"Wicked (2024)" A Good Musical Adaptation?

 

    Yeah I went to go watch Wicked. You've seen what I reviewed, was that ever really a surprise? What is a surprise, at least to me, was that the film was actually surprisingly good. Look, sometimes it's so easy to get caught up in twitter drama, and negativity only feeds off negativity, so going into it all the press I knew about this film was: the colour grading was bad/could be improved, whatever Cynthia Erivo is doing, Ariana Grande body discourse, and of course Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater cheating discourse. All of this to say, there was not exactly a lot of positive momentum for this film in my mind going into it, people were complaining hard about the fact that it was only part 1, afraid that Hollywood would do what Hollywood does best and stretch out this musical to five hours or something like they tend to do with finale's in action movies. Luckily, I can report that Wicked has weathered the storm, remarkably well in fact I'd say. Frankly, of all the "controversies" that I've named none of them have really been active now that the film has been released. Which is to say it shut up the haters, and that includes me.

    Keep in mind my only exposure to Wicked going into this film was Glee, so I wasn't tainted by nostalgia, or preconceived notions about how particular songs should sound. In fact, if anything Glee sort of hampered my expectations for it, I swear they kept on mentioning Defying Gravity, and every time I was never particularly impressed with any Wicked songs they sung. Even still, I left in love with some of the songs. No it wasn't like Hamilton or Heathers where I was in love with all of the songs instantly, but tracks like Popular, What Is This Feeling?, The Wizard And I, and of course Defying Gravity, give people plenty of variety in the songs offered, whether they be ballads, showstoppers, or faster peppier tracks. Thankfully, this musical did not fall into the trap of having too many celebrity/guest singers, and so for pretty much the entirety of this musical you can enjoy the singing of Erivo and Grande, who really shine. I was especially impressed by Erivo's singing she really does just hit those notes effortlessly. Technically, Peter Dinklage and Michelle Yeoh sing in this musical but their parts are so minor I don't really care about critiquing them, the singing is good, and terribly autotuned tracks are not this musicals bane. 

    In terms of what I didn't like in this film there are only a couple smaller nitpicks. Yes, the colours are too realistic for Oz, and I definitely feel like they could have been more saturated to pop, but it doesn't look too bad on a movie  screen. I think seeing clips on phones and computer screens absolutely did not help, and could make it worse once a digital release comes out, but for now, it looked pretty alright on the screen (though I feel like the skies were cloudier than they needed to be in many scenes). In my opinion what was more egregious were the sets. They certainly had more room than you would on an average stage, and the settings changed frequently. Even still, I felt like there could have been more spectacle. Personally, the sets felt oddly small, especially SHIZ. For a big school I felt like it was really small, the only time it really felt large was during The Wizard And I and Elphaba is exploring the school. Not to mention its just surrounded by fields of wheat, and nothing else. When they go to the train station it really did feel like they were too lazy to add any other buildings or any sort of background dressing, it looks really empty in a bad way. Also, I won't touch on this too long but the CGI is kind of bad, like distractingly bad? Frankly, I think I would have enjoyed Defying Gravity more if they just didn't have Elphaba flying around a bunch because it looked so fake.

    My last complaint is definitely nitpicky, and it's just about how it sort of ends abruptly. I'm not sure if the musical originally ended this way, and I understand that there is going to be a part two, but at the same time after she meets the wizard very little happens. It just kind of jogs its way to Defying Gravity and didn't feel too satisfying in my opinion. I suppose the only reason this feels really jarring to me is that I thought the pacing of this musical was actually exceptional considering how long it was. It didn't ever feel like it needed some intermission, and the balance between not singing every single line, while also not having dialogue scenes that dragged on too long was fantastic. I usually don't have an issue with how long films are in theaters, but considering the last movie I watched before this was Joker: Folie A Deux, and how often I checked my watch during that film, I was a bit jaded when it came to musical adaptations at the time.


Final Score: 75/100

    I suppose the only questions I have left for this film is what are they going to do with part two? They basically changed the entire Wicked Witch of the West character. In fact, a part of me feels like they made her almost too sympathetic? Or they made Glinda too bratty. To be fair they did ham up a lot of the cliqueness/general brattiness since it was a school but still.  Frankly, I don't know how they're going to change it themselves. The original Wizard of Oz characters are most definitely present, since they were shown at the beginning, but it would be anticlimactic if the second part just followed Glinda and not Elphaba as well. How are you going to have Elphaba be a good person if she literally hurts her minions by giving them wings? It'll tbe interesting to see how much of the Wizard of Oz lore they're willing to modify, though frankly I think you'd need to be 80 to really care about how much they alter the plot of The Wizard of Oz. Regardless, I was impressed. In an era where it feels like almost every theatrical adaptation of musicals are mediocre to just plain bad, this one worked.