Spoiler alert! The following post contains details about the ending of Timothée Chalamet's new "Wonka" movie (in theaters now).
We all have those films that are guaranteed to make us weep.
“Wonka” director Paul King struggles to get through Disney/Pixar’s “Up” without “at least three or four snotty howls,” he admits. “I cry at everything now.”
For star Timothée Chalamet, “It’s honestly something I’ve been in. I know that’s awful,” he says with a laugh. “ ‘Interstellar’ gets me. When Ellen Burstyn and Matthew McConaughey have their scene at the end? I’m a wreck.”
“Wonka” is about to become many people’s “grab a tissue” movie. In the fantasy musical, a young Willy Wonka (Chalamet) moves to the big city to open his own chocolate shop, in the unlikely hope that it’ll somehow bring back his late mom (Sally Hawkins), herself a chocolatier. By the end of the film, he comes to the emotional realization that while she’s not physically there, she’ll always be supporting him in spirit.
In the heart-tugging finale, Wonka unwraps the last bar of chocolate that his mom made for him before she died. Enclosed is a golden ticket with a message from her reading, “It’s not the chocolate that matters. It’s the people you share it with.” Smiling through tears, Wonka breaks off pieces of the candy one by one, dividing it between the many new friends he’s made along his journey.
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The movie ends with Wonka inviting his Oompa Loompa pal (Hugh Grant) to head up the tasting department at his future chocolate factory, which whimsically springs to life inside his head. As this all unfolds, he earnestly croons the classic song “Pure Imagination,” which was featured in the 1971 original film “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” During the closing credits, Grant also performs a new rendition of an Oompa Loompa song, informing the audience what happened to the other characters in the film.
Along with the familiar music, “Wonka” features many Easter eggs from the original movie, as well as Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Wonka nearly drowns in a large vat of liquid chocolate, reminiscent of the factory's famous chocolate river. His nefarious rival candymaker, Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), appears in all iterations of the story, including this latest version. And Chalamet’s line “Scratch that, reverse it” is a direct nod to Gene Wilder’s chocolatier in the first film.
The scene where young Wonka struggles to read a fine-print contract is also an homage to the original movie when Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) and the other kids are instructed to sign a lengthy agreement before touring Wonka’s factory.
“There’s a bunch of little things that we threw in,” King says. “There’s a lot of stuff in the choreography like Wonka stepping back as he goes down the steps and (using) the cane. He’s his own character, and this is 25 years earlier, so he’s in such a different place in his life. But I like those little things where you can see, ‘Oh! That’s how he becomes the older Wonka from the Gene Wilder movie.’ ”
The movie ends with a starry-eyed Wonka dreaming up his legendary factory. But it doesn’t get into how or why exactly he became the somewhat menacing character we know in the first movie: a lonely oddball looking to give away his business to the kindest, most selfless child. King says he has ideas for potential “Wonka” sequels, although none have been announced.
“I had a blast doing this,” King says. “There are a bunch of Willy Wonka story ideas in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ as well as in the Dahl archives. It’s a rich world. I would love to see Willy on the Oompa Loompa island. Willy in Loompaland sounds good. But we’ll just have to see how this goes.”
'Wonka' movie review:Timothée Chalamet's sweet take on beloved candyman (mostly) works
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