By Jana Monji
Director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, Part I is doing well in previews, putting away $19.2 millions according to Variety, but while I enjoyed Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera as frenemies who become friends, there were technical aspects of the film which were to my eye “hideoteous.”
Based on the 2003 Gregory Maquire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, it is about what happened before Dorothy Gale dropped into Oz. The 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz was based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Using both Baum’s novels and the classic film for inspiration, Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) teamed with Winnie Holzman to create a 2003 Broadway hit.
The film like the musical opens with the citizen of Oz celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande-Butera) appears and someone asks if she knew the WWW. Via a flashback, the audience learns how Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was accompanying her paraplegic sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) to Shiz University. In a moment of anger, Elphaba reveals her ability to move objects telekinetically. The school’s headmistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) takes an interest in Elphaba. Glinda, at the time, called Galinda, inadvertently volunteers to share her private room with Elphaba.
Elphaba and Galinda hate each other, with Galinda being backed by her many friends, including besties Pfannee (Bowen Yang) and ShenShen (Bronwyn James) and Elphaba being rejected by her sister Nessarose who wants to live a more independent life. Only Morrible and Doctor Dillard (voiced by Peter Dinklage), a talking goat who teaches history, are kind to Elphaba. Yet Dillard has his own problems; he and other talking animals face a growing prejudice and attempts to take their speech away from them.
Elphaba is determined to get the Wizard of Oz to help Dillard and others like him. She finds an unlikely ally in the bad boy prince, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who begins attending the university after being kicked out of others. At a party that Fiyero initiated, Elphaba and Galinda become friends. As friends, they go to meet the Wizard of Oz. What they learn there will lead Elphaba to defy not just gravity, but also Morrible and the Wizard.
The running time of the Broadway musical Wicked is two hours and 40 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. Wicked, Part I the movie is 160 minutes, or two hours and 40 minutes, but ends with the Act I number, Defying Gravity. What fills up the time? Some wonderful musical numbers and CG as well as character development.
The film has been in development hell so long that the Broadway original stars, Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel were possible leads. Chenoweth (the original Broadway Galinda) and Menzel (the original Broadway Elphaba) do make a cameo in the film.
Back in 2016, Universal Studios had announced Tony Award-winning Stephen Daldry as director. When Daldry left due to scheduling conflicts, Chu was announced as the director in February 2021. Chu directed the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning In the Heights that was released later that year (June). That film came out in one part, 143 minutes (two hours and 23 minutes). The Broadway production was two hours and 30 minutes long and that included a 15-minute intermission.
Chu used the same cinematographer for In the Heights, Alice Brooks. Like In the Heights, the film Wicked suffers from what is in my opinion, excessive light flares. Light flares were present in In the Heights, but there seems to be so much more in Wicked Part I, particularly anamorphic flares, and that detracts from the magic of the Land of Oz. Sometimes the flare obscures the facial expressions of the actors and sometimes upsets the balance of the composition. Anamorphic flares can also be an effect layered into the film, so it might be a matter of choice, just one I don’t agree with.
There are still reasons to see Wicked, including performances by Erivo and Grande-Butera and the tailored and intricate costumes by Paul Tazewell. Yeoh is regal and, as usual, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard is quizzical but neither have the vocals to match Tony and Grammy award-winning Erivo and Grammy Award-winning Grande-Butera. Asking audiences to wait in what is essentially a year-long intermission is a risky move. The momentum of the song Defying Gravity will have been lost and it’s hard to say if director Chu and writers Holzman and Dana Fox can help recapture it. Wicked Part I premiered in Australia on 3 November 2024. Wicked Part II is scheduled for release on 21 November 2025.
For a longer review, please visit AgeOfTheGeek.org.
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