Released on December 15th, this enchanting prequel to the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” tells the story of how he came to have his amazing chocolate factory in the first place.
By Alina Ramirez
The new “Wonka” movie is a musical about the backstory of the star chocolatier, Willy Wonka.
The movie was successful and made about $509.7 million at the box office. People were mixed about the movie from the beginning because they thought Timothee Chalamet wasn’t a good fit to play Willy Wonka but, as more went to see the movie, more didn’t mind him playing Willy, as people said he fit the role perfectly.
The movie itself is fascinating and filled with good music and even better scenes and special effects.
“Wonka” starts with the main man himself coming into Europe to sell chocolate and he arrives with some money also. He burns through the money he brings relatively fast as he has no choice but to give it away with all the problems he faces.
As the sky starts getting dark, Willy finds himself on a bench in the cold with not enough money to stay anywhere.
That is until he runs into a man named Mr. Bleacher, who says that he can come with him to have a place to stay and Willy accepts not knowing what’s to come once he gets there.
When he goes inside the place, he finds it nice and he also meets another character named Mrs. Scrubitt. She tells him to make himself comfortable and once he does get comfortable, she pulls out a contract for him to sign. Once he signs it, Mrs. Scrubitt says he needs to pay the hidden fines that consist of “using the fire” and “walking around the place”.
Before he did sign it though, he was warned about it by a girl peeking through a hidden door in a bookcase telling him to not sign it and read the fine print but since he can’t read, he just signed it not knowing what would be the consequence of that.
Since Willy didn’t have money, he was forced to work for both Mr. Bleacher and Mrs. Scrubitt until he paid his debt.
While being set down to where he’ll work, he meets 5 others who were tricked just like he was and he also gets to formally meet the girl that tried to warn him whose name is Noodle.
Once the morning comes, he goes to the place (called the Galeries Gourmet) where he wants to buy a shop to sell chocolate.
He stands in front of the shop and brings attention to people with his creation, “Hoverchocs” which does not draw attention to people walking by, but the 3 other shop owners who are watching all that play out. They call the chief of police and confiscate his earrings which makes him not able to repay his debt.
He is now not allowed to leave Mrs. Scrubitt’s boarding house until he repays everything to her.
He soon learns about the “Chocolate Cartel” and knows why they called the chief of police on him. They control the chief with chocolate as that’s his weakness and they have him force Willy to leave town.
Willy escapes with Noodle and promises her a lifetime of chocolate and she promises that she’ll teach him how to read.
In order to make chocolate to sell and repay his and Noodle’s debt, he has to milk a giraffe and once that scene passes over, the laundry workers that Willy is working learnearns about his plan to pay back his debt and join him to help him sell chocolate.
One night when Willy is sleeping, someone sneaks into his room, trying to steal his chocolate creations. But, Willy has seen this person before and sets a trap to catch him.
The thing he catches is an Oompa Loompa and he explains to Willy that he needs to take his chocolate because he needs to repay his debt to Loompaland since Willy stole cocoa beans from their trees. Willy lets him go after the Oompa Loompa convinces him to let him go but once he does leave, he doesn’t go without taking the chocolate.
Once he made enough money, Willy uses some funds to buy his dream shop and finally sells chocolate in peace. The “Chocolate Cartel” is not happy about this and exposes how all the employees were escaping to Mrs. Scrubitt and they have a plan to ruin his newly opened shop. They put yeti sweat in his chocolate creations and that causes chaos all around the store.
With the store left in shambles, the “Chocolate Cartel” goes into the store offering to repay everyone’s debts and let them free. Willy accepts but, not without him being forced to leave as that was part of the agreement if he wanted to let everyone go.
Once he leaves, Mrs. Scrubitt calls everyone up and releases everyone one by one. Once it came to Noodle’s turn to be freed, she let her know that the “Chocolate Cartel” paid extra for her, just to keep her there.
As soon as Willy is on the boat to leave, he realizes that one of the “Chocolate Cartel” members named Slugworth has a ring just like Noodle wears around her neck.
He jumps off the boat right before it explodes. He then rescues Noodle with the help of the group and they run to obtain the cartel’s incriminating account book. Once they get ahold of it, they are confronted by the cartel and Slugworth (now revealed as Noodle’s uncle) says that he reported her death to her mother because he wanted to receive the family fortune after his brother (Noodle’s dad) passed away.
They attempt to drown Noodle and Wonka but not before giving them a jar of candies saying “I promised my orange friend I’d give him these” (referring to the Oompa Loompa).
They laugh at his face and once trapped, all 3 cartels eat the chocolate. Soon, the Oompa Loompa comes and saves them. Once the cartel members get outside, they start floating as the jar filled with chocolate is “Hoverchocs”.
Wonka reveals the book to the police department as it contains every crime committed. As the end of the comes, Willy takes out a bar of chocolate his mother gave him when he was young.
At the end, Willy reunites Noodle with her mother and he buys an abandoned castle to make his enchanting chocolate factory and he hires the Oompa Loompa as his chocolate taster.
This really kept people interested throughout the plot and deserved all the praise it got.
Alina Ramirez
Alina Ramirez ('27) is in Journalism 1. She's a writer for the Arts and Entertaiment section. She is very interested in music and has many different artists she listens to. Some of her favorites consist of TV Girl, Immortal Technique, Gorillaz, and Weezer.
Tags: arts, arts and entertainment, arts and entirtainment, entertainment, movie, movie review, rangers, Redwood, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers, rhs, visalia ca, Wonka movie