"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Wicked: Part I

WICKED: PART I starts near the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, felled by a well-aimed bucket of water. The celebration commences. Glinda the Good Witch (Ariana Grande, DON’T LOOK UP) arrives in her bubble to address the crowd, and somebody asks her if she knew that dead lady. So she tells us (part one of) the story of her days as the college roommate of the would-be wicked witch.

I’m gonna start this review with a flash forward too. I thought this movie was okay. I didn’t hate it. I don’t really get it. Stay tuned for details.

I sometimes say I’m not a musicals guy, but really I’m just not a Broadway guy. It’s not as much the “I’m gonna start singing now” format as it is the specific modern Broadway style of storytelling, tone of melodrama, sense of humor, and especially musical styles that don’t appeal to me. Case in point: huge crossover hit and cultural phenomenon Hamilton (Disney+ version). I swear I tried to watch it with an open mind, but I just don’t know how to stop wincing. It sets off all my too-corny defense systems.

But I’m not hopeless. I loved Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY. I even loved LES MISERABLES! I thought CATS was an amusing enough abomination against God. So there’s always a possibility of winning me over. WICKED PART I’s trailers did it no favors, but word was almost universally positive, and I have respect for director Jon M. Chu (G.I. JOE: RETALIATION) because he’s from the streets (specifically STEP UP 2 THE STREETS). So I bit the bullet, paid the twenty bucks for VOD and attempted to ease on down the road.

As you may know, WICKED PART I is an adaptation of the first act of a blockbuster Broadway musical, itself based on a popular book by Gregory Maguire, itself a riff on the WIZARD OF OZ movie, itself a musical based on the works of L. Frank Baum (whose name I didn’t spot on the credits if WICKED). I think the popularity of the musical (or maybe the book?) inspired a wave of villainess’-p.o.v.-reconsidered works (or even villain – see DRACULA UNTOLD), so I’ll give this a pass for the premise not feeling all that novel. Obviously the phenomenon of women being unfairly demonized and not understood until it’s too late continues to be relevant. Furthermore, this version has themes about the rise of fascism and the treachery of insincere allies that are very trenchant. So intellectually I sorta get why it’s such a hit.

It stars Cynthia Erivo (WIDOWS) as the future Wicked Witch of the West, whose name here is Elphaba Thropp. She was born with green skin, causing much ridicule, and she’s used to dealing with that, but while helping her younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) move into the elite sorcery college Shiz University (just go with it) she has a telekinetic outburst that inspires dean Madame Morrible (Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh, BABYLON A.D.) to take her on as a private student, providing housing by coercing kiss-ass popular girl Galinda (as Glinda was known in college) into sharing her private residence. But she’s basically the weird goth roommate to the head cheerleader, and is forced to live in her closet.

I couldn’t tell you much about pop star Ariana Size L, but between some physical humor, the creepy hollowness of the character’s performative friendliness, and the odd waifish quality she already embodies, I think she’s pretty funny here. I knew WICKED would be a defense of the wicked witch; I did not know it would be such a brutal takedown of Glinda the Good Witch. You thought she just had a goofy, old-timey fairy thing going, but according to this she’s a vacuous phony, a pampered, self-centered wannabe, a coat-tail riding usurper and instant ship-abandoner. Toward the end there finally seems to be some genuine admiration between the two roommates, which makes her lack of solidarity even worse.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Elphaba never dreamed of witchdom, but she accepts Morrible’s offer, hoping it could help her meet the Wizard of Oz and get him to cure her of greenness. I think there’s also part of her that feels good about being recognized for a talent. Within the story the green skin is more of a symbol for disability than for race, but there is a prejudice against her for her skin color, so I think it adds something that they cast a great Broadway actress who happens to be Black. I believe on stage it was more in the tradition of those stories where being an alien or having mutant powers stands in for being a minority, without having to actually cast any minorities. Having a Black woman in the role gives us something beyond girl power when she has to come into every situation suspicious of how people will see her, hold her head up extra high, and achieve on a higher level in her magical business. (At the same time, it is a diverse cast, and though the character of Nessarose is always in a wheelchair, Bode is the first actual wheelchair user to play her.)

There is romance. Prince Fiyero Tigelaar of Winkie Country (Jonathan Bailey, FERRARI [tv movie]) is a heartthrob transfer student who flirts with Elphaba, but she rejects him so he settles with Galinda. A munchkin named Boq Woodsman (Ethan Slater, Joel Grey in Fosse/Verdon) has been friend-zoned by Galinda, so he settles with Nessarose.

There’s some prequely stuff here. The monkeys get their wings (body horror style), the brick road gets its colorway, a lion cub lacks bravery. We all know Oz is a place where a lion can join you on your journey, so it’s kinda fun that there’s a talking goat professor at the school (voice of Peter Dinklage, THE THICKET) – realistic cg, not guy in makeup. There is a rash of anti-animal biotry on campus, culminating in the firing of the professor and class demonstration of caging animals. Elphaba speaks up, but no one else does. It’s all very Harry Potterish, but also feels accurate to this moment in history in a way that’s effective. Galinda and Fiyero were starting to seem like they might actually be nice people, but it turns out they’re not the type you can count on to take a stand when it counts. Whelp.

Though bummed out by the rise of fascism, Elphaba does at least get an opportunity to travel to the Emerald City and meet the wizard (Jeff Goldblum, HOTEL ARTEMIS), both in giant mechanical head form and FTF, and she’s such a stand up lady that she brings superfan Glinda with her. (At this point she has altered her name to how the talking goat once mispronounced it, a symbolic gesture of support in lieu of action.)

Elphaba decides to stop worrying about being green and ask the wizard to help the cause of animal rights instead. But shit goes south, she steals the Necronomicon or whatever, flies on a broom, sings her biggest hit, end part I.

I confess I don’t know what the big deal is about “Defying Gravity.” I had seen it described in breathless prose like one of the great works of 21st century music, so I figured what I’d heard of it must seem better in context. But… you know. It’s another one of those types of songs. She flies at the end. I mean, she already was flying but I guess she does it better after the song. I heard Chu interviewed by Sean Levy on the Director’s Guild podcast and Levy was about ready to give Chu ten Nobel Peace Prizes for coming up with the part where she seems like she’s flying but then she plummets off screen, and there’s a beat and I guess she must be dead but– oh no, wait! She caught herself! Thank God! And she zooms back up! SHE CAN FLY!

(The exact beat you expect if you’ve seen any movie with flying, ever.)

That Levy considers that so unprecedented may explain a thing or two about his filmography, but to be fair he’s also obviously coming from the background of loving Broadway musicals in general, and Wicked in particular, as is Chu. And that interview is enlightening in understanding the amount of work that goes into planning, rehearsing and filming every moment of a big musical like this, plus expanding the stage story and the mythology of all these movies and books into his cinematic interpretation. Chu is hugely passionate about it all but more effective, in my opinion, at the musical part. As far as creating a cohesive fantasy world he’s throwing alot of different things in alot of different directions and some of them are landing in the bushes. It doesn’t feel to me like he has that much of a take on Oz, like RETURN TO OZ did. It’s more just mixing up some of the famous imagery, some generic fairy tale shit and some talking animals.

But who am I fooling? If you put in a part where they go to a speakeasy and there are animals playing instruments like the octopus drummer in AQUAMAN, I’m gonna kind of enjoy it, even if it’s stupid. Especially if it’s stupid.

There are some real HOBBIT trilogy shenanigans going on here, because 160 (one-hundred-and-sixty) minutes is reportedly longer than the entire stage musical, and we’ve gotta wait for a whole other movie to cover the rest. (Don’t worry, it’s a big hit so it won’t be a Ralph Bakshi’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS or a THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT: PART 3 OF 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER type situation). I’d heard it stands as a complete story on its own, which I sort of get. This is how she became “wicked” I guess. The trouble with that is I’m not sure what I need part two for. To find out why water melts her, I guess. And why she hates dogs so much. And how her nice sister in the wheelchair gets flattened and everybody celebrates. What the fuck, Oz!? You guys are monsters.

WICKED: PART I is written by Winnie Holzman (writer of the stage version and creator of My So-Called Life) and Dana Fox (COUPLES RETREAT, CRUELLA), songs and score by Stephen Schwartz (original stage version, POCAHONTAS, ENCHANTED), new score by John Powell (FACE/OFF).

Sorry to journey into the kingdom of hot takes and/or bad taste here, but I honestly got more out of Fox’s earlier movie CRUELLA, not to mention the earlier-than-that MALEFICENT – movies I suspect wouldn’t exist without the popularity of the Wicked musical and/or book. The latter I caught up with recently, never reviewed it but it’s a pretty fun, ludicrous riff on the idea of painting the ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS dognapper as a talented misfit who got screwed over. What stuck with me most is the visual style, and unfortunately WICKED just can’t hang in that company. I guarantee you Tim Burton or Gore Verbinski would’ve made Oz look stunning, and that alone might’ve been enough to win me over. But “better looking than I expected from the trailers” didn’t cut it for me.

Chu is working with production designer Nathan Crowley, a veteran of eight Christopher Nolan movies plus JOHN CARTER and WONKA. Costume designer Paul Tazewell has been to Oz before – he did THE WIZ LIVE!. Director of photography Alice Brooks did Chu’s LXD web series as well as DANCE CAMP, IN THE HEIGHTS and tick, tick… BOOM!, and I’m sure that knowing how to move the camera during dance sequences is crucial to a movie like this. All of these are talented people, so I put it on Chu that their work doesn’t meld into something that ranks high in the century-plus of cool looking Oz movies.

But that’s not what most people are looking for here. They’re looking for the musical numbers, and they seem to have loved those. This review might only be relevant to others like me looking in curiously from the outside.

So here we are where we started. The intended audience for this seems to love it. I don’t fully understand what they see in it, but it’s certainly more watchable than the bullshit I pictured when I saw the trailer. So take that for what it’s worth. End of part I. To be continued. Or maybe not if part two doesn’t get nominated for best picture. I’m busy sometimes.


p.s. If the wicked witch was actually cool and just got fucked over by a prejudiced society, is that also true of her waking world counterpart, Dorothy’s mean neighbor Miss Gulch? Has there been any scholarship on this?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 at 10:31 am and is filed under Reviews, Fantasy/Swords, Musical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

36 Responses to “Wicked: Part I”

  1. My wife and I are the intended audience for this, and we both loved it so that checks out. I was actually of the mind of waiting a year and seeing both parts in one day because I was confused to why a story I was able to see all of on stage was suddenly broken into two movies, and the wife was going to go with friends, but due to shenanigans that didn’t work out and she was sad so I told her I would go and I am happy I did. I guess based on what I know of you from reading your reviews for literal decades I’m not surprised it wasn’t your cup of tea, but I find your thoughts that the films depiction of Oz being weak and not as fully realized as any other filmed version of Oz we have seen to be strange. I thought the film looked beautiful and it’s world seemed as fully defined and well realized as any other major fantasy movie. I mean, obviously it isn’t thought out to the point of how the entire ecosystem works ala Pandora or something, but it worked for me. I’m excited for part 2 and for the chance to see both halves in one day.

  2. If it makes you feel any better, I saw Hamilton when it was just this little thing at the Public. I found it… not without it’s charms (anything that presents Thomas Jefferson as a Darth Vader-level villain, I’m going to enjoy at least a little), but ultimately pretty fucking corny. I can only imagine the XXXXXXL broadway version is not without it’s charms (granted the Thomas Jefferson thing is intact), but SUPER fucking corny, because that seems to be how these things work

    Case in point: Wicked. People fly around the theater on wires with pyro and shit. It’s like an Iron Maiden concert, if Iron Maiden played middle-of-the-road pop songs and made allegories even blunter than normal Iron Maiden songs. Obviously there’s an audience for this. Unfortunately, I’m not that audience.

  3. Vern, I was really interested in your take on this after I saw it opening weekend, because I know you like musicals and can typically see the overlooked/underappreciated merit in many things I would reflexively scoff at. I came out of this one unimpressed and bewildered by it’s popularity.

    I saw this solely because I have daughters. One was actually in a school production of WIZARD OF OZ the year prior, and I was INCREDIBLY impressed by that- the girl they cast as the Wicked Witch ate every single scene she was in (as both Gulch and the Witch) with the most mega performance I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing live. And the rest of the cast was superb- the Wizard himself hit every line reading in a way that made me belly laugh. They even did the version with the Jitterbug that got stuck in my head for weeks afterwards. So I was primed to be open to another take on Oz.

    I thought this movie pretty much sucked anthropomorphic goat balls. I tried to have an open mind but didn’t realize it was damn near 3 fucking hours long until it was about to start. Then I had to endure an hour of Ozwarts orientation and painfully trite high school drama before anything happens. Bowen Yang’s character was torture every moment he appeared on screen. I see all this fawning praise for Ariana Grande playing a self absorbed sociopath and kept waiting for Glenda to have some kind of relatable arc, and it never happened. Michelle Yeoh is wasted worse than Goldblum in this movie, but good for them for getting paid I guess. I kept wanting someone to roll the sister into a lake or something- even Erivo seemed like she was looking for any believable way to make this character relatable beyond just “it’s not easy being green.” I simply didn’t care about any of these characters, at all. The flamboyant winkie Prince had the sole moment of fun for me, with his Chad portrayal, but then he had to go sit in class and be boring like the rest of them.

    What was the point of the racism against talking animals? Why did some talk and some were just animals? What was the point of the “revelation” with the Ozonomicon? Is this stuff explained in the book? I came away feeling bad for Dinklage. At least it’s somewhat believable why people hate mutants/X-Men, even if it’s not really plausible that attractive people with superpowers would be automatically hated. In WICKED it just seemed like they needed a plot point and didn’t bother to explain anything about it. Don’t even get me started about the ridiculousness of the dance scene. I was openly hostile to the movie at that point and their big emotional turning point was one of the most unearned and utterly bizarre failed mimicries of human emotion I can remember seeing in a movie. This movie seemed like it was created by the most nonsensical version of a right wing caricature of Broadway sensibilities.

    My daughters sing these songs all the time, because that’s what you do in 2025 when you’re a grade school aged girl apparently. But even she called out Defying Gravity for being a bunch of random barely related melodies held together by a weak hook. And that was the best song.

    None of this even gets into the queasy scumminess of the personal lives of the main cast, or the ridiculous nonsense controversy over a fan edit of the poster that Erivo blew way out of proportion and tried to pretend was some racist slight against her.

    I can’t remember the last time I went into a movie with an open mind and was let down so badly, then emerged to find everyone heaping breathless praise on it to the point I just noped out of the conversation entirely. Best picture???? Fucking LOL. Seems to match the general dissonance of the last few months, at least. Nothing should surprise me, but the response to this movie did.

    What sucks is that I have to do all this over again next year when part 2 comes out.

  4. ” At least it’s somewhat believable why people hate mutants/X-Men, even if it’s not really plausible that attractive people with superpowers would be automatically hated. In WICKED it just seemed like they needed a plot point and didn’t bother to explain anything about it.”

    I mean I live in a city where everyone hates Indian people. I don’t really see it as that implausible that people would hate animal people for just being different. Like that’s kinda the thing with racisim is it’s not in anyway justified or sensible.

  5. I love musical theater with intense passion. I wasn’t a theater kid or anything. A good moment in a musical can just move me more than anything else ever has, so I was definitely the audience for this. I’m not saying every musical moves me. I, too, didn’t especially like or connect with Hamilton. I don’t really feel the need to investigate why I like them. I just do and that’s enough for me. But I also can’t explain to others why they should love them. If it’s not for you, that’s fine. It’s a popular opinion. I’ve seen this twice, so far. The second time was on Christmas Eve and there were a lot of families in the theater that seemed to contain someone who just got dragged along with their wife and/or kids. A guy sat just in front and to the side of me and was on his phone multiple times. I honestly considered leaning forward and saying, “Listen, you obviously don’t give a shit about this movie, so why don’t you go wait in the lobby where your phone won’t be a distraction to the rest of us who actually are into musicals.” But then I took a deep breath and decided to not make a random guy look like an asshole in front of his kids on Christmas Eve. He had the light turned down low, kept it down in his lap and wasn’t on it the entire time. All that said, Vern, I can’t tell you why Defying Gravity is so moving, all I know is both times I’ve seen the movie it made my eyes fill with tears while I gasped and broke out into goosebumps. I was worried that they weren’t going to do the stage production justice, but in my opinion, it’s the best musical I’ve seen go from stage to screen. And I mean, in my own personal experience. I can’t speak to all of those that came back when musicals had their heyday back in the olden days.

  6. Ben: but people give “justifications” all the time for their racism/bigotry; immigrants took our jerbs, spread disease and eat our pets. Feminists ruined video games and Star Wars. Trans people want to cut off our kids genitals. Etc. it’s all bullshit, of course. But did the movie even bother to provide this information? I kept waiting for the exposition goat to explain the Animals’ History Of The Oz States and then they just SPOILER

    disappeared him, and replaced him with Prof Stephen Miller to vivisect a lion cub, for some reason. All the students seemed as confused as I was about WHY though. There didn’t seem to be any Oz Maga types to explain why they suddenly hated animals. Did the animals just poop everywhere? I didn’t pick up on any of it. But maybe I missed it.

  7. With you on HAMILTON and on musicals in general. Someone kept telling me I had to listen to the HAMILTON soundtrack, and I finally humored them and started a song, and I got about 20 seconds in and just couldn’t. I feel a visceral embarrassment for everyone including myself when it comes to musicals (especially history sing-song rapping — that’s next-level literal cringe for me). With this one, you know, there’s a difference between being closed-minded and knowing yourself, and it’s just not for me. Now, having said that, I definitely accept that this sort of material and genre scratches some people right where they itch, and God bless them, I’m glad this exists for them, and I hope the scratching reaches orgasmic heights. Sing and dance it up!

  8. Although I went to see this mostly for my lady’s sake, and thought it was very slow to get going, I liked this well enough. I loved CRUELLA though, so I share Vern’s hot take.

    Crudnasty: “the queasy scumminess of the personal lives of the main cast” – Do I dare ask who/what this refers to? It can’t just be the fan poster thing, right? (“Animals’ History Of The Oz States” is excellent wordplay BTW.)

  9. Curt: the unsavory details are the (seemingly legit) allegations that Adriana Venti had an affair with the Munchkin guy during the production, while both of them were married to other people. The Munchkin’s (now ex) wife confirmed it recently in an essay addressing the rumor mill basically calling out Ms “break up with your girlfriend, I’m bored” for being a homewrecker- then lying about the timing and playing the victim- and all that lowered my opinion of Grande even more, and it was not very high to begin with.

    And thank you!

  10. There’s also some sort of infidelity past with Cynthia Erivo, but I don’t remember the details. Also I think she’s said things online that people found to be anti-Black or something to do with race. Again I don’t remember the details. Which maybe means I shouldn’t spread those rumors, but too late.

  11. Gotta be honest: Every time they make one of these revisionist “The horrible villain from the beloved popculture item wasn’t really evil” stories, I have to think of SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER. (Which, for those who never saw any version of THE PRODUCERS, was a bad stage musical that tried to make Hitler look like a nice guy who was just misunderstood.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that a fictional villain from a fairy tale or whatever is as bad as Hitler and in general I’m a person who tries to understand why even the shittiest people act like they do, but…why can’t you teach children that bad guys are sometimes just bad guys and it’s not the good guys’ fault that a villain is a villain? Maybe it’s far fetched to connect stuff like WICKED to our current political climate, but I feel sometimes that one of the reasons we are so neck deep in shit is that we now have at least two generations of assholes who were raised on “What if he wicked witch was bullied and Superman is actually fashist”.

    Apart from that: Obvious rant about how the movie’s success will most like guarantee that nearly every blockbuster will be split in half in the near future, you heard it before from me.

  12. Add me to the chorus of ‘did not fuck with hamilton’
    I mean on top of my usual icky feelings at American films and their weird kinda obsession with American politicians.

    It also always came off as ‘this isn’t like your dads musical, this one is hip!’ wich just like… Ugh fuck no. I love musicals cause of their sincerity, you can’t fake being cool when you’re singing about your feelings.

  13. Ugh fuck no. I love musicals cause of their sincerity, you can’t fake being cool when you’re singing about your feelings.

    This
    I didn’t want to get to it, because it would seem like I was bashing a thing that millions of people love (and while I saw Wicked, I didn’t see this movie version)

    But, easily one of my favorite movies is West Side Story (and I don’t mean best, or most important, or whatever. I mean ‘if I see it’s on, I’ll watch it to the end’). And the very BIG difference between WSS and the ‘new school’ musicals is that it isn’t glib, smug, “This is a musical and musicals are so dumb, amiright?”.

    It follows the maxim that when the characters can no longer talk, they sing. When they can no longer walk, they dance. And it doesn’t make cute jokes about the fact to distance themselves from it, and ensure the audience they’re actually cool.

  14. I think that sincerity point nails it. I love an old school MGM type musical, and I’d even put a couple of those among my all time favourite movies, but new musicals not so much. If I look at 21st century film musicals that I went out of my way to see and liked, it boils down to HAIRSPRAY, which although lacking Divine and with Travolta mugging in a way Divine never had to still captures Waters’s sincerity, and WEST SIDE STORY, which just exudes Spielberg’s sincerity, and his craft. Even then they both can’t help but feel like imitations of the original movies. And then there’s SUNSHINE ON LEITH which armed with the weapons-grade sincerity of The Proclaimers’ songbook just goes with it, rolls with it, dances with it. Sure it’s a jukebox musical but that sincerity completely papers over all the cracks in the construction, just like it did with, say, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN.

  15. Ben and jojo: I tend to associate rap and hip-hop with streetwise bravado and verbal cleverness, both of which are perhaps more performatively “cool” compared to the more emotionally unguarded tone of most musical theater. So maybe that’s what makes HAMILTON seem to be a different flavor from other Hollywood musicals.

    CJ: I think the original idea behind revisionist stories like WICKED was that official histories are written by the victors, and that outsiders and misfits are unjustly persecuted and demonized, and also that antiheroes are charismatic and interesting.

    Also the liberal stance used to be that people are naturally good but made bad by society, and that wrongdoers deserve the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to redeem themselves (a stance that tough-on-crime conservatives such as Dirty Harry rebelled against).

    Personally I’m troubled by the rising social-media populism which says that outsiders and misfits deserve to be persecuted and ostracized and that no redemption is possible for anyone who fails a moral purity test. I don’t know whether this is a reaction against, or a further example of, the rise of meanness and cruelty among those with political power.

  16. I gather “Defying Gravity” is a lot more impactful in that emotional power-ballad way when you hear a singer hitting those notes (and that genuinely gorgeous “war cry” at the end) in the same room as you. So, you literally had to be there.

    It’s always so funny when I hear a movie described (by adults, mind you) as a powerful metaphor for resisting fascism, and what that amounts to is a hot woman saying “well *I* think that we should *NOT* put the cute little animals in cages. I think they should talk and have JOBS” while a bunch of characters named shit like Slizz and Gumpaba gasp retrogradely.

  17. Yeah, but we are not talking about the nice emo kid with the admittedly very dark humor, who has no friends because everybody believes he worships Satan and will go on a killing spree one day, but just wants to move people’s heart with his art, or that new popstar who tweeted an uninformed political opinion and later apologized for it. We are not even talking the LGBTQ+ community here. When the Wicked Witch dies, everybody in Oz breaks into a happy song and something tells me they weren’t just the victims of racist anti-witch propaganda.

    Let’s be honest, we live in a time where “Oh no, my horrible actions don’t define the real me, thanks for trying to understand me by interviewing me and not my victims and giving a platform to both sides” caused more harm than good. It’s admittedly a HUGE stretch to connect an escapist what-if musical based on a popular fantasy book, that was most likely just made for shits and giggles without any connection the real world in mind, with “He wasn’t really giving a Nazi salute, he was showing his love to everybody and also he is autistic”, but…y’know.

    Also no offense, I know you don’t mean it that way, but why is it always the people who call out the assholes, who have to defend themself for doing that? People are actually getting deported for being not white enough, trans kids are getting denied human rights, but hey, it’s the ones who say “Don’t use the N-word” on social media who are bad for cancelling people who fail their “moral purity test”.

  18. Ugh, I try really hard to not turn this commentary section about the supposedly feel-good fairy tale musical into another political commentary shitshow, since we already have so many of that, so I just shut the fuck up now and will only talk about my anger of it being another half movie that gets thrown into theatres, if that topic should come up again. Apologies.

  19. Curt – Thank you, sincerely. That was well put.

    Wicked (the book) wasn’t the first to do “villain/ess was actually a decent person who was wronged” narrative, but it certainly made it mainstream-ish. It’s post-modern, sure, and too common by now to have much of an impact, but it’s a device that promotes empathy by design.

    I think at around the time or RAYA it became more common to see the “don’t you miss it when bad guys were just evil, not misunderstood?” criticism as part of a bad-faith attack against Disney or similar, part of a larger point of a corporate woke agenda ruining their products. To be clear, I do think the argument has some at least a little merit (the evil villains being fun part, not the woke agenda bullshit) and am not accusing anyone here of using it that way. But I’ve seen it deployed a few times on right-wing dogpiles, enough that it makes me slightly uncomfortable.

    There was never a chance I’d even consider watching this based on that trailer and my tastes, but for what it’s worth, the book is meant to be pretty good.

  20. How do we talk about any kind of creative endeavor that touches on “bigger ideas” if we have to censor ourselves from acknowledging the fact that the world is in a state of (to put it in the most charitable terms) political upheaval, let alone a freefall into fascism? I don’t think every movie qualifies but when you have a movie dripping with subtext about those themes, seems unfeasible to draw that boundary for The Discourse, even in sane corners of good faith discussion like this.

    Vern mentions one moment in the movie I thought was pretty interesting/relevant- Galinda making the COURAGEOUS decision to performatively change her name to Glinda in honor of the exposition goat despite being present for his kidnapping and just watching it happen and then doing nothing about it. Basically the Oz version of changing your PFP to “slava ukraini” while buying a Tesla. I kept waiting for more instances of this to happen, but the movie just went back to asking me to care about her BFF drama instead.

    Re: cancel culture, it seems like the crucial distinction between people who should be shunned for life vs those that just need time to change their essence is if they are humbled and reflect on their actions, vs just doubling down on being a victim. James Gunn vs Roseanne Barr, basically- Gunn acknowledged he made edgelord tweets and was humbled enough by getting called out for it to admit it was a mistake and show real evidence that he had grown as a person. While Roseanne just screamed about being victimized while tripling down on being a shitty person. People like Gunn deserve redemption for their response to being cancelled, people like Roseanne can be launched into the sun if they continue to be outspokenly deplorable, and people who can’t tell the difference should be ignored.

    I agree it’s a bit ridiculous to call a corporate product movie like this a POWERFUL metaphor for resisting fascism, but it’s a movie for kids, it can be a candy coated metaphor and still be valid for the intended audience. Orwell wrote ANIMAL FARM before 1984 but both are still pretty good even though one is about talking animals with names like Snowball.

  21. Wow. I can’t believe the book is 20 years old now. Loved the book, liked the movie part 1. All of the themes are in the book that the show/movie convey. Guess Gregory Maguire was ahead of the curve on all the “reimagining” of villains being good guys.

  22. Shit. The book is 30 years old. Jesus…I’m old.

  23. “I thought this movie was okay. I didn’t hate it. I don’t really get it.” is a great summation of my feelings, also. I have no issues with musicals, but I think gotta enjoy the songs and none of these songs are to my taste. I wouldn’t have watched this if it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture and I would have been fine with missing it. I had the chance to see it in theatres over Christmas break and I’m glad I passed.

  24. CJ, no apologies needed. Your frustrations are justified.

    I don’t know what happens in the second half of WICKED, but I guess my assumption was that the Wizard of Oz / Dorothy story we all know by heart would turn out to be false propaganda by Elphaba-haters and that WICKED is meant to be the “real” story (see also Vern’s review of MALEFICENT). If it turns out that Elphaba does indeed end up as the cruel tyrant depicted in THE WIZARD OF OZ then that would be another matter.

    I think that when earlier versions of WICKED were written, published and performed, no one involved was foreseeing tyranny as an urgent problem in the West, and that this story was simply meant as a plea to accept those who are different.

    My take is that the cultural left lost much of its sympathy for weirdos and outcasts and malcontents as a result of such people becoming a disruptive force in culture, technology, economics and politics. Nerds (and “nice guys”) are the villains now, to a degree that would have been difficult to predict when WICKED was new. People like Zuckerberg and Musk have done for nerds what the Manson family did for hippies – they changed the public perception of a whole group of people from sympathetic underdogs to dangerous villains who need to be kept in check.

    The irony is that “the nice emo kid with the admittedly very dark humor, who has no friends because everybody believes he worships Satan and will go on a killing spree one day” (as CJ evocatively put it) would probably be more vilified, and more radicalized, in today’s world than when this book and play were new.

    I try to steer clear of the “c.c.” term because I think angry mobs ganging up on somebody, regardless of how large or small the perceived slight is, is disturbing and dangerous, no matter what ideology is motivating it or the social class of the person it’s being done to. Such events don’t dominate the headlines the way they did when social media was newer and the current chilling political regime was not yet in full force, so it feels misguided to dwell on it too much these days… but defenses of bullying and mob justice seem to be at the heart of so much current political discourse, and it’s tragic that this is where we are now.

  25. I have to be really in the mood to watch a modern musical, because they can be so overlong and self-indulgent feeling at times. IN THE HEIGHTS for instance was okay, but it went on forever and had numbers I think could have been cut. Like when Lin Manuel Miranda sings “Piragua” at the beginning and I just assume since it’s him playing that guy he must be important later to get a song about the merits of a frozen desert on a hot day, and…no, he doesn’t really do anything else in the film.

  26. Testing…

  27. And we’re back!

    I’ve been trying all week to say that I used to think I hated musicals, but what I actually hate are *integrated* musicals. These are musicals in which all the songs directly pertain to the plot and/or characters, as opposed to musicals where the songs are just excuses for musical numbers. Often, the characters in unintegrated musicals were performers themselves, so the song-and-dance routines would be framed as performances. And even when they weren’t, it’s a lot less of an ask in terms of suspension of disbelief to believe that a character would start singing a Cole Porter song that is a popular song in the world of the movie than it is to believe that a character can extemporaneously freestyle an original song about their own predicament in real time. I also feel that there’s a better chance of a song being enjoyable as a piece of music when it doesn’t also have to function as a plot device. Many of the most popular songs in the American songbook originated in unintegrated musicals, and they work just as well outside of their original context because their content is not so intrinsically linked with a particular story.

    All this to say that Stu’s complaint about a song being unimportant to the plot would never occur in an unintegrated musical. They’re all unimportant to the plot, because the plot itself is unimportant. It’s designed for the sole purpose of staying out of the songs’ way.

  28. Happy to finally be back…

    I haven’t got much to add, other than that I still believe that I hate musicals. Some of the comedy ones are alright, I guess, but the music is usually awful in all of them. I also realize that, like kung fu movies or car chase flicks that I dig, the song and dance numbers aren’t there to add anything to the story, but to be enjoyed as pieces of art. So I guess I have to find a musical with some decent tunes to test how deep my hate for the genre goes…

  29. Majestyk: So ELVIS and even WALK HARD then?

  30. FWIW the movie adds a whole bunch of dialogue between verses of Defying Gravity so that may compromise some of its impact.

  31. I guess it was my turn to get the access denying error for a few days, let’s see if I’m back…

    My default was always “I hate musicals” but over the years I realized that is not uniformly true. I even started a Letterboxd list to remind myself I loved or liked these movies:
    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
    Artists and Models (I need to watch more Frank Tashlin movies, I enjoyed this one a lot. And I had no idea young Shirley Maclaine was so hot. I have Tashlin’s musicals with Jayne Mansfield on my watchlist)
    Cry-Baby
    Walk Hard
    South Park the movie (loved it as a teenager at least)
    Stage Fright (2014 musical comedy slasher)
    Sucker Punch- I think this (in extended cut form at least) qualifies as some kind of music video version of a jukebox musical. It even has the lead actress singing some of the covers on the soundtrack, and you hear that long before she speaks any dialogue. The action scenes are all similar to music videos/choreographed dance numbers that are mostly just soundtrack, no dialogue. And Snyder’s music choices are so on the nose they are more obvious/literal than many original songs in musicals.

  32. Stu: I’ve been trying for weeks to add that musical biopics and dance movies are pretty much the last vestiges of the unintegrated musical. Maybe that’s why Vern likes the latter so much.

  33. Musicals aren’t my favorites but I do like a number of them. I always disliked the type of musicals like Chicago where the numbers are on stages, same for all the old timey stuff. It takes away from the tools of cinema. Like for instance, just saw this Matilda musical on Netflix (don’t worry manly bros it was not my choice). It was oookay, but the end sequence was rgeat. All of these kdis dancing trhough a school with stedicams and such. If I wanted to see a bunch of dance numbers stagebound I’d just go see an actual live theater musical. In a world where we watch Jackie Chan take on a hundred guys with axes and survive, or John Wick standing with no cover and taking out 30 dudes shooting at him, I can’t be bothered that people singing and dancing doesn’t happen in real life.

    For me the best type of musical is the sneaky kind, the non-musical musical or where they just have one big number. Like in the Zatoichi redo with Beat Takashi, there are 3-4 musical sequences with choreographed numbers that are sometimes actual dance, but sometimes just movement pieces. It gives a regular movie a lot of extra energy without comitting to the idea there HAS to be 10 songs in it. Love the scene from 500 Days of Summer. Last Night in Soho wasn’t a musical but had a lot of musical scenes. And I LOVED that the big climax to Barbie was just a gigantic song and dance bit.

  34. That dance routine at the end of ROMY AND MICHELE’S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION was one of the single best movie going moments in my life. I could not stop screaming with laughter throughout it.

  35. Maggie I had not seen that movie but just checked out the clip on Youtube. Yeah that was really good, they just go into a perfectly choreographed dance. Totally unreasonabele and great. Oh, and of course only Spielberg would have opened Temple of Doom with a big musical number that completely breaks reality for no reason. Great to see that kind of verve in blockbuster action filmmaking which no one would really do, unless maybe if the movie were a comedy like Barbie.

  36. For the record, I like musicals. Love Hamilton. I think film adaptations of stage musicals tend to lose something in the translation. I think I liked WICKED less than Vern.

    Did anyone else notice the similarities to Netflix’s Wednesday series? Outsider girl wears all black, goes to magic school, is paired with a cheery pink roommate, does a weird dance, becomes embroiled in a sinister plot. (Why are all these college students 35 years old?)

    Surprisingly, because I’ve never really paid attention to her before, I thought Ariana Grande was great. Synthesizing Kristin Chenoweth and adding her own flavor on top. That, and Jonathan Bailey’s Rupert Everett swagger injected some personality into what I thought was mostly a dull affair.

    If you can only watch one prequel film inspired by the Wizard of Oz, go with PEARL instead.

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