I will preface this post by saying that while I have always been familiar with Wicked as a popular piece of modern musical theater, I have never seen the show, nor have I read the book by Gregory Maguire. I was familiar with many of the songs, like Defying Gravity, Popular, and The Wizard and I. If I’m being totally honest, I avoided the book because, to me, it was glorified fan fiction by someone who had no connection with the original story, taking it upon himself to take a classic piece of American literature and turn it on its head. That said, I was mildly interested in seeing the feature. It wasn’t anything that I was going to go out of my way for, but I needed to see it so I could podcast about it, and that podcast will be available on the Gen XvZ: A Movie Podcast this Tuesday, Nov. 26.
I will continue by saying that not only was I pleasantly surprised by Wicked, but I was also very nearly blown away. Wicked is one of my favorite movies of the year so far. While it’s not a perfect movie, it has all the components that a film should have. It has deep characters who grow throughout the story and have compelling outer goals and inner desires. It has an emotionally engaging story that allows the audience to root for those characters and feel engaged with what they’re experiencing. It looks amazing. I would expect to hear the names of the production designers, set designers, costume designers, and VFX artists quite a bit at this year’s Oscar ceremony.
Most of all, it’s fantastically entertaining.
There have been many entertaining movies this year, but Wicked takes its entertainment value to the next level. All the above components combine to create a spectacle for the eyes, ears, and heart.
As mentioned, it’s not perfect. I felt like the first half of the movie was a little too much Harry Potter meets a little too much High School Musical. It was hitting a lot of the same beats, and even the hat that ends up belonging to Elphaba looked an awful lot like the Sorting Hat. However, once Elphaba Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) go to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, the stronger components of the storytelling kicked in, and that was when the movie reached its full potential. Not that the first half lacked entertainment value in its own right. The musical numbers were great, and the seeds of the story were all sown in the first two hours. But for me, the story really got interesting when they got to the Emerald City.
Side note, there are also a couple of awesome cameos when they get there.
From a structural perspective, the screenplay worked very well despite its nontraditional structure. This film is two hours and forty minutes long, and it only represents the first half of the story. Presuming part two, when released next year, will have a similar runtime, it’s reasonable to presume that Wicked Part I ended at the Supreme Ordeal stage of the Hero’s Journey.
If that’s the case, this film gave Elphaba an outstanding Supreme Ordeal and also gave her a tight Hero’s Journey to this point. We see her Ordinary World before arriving at the Shiz school. She refuses the call to attend the school, but her display of magic leads her to meet her mentor in Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who convinces her to study magic which could lead to an opportunity to work with the Wizard of Oz. From there, Shiz is the Ordinary World, and Elphaba meets many allies and enemies and experiences many tests. Glinda is a terrific archetypal shapeshifter in that she starts out as an enemy to Elphaba before shifting to an ally. They cross the first threshold together when they take the train to the Special World of the Emerald City. The Approach happens as they make their way through the city to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), which leads Elphaba to her Supreme Ordeal of realizing the Wizard and Madam Morrible are not who they pretend to be, which starts her down the path to becoming the Wicked Witch of the West.
That is outstanding story development, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here. It’s also a good example of how malleable the Hero’s Journey can be. Director Jon M. Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox effectively shook up the order of The Hero’s Journey while still giving us a dramatic story that felt like it was naturally developed.
There is one other significant imperfection.
Actually, there are two, and I would be remiss for not mentioning them. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum sing made a pretty bad mistake. It’s not quite to the level of Russell Crowe’s singing performance in Les Miserable, but it’s close. The one saving grace was that both of their songs were short, so we didn’t have to listen to either of them sing for long. However, each song was long enough to see that neither of them was a trained singer in a cast that had some fantastic singers, and putting Yeoh and Goldblum in that position was not fair to them.
In the grand scheme of this film, however, that was a relatively minor transgression. Overall, this is an outstanding film that should have an incredible opening weekend and should do amazing numbers at the box office throughout its run. It should also do very well come awards season, and I can see it getting nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress in a Leading Role, and Actress in a Supporting Role, as well as the aforementioned artistic categories and other technical categories.
One other thing I would recommend is seeing Wicked in IMAX if you can. The art direction of this film is stunning, and the only way to truly appreciate it for all its worth is to see it on as big a screen as you possibly can. It deserves to be seen that way.