Wicked

Whenever something I'm a fan of gets turned into a movie, I'm inherently skeptical. TV show, book, video game, whatever, adaptation is a difficult art. Even more so if you care about keeping existing fans happy. Taking liberties with the story and presentation risks changing the experience of the story in ways you maybe didn't intend, but keeping it the exact same invites the question of "Why make it a film at all?".

Which is why I was intensely skeptical of Wicked. I get why they wanted to make it: it's based on one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time, which is itself riffing on one of the most beloved movie musicals of all time. But why was this entry, which only covers Act One and thus the first half of the story, going to rival the runtime of the entire Broadway version? The response was intriguing: they were going to include a bunch of extra material from Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, on which the Broadway musical is based. I've never read it, so I wasn't entirely sure what that would entail, but I was excited to find out!

As far as the story goes, that turned out to be false (at least as it pertains to Part One). Just about all of its 160 minute runtime matches what you've been able to see at NYC's Gershwin Theater for the past twenty-one years. There are a few additional scenes, a couple characters have a few more lines than before, a couple bits of modern dialog have been added. But if you've seen it on the stage, the movie version has exactly zero surprises in store for you. Which has the added downside of meaning it fails to justify all the added runtime. So where does it come from? Mostly extending and luxuriating in what already exists. For example, the showstopping "Defying Gravity" is already far longer than you may remember, comprised of multiple parts and shifts, intentionally big and arresting as it closes out Act One. But in the movie, it's extended even further, covering the final fifteen or maybe twenty minutes. It's not the only one given such treatment, although it's probably the most egregious, especially as it does dilute its power somewhat.

Despite that, the film does manage to make an argument for its existence, just through its staging and visuals. Broadway has always blown me away with their ability to transport you despite being unable to show you the action from more than one angle, but it is inherently limiting. Cast onto the screen, director Jon M. Chu makes full use of the added freedoms his medium of choice affords him. This thing is a maximalist fever dream in the tradition of a Baz Luhrmann production, leaning hard into the wacky and fantastical production design of the stage musical, and pushing it even further in many ways. Of course, Chu has the benefit of CGI, and uses plenty of it. It's mostly good: although there are many parts in which you can clearly tell, the fact that so much of the world looks like it popped out of a Dr. Seuss book prevents it from becoming distracting, as the whole place looks unreal.

Given the genre, the musical numbers deserve special attention. None of the songs in Part One are original, although they do switch up the instrumentation a bit. Which is benign, save for the case of "Dancing Through Life", an already light song which is ironically rendered fairly lifeless by the changes. However, Chu and choreographer Christopher Scott compensate by turning that number into one of the most exciting and freshest pieces in a film full of truly spectacular set pieces. They make full use of the nonsensical yet undeniably neat ringed library shelves, as well as the more grounded lunchroom, to craft a wide ranging dance scene befitting the Golden Age of Hollywood. It should come as no surprise that the entire cast fully nails every song, with Grande and Erivo perfectly carrying out the most demanding roles.

It occurred to me watching this just how much Part One of the story belongs to Galinda (Ariana Grande). Which makes a certain amount of sense, as Wicked is a frame tale in which Galinda tells the Munchkins of her friendship with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), known to them as the Wicked Witch of the West, back when they were in school, and the series of events that led them to today's celebration of her death via bucket of water at the hands of Dorothy. But it's made more jarring here as there's no second half to balance it out, to focus on Elphaba's exploits once the two women go their separate ways. The result is that so, so much of this half falls on Ariana Grande's shoulders. Which is another thing that had me concerned: based on all the pre-release material, I had become convinced that Erivo was going to blow me away, and Grande might weigh down the whole enterprise. Even as critics screenings started producing talk of Grande as a potential Best Actress nominee, I remained skeptical.

I needn't have been.

Don't get me wrong, Erivo is fantastic, and I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to what she gets to do in Part Two next year (🤞). She pulls off the muted, jaded naturalism and pessimism and genuine surprise at things going her way impeccably, including a bunch of small, blink and you'll miss it facial expressions that manage to bring us inside Elphaba's headspace even when she's not the center of the frame.

But this is Grande's show, and hot damn, does she deliver. From the moment she appears on screen, she displays a tremendous range even within each scene, which manages to be a microcosm of her arc. She presents as a flighty, bubbly, benevolent force, one who endeavors to keep order and clearly demarcate good from bad. But as the Munchkins launch into "No One Mourns the Wicked", celebrating the death of her former friend, her humanity and empathy move to the fore both through facial expressions and her delivery of her part of the song, containing mournful lines such as "The Wicked's lives are lonely" and "The Wicked die alone". Once we arrive at Shiz University, Grande fully hurls herself into the role of insufferable and entitled brat, while still maintaining the charm and energy to not only communicate to us why everyone loves her, but to avoid grating on the audience, either. Her character is the most obviously absurd and cartoonish, but she's so game and unguarded that she somehow makes it work.

Even as the expanded runtime threatens to dissipate some of the most emotional moments in the film, the chemistry of the two leads means that doesn't wholly come to pass. Most crucially, Elphaba's improvised dance at the Ozdust, and the moment it generates between the two women, as well as the shift it represents in the film as a whole. Elphaba also gets to share a powerful scene or two with Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), which finally gives Bailey the chance to shine as he and Erivo craft a scene dense with subtext. If you know the whole story, you know it's the start of an arc. But without that context, it must seem like a pointless little diversion.

A similar thing can be said for Jeff Goldblum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He makes little impact in the few scenes he shows up in, which don't come until somewhere around the two hour mark. Granted, Goldblum isn't doing his character any favors, turning in a fairly bad performance. The script doesn't do him any favors, given that late entry and his scenes containing a few obnoxious attempts to explain certain elements of Oz, all but turning and winking at the camera as they do it. But his delivery and actions and mannerisms make him feel so lost, as if he just read his lines for the first time when he showed up on set that day, then threw them away in favor of improv. It's a baffling performance of a character who feels severely diminished by being required to wait far more than fifteen minutes for Act Two.

Which demonstrates what was always going to be this movie's fundamental issue. While its source already being split in two means the ending isn't a cliffhanger in the same way Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was, it does mean most of its arcs are left dangling, with some barely getting started. Given the year-long wait for Part Two, the hesitation from theaters to show double-features any more, and the history of multi-part films which were never finished (looking at you, Horizon: An American Saga), it doesn't leave the best taste in your mouth. Although I think they were filmed back-to-back, which would imply Wicked: Part Two is at least in post-production already, if not fully complete, meaning Universal would have to pull a Warner Bros. for us to never see it.

Given my love of the Broadway musical, and my general aversion to modern Hollywood blockbusters, there was absolutely no guarantee I was going to enjoy this film. But when your adaptation copies and pastes 90% of its script from the source, which I already find incredibly funny and poignant and timely (its themes include authoritarianism and charlatans and the lust for power: you do the math), you're going to trigger the same neural pathways which lead to my enjoyment of the original. I'd be remiss to omit that admission, but as I've just spent 1500 words explaining, I think there's a lot more to this movie which makes it tremendously worthwhile.