January 4th, 2024 marks the fifth child to drown in the chocolate river within the walls of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Once considered to be a place of hope where whimsicality was fostered and joy was nourished, is now home to the impending threat of death.
Augustus Gloop, Patrick Quackshaw, Barron Trump (not that one), Jeremy Gropmop, and Gaten Matarazzo (maybe that one); names echoed throughout rioting streets, chanted and urged to never be forgotten outside the slim slots of relevancy that time provides.
Devoid of any remorse, Wonka studies his reflection on a Thursday afternoon. He has something else on his mind. Something more important. Grasped in the palm of his hand where his cane usually rests is a magazine cover braced with the poster of Warner Bros’ Wonka.
Multiple attempts to steer Wonka away from his anxieties about his casting in the film and toward the severity of his unethical work environment ended up unsuccessful.
When asked to comment on the recent string of drownings, Wonka’s eyes paced back and forth between the magazine and the mirror until eventually deciding to reply, “My face isn’t that pointy, right? Like I have a jawline but not… not to that degree?”
Unfortunately, these increasingly common and seemingly purposeful drownings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the controversies that plague Wonka’s factory.
“Mr. Wonka asked me to test out a new candy cigarette he was working on,” an Oompa Loompa alleges. “He claimed it was designed to taste like a mother’s embrace. I told him I thought his concepts were getting too abstract. He impatiently shoved the cigarette down my mouth, repeatedly muttering ‘I know you want this, I know you want this’ as he lit it for me. It was a regular cigarette. Genuinely, just straight-up tobacco.”
If that’s not horrifying enough, once a week Wonka allegedly stands on a podium and delivers a speech about the “white man’s burden.”
“There’s a certain pressure he feels to educate us,” says another Oompa Loompa. “He also says we should be thankful for the measles he ‘graced’ us with ― that we should consider it to be a lasting mark of his generosity. He’s thinking of branding it. ‘Who would buy measles?’ we asked him. ‘Would you buy measles?’ we asked. He looked us dead in the eyes and said, ‘You don’t know me.’”
When approached with the previously mentioned accusations, Wonka, still in the mirror, felt the need to clarify, “Don’t get me wrong, I loved him in Call Me By Your Name. Truly a talented actor and all of that. It’s just — I don’t know — why not ca st Roseanne Barr? Right? I mean, does she not capture my essence better? Let alone the fact that she’s a good friend, something about her always resonated with me on a spiritual level.”
Wonka later admitted that his biggest gripe with the film wasn’t even Timothée Chalamet — it was the fact that his character was written to be illiterate, a character flaw he deemed through email to be “compleetlee untrue and pure miss informashen”.
It’s unclear whether or not Wonka will ever address the blood that is on his hands or the abusive working conditions of the Oompa Loompas he so desperately relies on — but one thing is for certain:
Writer and Director Paul King’s Wonka is in Theaters. And if that sounds like a threat, it might be.
