Did "Wonka" show you just a single world of
pure imagination or is there more to come for the young chocolatier and his tiny orange friend?
Here's what the ending of "Wonka" really means. Willy Wonka is an immigrant fresh off the boat in
a new land with big dreams of making and selling chocolate, inspired by his mother, but he has no
money to his name. Desperate for a place to stay, he takes a suspiciously cheap room deal from
Mrs. Scrubbit and Bleacher, unable to read the fine print forcing him into decades of indentured
servitude. Wonka's plans to pay off his debts by selling chocolate also face the roadblock
of the Chocolate Cartel led by Slugworth, who are in cahoots with the chief of
police to shut down all competition. Wonka teams up with Scrubbit's other hapless
victims to surreptitiously build their chocolate empire — though they occasionally have to resupply
ingredients stolen by an Oompa-Loompa seeking payback for a previous cocoa theft. Wonka's
most significant friend in this group is Noodle, an orphaned girl who teaches him how to read.
Wonka's magical confections prove so popular with the public that he's eventually able to open
his own store. The opening, however, is sabotaged by the Cartel, who pay off Scrubbit and Bleacher
to poison the store's supply. At his lowest point, Wonka is given an ultimatum — if he leaves
town, all his friends' debts will be paid off. On the boat out of town, the Oompa-Loompa
catches up with Wonka, encouraging him to fight back against the Cartel. Wonka realizes
that Slugworth's signet ring matches Noodle's — it turns out she's Slugworth's niece, and she wasn't
freed but instead bought by Scrubbit and Bleacher to keep her out of her family's fortune. Wonka
returns to reunite with his friends for a massive heist to acquire the documented evidence of
the Cartel's crimes. They find the documents, but the Cartel traps Wonka and Noodle in a
flooding chocolate chamber. The Oompa-Loompa, still on the trail of Wonka's chocolate, ends
up rescuing them before they drown. The police turn on their corrupt chief after seeing
the evidence, the Cartel leaders are blown away after eating Wonka's levitation candies,
and the chocolate explodes into a fountain. Wonka opens the bar of chocolate he's been
saving from his mother, and inside is a golden ticket with a message about the joy of sharing
chocolate with people. Noodle's mom is found, allowing for a mother-daughter reunion as
Wonka sings "Pure Imagination," and Wonka and the Oompa-Loompa make a deal to work
together to build their chocolate factory. "Wonka" spells out its ultimate moral loud and
clear, literally writing it on a golden ticket. It's the old cliche of "the real treasure was
the friends we made along the way," delivered with just enough conviction and earnestness
to hopefully make viewers' eyes water more than they roll. Wonka's motivation from the
beginning is driven by his love for his mother, and though she's no longer with him except in
memory, he's now built up a group of friends and has a "found family" he seeks to take
care of. The movie also makes clear that you can balance caring for others with
pursuing your personal dreams — Wonka was ready to give up the latter for the sake of
the former, but he realizes he can do both. "What are you doing?" "I'm making chocolate of course." This message is perhaps the one thing the
movie has in common with the 2005 "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Whereas the book
and the 1971 movie use Wonka primarily as an arbiter of sin and virtue for the kids
visiting the factory to learn lessons from, the 2005 movie shifts the arc more towards
Wonka himself learning the value of family. The difference is that Johnny Depp's
version of Wonka learned that lesson at an older age after having a much more
fraught relationship with his own family. While the ending of "Wonka" works successfully
as a conclusion to the movie's self-contained narrative, it's weird as an origin
story for this particular character. Whether you're talking about the book
or the two previous movie adaptations, Willy Wonka is a character famous for
his mysteriousness and reclusiveness. The Gene Wilder version in particular
has a sharp cynical edge — he doesn't even feign caring about kids getting injured
on his factory tour, and even Charlie nearly gets screwed out of his reward due to the fine
print in a contract he couldn't possibly read. If "Wonka" is all about a younger
Wonka learning the value of friendship, isn't it weird to think he'd later go on to
shut himself up in his factory and shun the outside world? Perhaps the Oompa-Loompas would
be friends enough for him in his recluse years, but surely he'd want to stay in some contact
with Noodle and his other human friends as well, right? Furthermore, it's sad to imagine this
version of Wonka, screwed over by contract law in his youth, growing up to be the same man
who would try to do the same to other people. "The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last." It's not really clear whether this is a standalone
story about Willy Wonka or intended to eventually segue into the events of the novel and films. Paul
King's film does offer other points of distinction that might imply this is a different continuity:
Where the book explicitly takes place in England and the 1971 movie in the United States, "Wonka"
seems to take place in a fantasy setting. Their monetary currency of "silver sovereigns" is
fictional. Magic holds a greater presence in this world than it did in other Wonka
stories, especially in the musical numbers. The period is also distinctly indistinct, with an
anachronistic mishmash of styles and technologies. And this film's version of Arthur Slugworth is
definitely a different take from the 1971 version. In his performance, Timothée Chalamet isn't
attempting an impression of Gene Wilder; if anything, his exaggerated comic deliveries
and good-natured yet foolish characterization feel like they take more inspiration from Jim
Carrey's performances. If the Chalamet Wonka is supposed to in fact be a younger version
of the Wilder Wonka, then presumably a lot is going to change in his life between "Wonka" and
whenever he gives Charlie Bucket a factory tour. If the Chalamet Wonka is to eventually become
the Wilder Wonka, it would be at least in part thanks to the influence of the Hugh Grant
Oompa-Loompa. Though he only appears for brief portions of the film, the Oompa-Loompa
turns out to be one of its most important characters in terms of moving the story along.
His characterization is in many ways closer to the Wonka audiences already know and love, both
in his wittiness and in his extreme pursuit of justice that borders on sadism. By Loompa
law, any crime must be met with 1000 times the punishment — the sort of philosophy that
might justify turning annoying gum-chewing kids into blueberries or shrinking television
addicts and teleporting them into a TV. It's the Oompa-Loompa who encourages Wonka
to fight back against the Chocolate Cartel, setting the story's climax in motion.
While this fighting back doesn't escalate into the nightmare fuel of book Wonka
or Wilder Wonka's ironic punishments, it does at least push the character a bit closer
to classic Roald Dahl-style darkness rather than keeping him purely a figure of innocent whimsy.
Combine the Oompa-Loompa's influence with Noodle starting to give Wonka a more proper education
on non-chocolate subjects, and you can at least imagine the roots of how this version of Wonka is
starting to become closer to the original in some ways — even if the "power of friendship"
stuff makes him more different in others. In an interview with Games Radar, coinciding
with the release of the film's trailer in July, Paul King gave insight into how he went about
approaching his conception of a younger Wonka. Doing so was a "challenge," he
said, before continuing to say, "But I also felt -- maybe misguidedly,
but just probably from those childhood readings — that I did know who this person was." "How do you like it? Dark,
white, nutty, absolutely insane?" He pointed to the end of "Willy Wonka &
the Chocolate Factory" as proof of how even the aged, cynical version of the
character still believed in "goodness, kindness, and hope," which was key
to developing his younger version. Noodle, he explained, was necessary
as a "slightly more cynical person" to counterbalance young Wonka's
innocence. Even so, King acknowledged, "I'm not sure my soul is quite
as dark as Roald Dahl's." That sentiment goes some way to explaining why the film ends on such a happy note with
Wonka's positivity generally intact. Hugh Grant's job, both in performing
in and promoting Paul King's films, has been to bring his trademark cantankerousness
to a role that could otherwise risk becoming sickly sweet. Speaking to the Associated Press
alongside Timothée Chalamet, Grant took shots at the director's perfectionism and the strangeness
of playing an Oompa-Loompa, while still making it clear he loved being part of the production.
Talking about the film's moral, he said, "It's not a trite, tacked-on
motto. It comes from his heart." Chalamet seconded this assessment
that the director really means it, while acknowledging he'd be "suspicious" if he
heard about it from the outside. Chalamet compared the experience to his work on Greta Gerwig's
"Little Women" in terms of being an adaptation of a classic story that's done well enough
to overcome skepticism about IP-based movies. "This movie feels like a breath of
fresh air with a story that's outside the bounds of Roald Dahl's original
material. I thought it was magical." In a Total Film article, King revealed he
was open to making sequels to "Wonka." He pointed out how Roald Dahl, a writer who
"didn't really write sequels," nonetheless kept exploring different things he could
do with the character of Willy Wonka. He wrote "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,"
featuring Wonka, and even had plans to write a third book in the series, so there's plenty
of potential for continuation. King said, "There's an awful lot more Wonka story that
we have that we would like to tell. It's not like 'Dune: Part One' where you go, 'This is
what's happening in Part Two.' Hopefully it works exquisitely as a stand-alone movie.
But I would definitely like to do more. And I'd like to spend more time in this
world, and meet some more Oompa Loompas."
