Wicked. I read Gregory Maguire’s book thirty years ago and was transformed. In this pre-internet era, the idea of approaching a well-worn tale like The Wizard of Oz (which had always been an obsession of mine) from the “villain’s” perspective was relatively, er, novel. But Maguire had more than a gimmick – he had an incisive message to relay, a takedown of the patriarchy, an attack on racism and classism, a desire to champion the rights of all creatures great and small. I had never read anything like it.
A few years later, Stephen Schwartz (another obsession) adapted the novel into a big, brassy Broadway musical. My husband and I would finally see the show in Toronto a few years after its debut, and John fell deeply in love with the score and the narrative around an underdog and a top dog striking an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives … for good. I enjoyed the show but felt something had been lost. The novel’s thornier edges had all been sanded down and replaced with an equally moving but slightly different message around empowerment in the face of institutional adversity.
Twenty years later, director John M. Chu crafted a cinematic hybrid of sorts between novel and stage show to generally positive results. Wicked, Part 1 as it has come to be known felt like a revelation (again), bringing the zip of Schwartz’s score into an overlit landscape that didn’t shy away from Maguire’s cultural critique, while remaining a family-friendly, infinitely merchandisable affair. Chu made the arguably controversial, definitely monetizable decision to break the stage show into two films. Given that the first act of the stage show remained unencumbered from too many specific ties to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and was thereby free to do a good bit of world-building around the school years of Elphaba and G(a)linda, the first film felt like a complete thought, ending with the triumphant anthem “Defying Gravity.”
So what to do with the stage show’s more problematic second act which episodically barrels through key moments in Elphaba’s and Glinda’s adult life, intersecting frequently, sometime elegantly, often cumbersomely with key moments in Dorothy’s overly familiar journey through Oz? On balance, Chu blessedly gives us some breathing room to digest all that is happening. It took me four views of the Broadway show to actually remember and process what the heck transpires in that second act. Offering that second act material more cinematic real estate is both good and bad. In Wicked: For Good, we get far more character moments, enriching the dynamic between the former school chums as they lead their separate yet symbiotic lives. The downside? There’s more time for us to scratch our heads and ask, “Wait, where were Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion just then?” From a chronological perspective, at times it just feels like that math ain’t mathing.
But Chu was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. If he drastically reworked act two to unravel some of the nonsensical bits, 20 years of Wicked-heads would have revolted. If he changed too little, the more casual audience members (and mean-spirited critics) would declare this second installment a letdown. “It’s just not as much fun as the first one.” Well, duh. Elphaba does still have to become the “Wicked Witch” we all knew and feared as children. Schrodinger’s witch as it were.
For the tl;dr crowd, I enjoyed the film. A lot. It took me a week, though, to figure out what if anything I wanted to say about it. So here’s this. Go see it. Be open-minded. Hold space for revelatory turns by both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. And remember how disappointed you were with The Empire Strikes Back as a child, but how eventually it became your favorite Star Wars film in adulthood because it dares to be dark … and, well, real. Or as real as fantasy can be. Through a mirror darkly revealing that even in a magical land of escapism there are, in fact, lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my.
