While it’s been a rough year for blockbusters, I’ve been quietly biding my time for the release of one of my most anticipated films this year, Wicked. This is thanks to not only my love of the Broadway spectacle, but its director Jon Chu who helmed the charming and criminally underrated Jem and the Holograms film, I defend to this day – it’s good damnit!! He also did a little film called Crazy Rich Asians which he no doubt leveraged into the ability to craft a super faithful and very practical (ie:expensive) take, that goes back to the source for a bit of added relevancy.
Wicked has the director stepping back into the realm of the musical, with an adaptation that is a hybrid of sorts, being a somewhat loyal take on the show, which was in itself a rather loose adaptation of the 1995 book that promised the “true” story of the events behind the classic, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. That tome was an unofficial sequel to the original Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (LFba – Get it?), capitalizing on the fact that the book fell into the public domain, think Winne the Pooh: Blood and Honey. While the Wicked source is probably closer to NC-17 than PG, the Musical took the basic concepts and characters for the stage, thus crafting one of the biggest musical phenomenons to hit Broadway since Phantom.
For those unfamiliar, Wicked is the prequel to The Wizard of Oz but from the Wicked Witch’s perspective. The musical chose to lose most of the political and spicy bits and really hone in on the story of an outsider, the young, and very green, future Wicked Witch – Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), who thanks to her gift of magic becomes a student at Shiz university in Oz. It’s a very sympathetic take that follows her as she strikes up an unlikely friendship with the mega popular and uncharacteristically kind hearted, Galinda (Ariana Grande). While this story basically occupies the first act of the musical and this first film, it’s how their friendship solidifies and takes a fateful turn thanks to an audience with the Wizard of Oz, that fuels the second half. Sadly, we will have to wait a year to experience that half, but on the good side, it’s already in the can.
While that friendship is the heart and soul of this tragic masterwork, Chu has borrowed from the book a thread about the animals of Oz who can not only talk, but once upon a time were equals to the land’s two legged inhabitants. The subplot has the animals stripped of their rights and caged, which causes them to lose their power of speech, and their magic if you will. While this on the nose metaphor is there to deliver some extra weight to Elphaba’s eventual turn. The overarching implications of Oz’s loss of innocence, magic, and idealism appears to be a rather poignant metaphor for America before and post the Trump presidency. A land of milk and honey stripped of magic and freedom, while taking away the voice (ie:voting) away from those who don’t fit in.
This is combined with some stirring performances. While I’ve been a longtime fan of Cynthia Erivo, since I was blown away by her turn opposite Ben Mendelsohn in The Outsider, it’s Ariana Grande that completely caught me off guard. While Cynthia’s Elphaba is the picture of measured quiet control, it’s Grande’s seemingly effortless and bubbly Galinda that gives the film an unexpected heart and joy. She’s charged with only winning Elphaba over, but wins the entire audience over in the process. This also comes from scenes that often feel improvised in their spontaneous and comedic energy that happen within the controlled confines of its musical numbers. Chu also thankfully doesn’t commit the cardinal sin of the prestige broadway adaptation of attempting to shoehorn an original song for awards consideration, he instead remains true, even paying homage to the stage’s original Elphaba and Galinda in spectacular fashion.
This also transpires against practical stages and sets that allow a kind of lighting that feels warm and natural further cementing the fantastic in reality. The look also feels part homage to its big screen classic sequel, that feels almost alien to today’s more dreary or orange hued cinematic landscape. This is coupled with sound design that encapsulates the songs into the sound mix in a way that felt more natural than some, where it feels like the song was just cut and pasted into the film’s timeline. It’s obvious Chu was a fan, because he not only understood the assignment, he used nearly every cinematic tool he had to accomplish what is a perfect adaptation and will no doubt be the template going forward. Packed with dozens of easter eggs and call backs the equivalent to a Marvel film for theater kids.
While this is still technically half of a whole, it’s easy to see where Chu is going and I couldn’t be happier or more excited. He’s taken the property that is so familiar to some, and injected some new life and relevance into its story of the lonely outsider, using Elphaba’s story to echo his own personal story of a man whose family immigrated to this nation, that was once a magical land and has since lost that spark. Of course it is also a completely flawless adaptation of the source, that is immaculately cast and will no doubt go on to be a classic, but it’s that subtext that really calls back to the original intent of the show as a little bit of magic for those who are “different”, opening the conversation to those that need it right now more than ever.
