Conversation Between Rogue planet and Banjora Marxvile
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  1. Rogue planet
    October 18th, 2009 7:25 AM
    Rogue planet
    Okay, I'll remind you of that aswell.

    The book begins where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ends: Willy Wonka has just given Charlie ownership of his factory, and they crash through the roof of Charlie's house and inform his family of the good news.
    Charlie's grandparents (except Grandpa Joe, who had already gotten out of the bed) are nervous about going inside the travelling elevator, and after twenty years in bed, refuse to get up. The bed is thus pushed into the elevator, which then takes off. At a critical moment during the return trip to the factory, a panicking Josephine grabs Wonka away from the controls and steers the elevator with its occupants into Earth's orbit. The elevator circles the planet until Wonka sees the chance to link it with the newly-launched Space Hotel, a private enterprise of the United States government.
    In the White House, President of the United States Lancelot R. Gilligrass, the Vice-President and Gilligrass's strict nanny, Elvira Tibbs, and his Cabinet see this mysterious object dock with the Space Hotel and think it contains hostile agents of a foreign or extraterrestrial government. The space shuttle containing the hotel staff and three astronauts approaches the Space Hotel, and the shuttle's crew prepares for the worst. On the Hotel, Wonka and the others hear the President address them across a radio link as Martians, and Wonka proceeds to tease Gilligrass with nonsense words and grotesque poetry. But in the midst of this, the hotel's elevators open, revealing five gigantic, brown-green, boneless creatures shaped something like eggs with eyes. They change shape, each forming a letter of the word SCRAM, and Wonka motions everybody to get out of the Space Hotel quickly.
    Those shape-changers, Wonka tells the others, are predatory extraterrestrials called Vermicious Knids that have infested the Space Hotel. Since they can't reach Earth's surface to prey on its natives because they burn up in the atmosphere as shooting stars, the Knids are waiting in the Space Hotel for the new arrivals in the shuttle, some of whom they instantly devour. Capable of flying in anaerobic space at improbable speeds, they pursue the survivors but are unable to board the space shuttle. Instead, they dive-bomb the shuttle's engines and hull, destroying the rockets as well as the cameras and radio antenna. Without its rockets, the shuttle is unable to escape the Knids by breaking orbit and returning to Earth.
    Seeing all this from the relative safety of the Great Glass Elevator, which is Knid-proof (one Knid bruised itself badly on the Knid-proof glass and has been chasing the Elevator ever since), Charlie suggests that he and his companions use the Elevator to tow the shuttle in to land. Willy Wonka, in agreement, pilots the Elevator into range, whereupon Charlie's Grandpa Joe connects the two vessels by means of a steel cord. The Knids change into living segments of a towing line, with which they intend to drag the spacecrafts away. The bruised Knid wraps his body around the Elevator, providing an anchor for this operation.
    This plan proves again to be a double-edged sword. Willy Wonka activates the Elevator's retro-rockets and plunges to Earth, taking the shuttle and the Knids with it. The Knids burn to ashes as a result of the friction with the atmosphere during re-entry. At the right moment, Wonka releases the shuttle, which floats safely home. The Elevator crashes into the chocolate factory, ending its flight in the Chocolate room.
    Since Charlie was presented the factory as a gift by Wonka, he wants his family to help him run it. Georgina, George and Josephine still refuse to move out of their bed. Wonka proposes a pill he invented, Wonka-Vite, to make them young again. (He says that it is too valuable to waste on himself, which is why he needed an heir in the first place.) The three bedridden recipients get greedy and take much more than they need to. Instead of becoming a mere twenty years younger, the three grandparents lose eighty years, making George one year old, Josephine three months, and Georgina absent altogether, having become "minus two" (she was seventy-eight). Charlie and Wonka journey in the Great Glass Elevator to Minusland to get Georgina back with Vita-Wonk, a sprayable compound that makes people older. Minusland is a dark, gloomy region far beneath the surface of the Earth, filled up entirely with fog, and inhabited only by the invisible and highly dangerous Gnoolies, creatures which, with a single bite, turn their victims into more Gnoolies (Wonka states that the process, a form of long division, takes a long time and is very painful). After administering an even worse overdose of Vita-Wonk to Grandma Georgina, they return to the upper world.
    There, Georgina has become 358 years old. Her memory entails much of History, beginning with the Pilgrim voyage in the ship "Mayflower" and ending in the present moment, spanning over many wars and truces in between. Using a more cautious dose of Wonka-Vite, her companions subtract much of this age from her, leaving her at seventy-eight as she was before. Charlie and Mr. Wonka administer Vita-Wonk enough to recall Josephine and George to their original age.
    The grandparents are still incensed with Wonka's adventurous nature. They refuse, as before, to come out of bed. Then mysterious visitors arrive in a helicopter. The Oompa-Loompas give Wonka a letter from President Gilligrass, congratulating the occupants of the Great Glass Elevator on saving the lives of the shuttle astronauts and hotel staff and inviting them as the guests of honour to a White House dinner. The grandparents don't want to be left out, so they leap out of bed and join Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Wonka, and Charlie's parents to enter the helicopter sent to pick them up.
  2. Banjora Marxvile
    October 18th, 2009 7:16 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    Well done. the Great Glass Elevator was weirder. It has been a while since I read it.
  3. Rogue planet
    October 18th, 2009 7:13 AM
    Rogue planet
    Would you like me to remind you about the storyline for the Great Glass Elevator aswell?
  4. Rogue planet
    October 18th, 2009 7:12 AM
    Rogue planet
    I think I know the storyline better than you, here is what I can remember from the top of my head:

    Charlie Bucket, an intelligent boy from a poor family, lives with his parents and both sets of elderly grandparents. From these four, especially Grandpa Joe, he hears stories about the candymaker Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory he built in Charlie's hometown, which had been locked for a decade; however, the factory is mysteriously still operating. As time passed, rival chocolate makers sent in spies, posing as workers, to Wonka's factory to steal his recipes. Mr Wonka was frustrated by this and fired the workers so there would be no spies left. The factory has since resumed operations with workers whose identity is a mystery, for the gates remain locked, and nobody, including Wonka, is seen going in or out of the factory anymore.
    Wonka holds a worldwide contest, in which five Golden Tickets are hidden under the wrappers of his candy bars; the prize for those who find them is a day-long tour of the factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The contest becomes a worldwide mania, with people resorting to increasingly desperate and unscrupulous measures to find the tickets, and anyone who succeeds becomes front-headline news and a worldwide celebrity. Charlie and four bad children, the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and television-obsessed Mike Teavee, win the contest and go on the tour, led by Wonka. As the group moves from room to room, the tour turns into a punishment for the bad children as one child after another falls victim to his/her particular vices and is removed. Augustus falls into a chocolate river and sucked up a pipe to the fudge room; Violet turns into a blueberry after consuming unstable chewing gum; Veruca is thrown down a garbage chute; Mike is shrunk after meddling with dangerous television equipment. They leave the factory with permanent reminders of their misbehavior as well as their lifetime supply of chocolate: Augustus is squeezed thin, Violet is purple, Veruca is covered in garbage, and Mike is a 10-foot giant and thin as a wire.
    Charlie is the only child who does not misbehave throughout the tour. Seeing that he is the only one left, Wonka announces that he has "won" the entire factory and will take over the company after Wonka retires. The reason Wonka had sent out the Golden Tickets was to find a child to be his heir as he himself has no family to carry on his work. The two board a special glass elevator along with Grandpa Joe, who has accompanied Charlie on the tour, and they are propelled up from the factory, the story continuing in the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
  5. Banjora Marxvile
    October 17th, 2009 4:16 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    Sweets are sweeter.
  6. Rogue planet
    October 17th, 2009 4:13 AM
    Rogue planet
    The Warden has alcohol.
  7. Banjora Marxvile
    October 17th, 2009 4:12 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    But I still prefer Wonka. He has sweets!
  8. Rogue planet
    October 17th, 2009 4:09 AM
    Rogue planet
    The Warden is far more demented.
  9. Banjora Marxvile
    October 17th, 2009 1:43 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    Because of 1 simple fact: Willy Wonka... Was pretty mysterious, and a bit demented sometimes (boat trip...)
  10. Rogue planet
    October 16th, 2009 2:11 PM
    Rogue planet
    Why have a Willy Wonka theme when you can have a theme of THE WARDEN.
  11. Banjora Marxvile
    October 10th, 2009 6:15 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    Gene Wilder was mysterious, and hid what he was thinking well, and the boat trip where he just started singing eerily...
  12. Rogue planet
    October 10th, 2009 6:10 AM
    Rogue planet
    The Johnny Depp one was just rubbish.
    Gene Wilder was more creepy, because he didn't try too hard to be creepy and end up being stupid; but I got the feeling that he'd tear one of those children's faces off without batting an eyelid.
  13. Banjora Marxvile
    October 10th, 2009 6:03 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    The Johnny Depp one just creeped my out of my mind...

    As for the Gene Wilder one, I liked that! The boat scene was awesome!
  14. Rogue planet
    October 10th, 2009 6:00 AM
    Rogue planet
    Probably the most terrifying film from my childhood, after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  15. Banjora Marxvile
    October 10th, 2009 5:59 AM
    Banjora Marxvile
    He's modest, clever and so smart he barely can restrain it,
    He has so much generosity there is no way to contain it!

    ... AH! That is so... Annoying as you cannot forget it...