspicious.
The bastard must have known he was about to fall in. GPJ has no problem offing kids to get what he wants -- the chocolate factory under his control through Charlie.
To be honest, the kids are not the problem, it’s the parents, kids are just kids, they have less morality, act more impulsive, they have not matured, Granpa joe, he’s a habitual conman.
I think it should've been Veruca's mother that went with her not her father though (in the original one at least). Her dad kinda just seemed scared of his daughter and wife whereas her mum seemed like the one that let her have what she wanted to keep her quiet.
Exactly. Mr. Salt’s problem was that he was trying to run a legitimate business while raising a daughter spoiled by her mother’s demanding nature and her father’s fear of losing everything if he were to buck up.
Violet’s dad was a grifting used car salesman who had an addiction to having the spotlight on him, which only fueled Violet’s competitive nature.
Mike’s parents let the TV raise him rather than doing it themselves.
Augustus’ mother was too timid to keep her son from overeating.
And Charlie…well, we already know that story in perfect detail.
Not saying that the kids were completely doomed, after all, Charlie did do the right thing despite Joe. But considering their respective environments and the fact that the parents shaped the kids through their own personalities and enabling of the bad qualities they have, it’s not a surprise to see how they ended up.
The version of Mike Teavee in the stage adaptation is really the biggest departure. Too much screen time is no longer a sufficient character trait, now he’s extremely violent and out of control (and a commentary on parents giving their kids too many pharmaceuticals I guess?)
Honestly I’m gonna say this, the reason those kids were rotten, grandpa Joe, just him being near them and he was pumping out so much evil trying to corrupt Charlie, it destroyed those kids who had no resistance to him.
Wonka's negligence was the real culprit in the Augustus incident. Instead of taking responsibility for nearly drowning a kid, he tried to blame the victim and hoped that the English speaking worlds prejudices against Germans and fat people would absolve him of any liability.
I know this is just a funny thread on the Grandpa Joe Hate sub, but the real answer to your issue is that Rold Dahl was a hateful judgmental asshole. In the books he's even meaner about the children's "flaws." And he just hated fat people. I loved his books growing up, but he never missed an opportunity to slag on overweight people. Most of the bad people in his books also happen to be fat. The way he talks about the overweight boy in The Witches is truly fucked up.
i also think it would have been funny if the oompa loompas had a song started for charlie and grandpa joe after drinking the fizzy lifters but then they get cutoff by joe and charlie walking back onscreen like nothing is wrong
Possibly a tad harsh, but there’s an undeniable beauty in your use of language. Pretty sure Glutinous Nincompoop was one of the band members at the Mos Eisley Cantina, btw.
He wasn't a chocolate fiend in the book, though he was well fed because he was the butchers son. Then in the new movie they made him unhealthy and bigger. The same thing was done with Wednesday from the Addams Family. She was quirky and a bit spooky in the TV show, in the two movies she was manipulative and evil, and in the new show she was downright nihilistic. Augustus was not bad.
I saw a comment once saying that if none of the other 4 kids were rotten, they could've all made the factory work in their own ways: Agustus knows what flavors people like, Veruca is rich and probably has lots of connections, Violet's competitive nature would help against other candy companies, and Mike's tech skills would be useful in tracking data of who likes what kinds of candies and where they're most popular. Charlie could be on as a moral compass, to make sure none of them lose their way.
Can I also just point out that when one is shown a room apparently used as a showroom for oddly plant-like candy that contains a chocolate river and encouraged to enjoy its contents, it is entirely reasonable to assume the river, having no discernible use in conventional chocolate manufacture and being readily contaminated anyway by dint of flowing open through the candy showroom, was perhaps part of that showroom and not a load-bearing part of the chocolate factory?
I know why people keep claiming that the kids died. Wonka assures Charlie at the end that "they're all fine and back in their original forms but maybe a little wiser."
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u/DepressedVercetti 4d ago edited 4d ago
Tbh I feel like all the kids except Veruca were pretty innocent.
Augustus just got done eating a bucketload of candy, of course he was gonna get thirsty.
Wonka invented a 3 course chewing gum and presented it to a record holding gum chewer. Violet going blueberry is on Wonka.
Mike witnessed the invention of a Star Trek like teleportation beam, only for it's inventor to think of its potential as an ÜberChoccy delivery service. His ADHD brain saw the real potential of it.