There’s a tweet joke that has stayed bouncing around in my brain for months now, about a gritty re-imagining of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:
laughing imaging a gritty Wonka movie just called “Willy” and the trailer is Ryan Gosling solemnly sucking a lollipop in an empty factory while “Hurt” plays. this would easily make $1.2 billion worldwide btw
— Assassin Pitbull Leonidas (@ByYourLogic) June 9, 2018
Inspired by this tweet, I came up with the following plot summary of my take on the idea, a somber, tragic movie called “Wonka,” starring Steven Buscemi. I hope some of you enjoy this rambling bonkersness as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please note this is a super-rough draft, so sorry for any typos or incoherentness. This is also why the children don’t have casting.
Wonka (2022)
Steve Buscemi plays Willy Wonka in a film set 20 years after the initial tour of the factory, also its final day of operation. After the series of industrial accidents that resulted in traumatized children, initially conceived of as part of a “goodness of heart” test, Wonka felt he could no longer operate his factory, it having nearly destroyed the very children he wanted to serve and entertain.
Charlie (Lupita N’yongo) has grown up, and after receiving the proceeds from the sale of the final stock of the factory as well as the patents for all the candy, by way of apology from Wonka, has started producing the candy in a much safer way in Kenya, bringing prosperity to the region. Upon getting a call from the daughter of one of the Oompa Loompas (Meredith Eaton, playing the daughter of Peter Dinklage) that Wonka is back at the factory and wandering around in a semi-daze again, she flies out to the factory in an attempt to help her benefactor finally move on from his grief.
Wonka walks through the factory, visiting the site of each of the accidents, accompanied by flashbacks. We see the children receiving the golden tickets. Charlie is seen running from her home, followed by her grandfather (James Earl Jones), to get to a pay phone to call in and receive her prize, golden ticket in hand. This scene is notable for the fact that the geography is incorrect. The payphone is at a small shop on a hill, behind which we can see the Serengheti with Kilamanjaro in the background. this likely represents Wonka’s conception of Africa, having never been there or learned much about it, as well as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the song “Africa” by Toto, which intentionally displays a similar ignorance.
We start with the chocolate river, now hardened and seized, as Wonka walks along its surface. we see a flashback to when Augustus Gloop fell in, being swept away downstream and up into a pipe into the fudge room. We see one of the Oompa Loompas (Peter Dinklage) desperately shutting down the machinery in the fudge room and pulling a nearly-drowned Gloop from the fudge mixing machine, battered and heavily injured.
He then goes to the (Mushroom forest?), which is now charred and destroyed. We first flash back to Wonka burning the room down in the aftermath of the tour, so that the three-course gum never harms anyone again. We then flash back further to Violet engaging in the fateful blueberry incident. While she’s recovered and taken to a quiet back area to recover, Wonka cannot forgive himself for not properly securing the gum before the tour. We found out that in modern times, Violet (Emilia Clarke), runs a very successful charity organization, but is hounded by blueberry fetishists, leading her to feel unsafe in most public settings. We also find that newspaper photos of her blueberry-ification are passed around in imageboards, leading her to relieve the trauma whenever they resurface, now combined with a dark sexual element, leaving her haunted and unable to fully move on from the incident.
Next is the fizzy lifting drinks room, the vats and bottling equipment now shuttered and rusted. We flash back to Charlie and her grandfather sampling the drinks while Wonka’s explaining the intricacies of the production equipment to Veruca’s father (Matthew Broderick), a mechanical engineer. He turns when he hears Charlie and her grandfather’s surprised yells as they float to the ceiling, being slowly sucked towards a large ventilation fan that isn’t covered in a proper mesh covering. Wonka yells to the Oompa Loompa to shut off the machinery as he himself attempts to climb the machinery to grab the two floating tourists. He manages to grab Charlie by the shoe, but it begins to slip off, and her grandfather passes by and Wonka cannot reach him. Then, Charlie’s shoe slips off and she starts floating back up towards the fan. Luckily, the Oompa Loompa hits the emergency stop on the equipment in the room, shutting off the fan mere moments before Charlie’s grandfather or her can reach the fan. The two then are able to hold onto the ceiling until they burp themselves back to the ground, escaping with nothing but an uncomfortable case of indigestion. Wonka is visibly shaken after the incident, but continues the tour.
Mike’s test of the Wonkavision goes similarly poorly, and he ends up permanently shrunk.
The final room is the golden egg room. Veruca, an animal lover, gets too close to the golden goose, over Wonka’s warnings. The goose gets aggressive, and Veruca flees in fear, crawling into a trash chute to try and escape and slipping. Her father chases after her, reaching in and grabbing her by the ankle and preventing her from falling into the furnace three stories below until the Oompa Loompa can shut off the machinery. Wonka helps pull her out and Veruca carries a traumatized Veruca out of the factory, declining the rest of the tour.
Wonka brings Charlie and her grandfather into his office, explaining that this really wasn’t how he wanted the day to go, and that he’s shutting down the factory, as he now realizes just how unsafe it is and that he and the Oompa Loompa clearly can’t keep children safe in it, so what’s the point in continuing? Charlie protests, despite her near-death experience, but Wonka insists. However, struck by her passion for the candy, he turns over the patents/recipes and fifty percent of his assets to “do with as you will.” Charlie’s in awe of the gift, and her grandfather solemnly accepts on her behalf. He asks Wonka what he’ll do now, and a shattered Wonka simply says “I don’t know.”
In the modern day we find Wonka sitting on an old catwalk over the gumdrop room, now overgrown with mutated, gnarled gumdrops. Charlie finds him and sits down next to him, asking him if he’s okay. He says no. He misses it, the factory, making children smile. But he can’t forgive himself. Charlie suggests he go and apologize to the people he wronged. Out of the five children, she’s the only one who ended up unphased by the incident, correctly attributing it to a human mistake rather than malice, and escaping being traumatized, except by insisting that safety standards be rigorously enforced in her own candy factories.
Wonka says he doesn’t think he can face the other children, but Charlie coaxes him into it by promising to go with him, along with the Oompa Loompa’ss daughter, who is the caretaker of the old factory building.
He first finds Augustus Gloop (Charlie Day), now an adult who has a crippling fear of drowning and chocolate, leading him to become a shut-in much of the time, and heavily dependent on anti-anxiety drugs to get through social events involving chocolate, of which there are many. He struggles to go to his children’s birthday parties, can’t attend his oldest daughter’s swim meets, and feels cut off from them by his trauma. Wonka attempts to apologize, but Gloop won’t hear it, saying that while he appreciates the effort it’s too little and twenty years too late. He kicks Wonka out of his home, slamming the door in his face. Charlie comforts Wonka, saying that now he know at least he tried.
They travel to Violet’s home, a high-walled compound in London. She sees them in, and hears Wonka’s apology, but takes the time to yell at Wonka about how he ruined her life, detailing the stalking she deals with every day as a result of something she did as a child that is now sexualized beyond her control. She throws them out as well, with Wonka visibly distraught. While Charlie goes to get the car, the Oompa Loompa’s daughter tries to comfort him, saying that there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, as it were. He sobs, saying he wishes there was, and the two share a long hug until Charlie pulls up to pick them up.
They visit the adult Mike (Chris Hemsworth) next, now a wealthy microchip manufacturer. While he accepts Wonka’s apology, saying that it lead to a difficult life but also a unique perspective on the world, he curses out Charlie, who refuses to sell him the designs to the Wonkavision. He wants to use them to reduce humans’ environmental impact by shrinking people, and accuses her of killing the planet out of ableism. She is shaken by this, but continues to refuse, and they are ushered out.
The final visit is to Veruca’s (Mindy Kaling) residence in Manhattan, who has severe claustrophobia and a fear of fire, but otherwise manages to live a relatively normal life as the director of a recycling research nonprofit. While she graciously accepts Wonka’s apology, when she excuses herself to the other room, her wife (Awkwafina) tears into Wonka, explaining that Veruca has trouble around animals despite still loving them to this day, and that she’s heard about the accident and he should feel terrible. Tears well in his eyes as he admits that he does, and Veruca’s wife is notably shocked that he seems to actually care. She then comforts him, saying that she’s held in this rage on her wife’s behalf for so long, but now that she sees that he truly regrets it, she’s willing to forgive him, too. Veruca re-enters with coffee and the five of them have a relatively pleasant chat before Wonka leaves.
The three finish by sitting in Central Park, feeding the pigeons, with Wonka still despondent. Charlie gently coaxes him to open up, and he explains that while he’s gotten closure, he still feels terrible that he can’t fix things. The Oompa Loompa’s daughter explains that some things can’t be fixed (and aludes to her own father’s death of a congenital heart defect), but that we live with our mistakes and continue on anyway. Wonka still wishes there were a way he could bring joy to children again, and Charlie invites him to come live with her, and give children tours of the new, safer factory. Wonka tearfully accepts, and the final shot is a pan over him entertaining kids with his signature outfit and character as he leads them on a tour of Charlie’s candy factories.
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