Whether you have seen an unavoidable mixture of green and pink-toned advertisements toned in pink and green around the world, stumbled upon the beautifully designed Broadway poster or even had the opportunity to hear the iconic battle cry yourself — it is more likely than not that you have encountered ‘Wicked.’
Wicked was originally adapted into the best-selling musical from the book of the same name. The novel was written by Gregory Maguire in 1995, intending to be a re-telling of The Wizard of Oz but focusing on the upbringing and perspective of Elphaba Thropp (the Wicked Witch of the West).
Bringing the Wicked book onto the Broadway stage was like bringing fantasy to reality. With artistic techniques, technologies that were ahead of their time, and talent that allowed each character to thrive — a question began to swirl around within the early 2010s that a Wicked adaptation would bring the musical to the big screen.
Although it took more than a decade to execute, the cinematic experience finally arrived. With Cynthia Erivo playing Elphaba and Ariana Grande playing Galinda, it quickly stirred up controversy. Replacing Broadway legends with any movie star almost always brings conversations into why studio executives and casting choose who they did.
Wicked isn’t your typical musical film. While it contains the obvious layers that make the genre – such as arrangement, pacing, singing and dancing – Jon Chu’s directing style pushed a new twist into the production process. Chu, alongside the lead actors, decided that the film would benefit from them singing live on set, which allowed a multitude of different takes, versions and performances that produced immersion for not only each crew member but also those in the audience.
Of course, this newfound element in the musical production process had its cons. There are times within the film where you can almost sense that the takes being shown on screen aren’t perfectly “mimed” in visual expression, however those times were rare. Like all pieces of art, if someone nit-picks the depths of it to find flaws, they won’t leave empty handed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong.
The overwhelming majority of viewers that watch this film are attending for the experience, which Wicked most definitely provides. Ariana Grande produces a beautiful operatic tonality to the majority of her song parts, which parallel with the grounded, earthly, expressive and renown depth that Cynthia performs with. That being said, there are moments in the film that take the audience out of emotional moments because they split a song in the middle of its arrangement to have a world-building or conversational scene. While this is expected to happen in the majority of films, for Wicked: Part I, it leaves more of a footprint because the film’s two hour and forty minute runtime being almost as long as the entire broadway musical.
Not to say that the pacing from the film felt incredibly drawn out consistently, but rather that it just snatches you and forces its pace on you during moments when you want them to just keep progressing. There are moments in this film where these additional scenes contribute significantly to the emotional message of a scene, like in ‘Defying Gravity.” But, there tends to be less examples of the latter than I would’ve hoped.
Wicked: Part I manages to give references without too much intensity that many would call it “fan service.” While there are cameos and little secrets, they work because they just exist in the universe versus requiring recognition from the characters. The cinematography of this film has been a very argued choice on social media. One of the only times in the film where the cinematography significantly highlights its flaws to moviegoers transparently seemed to come during a moment in the ‘Dancing Through Life’ number, where the camera’s focal length feels so close to the action that you just get dizzy.
Nonetheless, the battle cry is perfectly built up upon. It’s an ending that is not only entertaining but also unique and executed with a mixture of filmmaking techniques. While it may not transfer the same level of energy that the stage performance once did, I do believe that it got close enough.
Perhaps Wicked: Part I’s largest flaw to me is that it is just enough. I didn’t feel that it pushed itself to break through any significant barriers amongst filmmaking production standards that would make it shine as a “once-in-a-generation” type film like ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ but I also would be lying if I didn’t emphasize that it does blow most modern musical-to-film adaptations out of the water. While it might not be a film that elicits and embosses the claim of significance, it definitely is a film that can say it executed what was expected.
Gabe Kanae can be reached via email at gkanae@sagebrush.unr.edu or via Twitter @NevadaSagebrush.
