It doesn’t come as a surprise that Wicked made it to the big screen nearly two decades after the original Broadway production became a global phenomenon. Although Hollywood’s often late to pick up on trends, musicals were among the foundational texts within the industry’s “golden age.” Several classics like Oliver, West Side Story, An American in Paris, and Chicago all have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It’s been a rough few years for the genre; adaptations like Cats and Dear Evan Hansen were critically reviled, and even well-reviewed productions like Steven Spielberg’s revision of West Side Story and the musical adaptation of Cyrano were financial disappointments. That said, a blockbuster on the scale of Wicked had a built-in audience, which indicated that it had little chance of failure.
Wicked didn’t have to work hard to gain an audience, which gave director Jon M. Chu the chance to do something inventive with the material. While Chu is no Spielberg, he proved with another Broadway adaptation, In the Heights, that he could take a fairly dense stage show and transform it into glitzy populist entertainment. The issue is that the material in Wicked is far less complex, and didn’t need to be split into two separate films, each of which adapts a different act of the show.
A two-part adaptation isn’t an abhorrent concept, as it’s been used to tackle mythologies that were in need of expansion. While David Lynch’s version of Dune was highly criticized for speeding through Frank Herbert’s extensive worldbuilding when it was released in 1984, Denis Villeneuve was praised for the scale and attention-to-detail that went into his two-part franchise. Even a novel like Stephen King’s It worked as two distinct films, as the time jump between children and adult protagonists allowed for a natural point to split.
The failure of Wicked as a standalone feature comes is that it ends at the climax, and not the denouement. There’s nothing wrong with a cliffhanger, but Wicked doesn’t end with an emotional resolution that offers satisfaction. The relationship between the future “good” witch, Glinda (Ariana Grande), and the supposed “wicked” witch, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), is splintered as a moment of shock, but lacks the time needed to land with an emotional impact. Jeff Goldblum’s role as the Wizard, arguably the most important character in this fictional universe, appears towards the end of the third act in what amounts to an extended cameo.
Wicked assumes that its audience is both familiar with the original The Wizard of Oz and already knows the musical numbers beat-for-beat. It’s not the only blockbuster this year that assigns its audience “homework,” but there was still a reasonable expectation that a viewer who hadn’t caught up on two decades of Marvel films would enjoy Deadpool & Wolverine. Wicked has reverence for the projects that predated it, but any of the technicolor magic of the original 1939 film is washed out with CGI backdrops and cloying animated creatures. The toggling between the static shots of authentic sets and entirely digital camera work has a jarring effect, and will only grow worse when viewed in premium formats like IMAX or Dolby.
The glossy style of Wicked is an aesthetic choice, but the lack of any real ingenuity within the visuals becomes oppressive at 160 minutes (approximately the length of the Wicked stage show, which includes both acts). Any individual musical number may be impressive in its own right, and will attract an audience among younger viewers that share clips on social media. However, any transitory scenes are stale callbacks to the era in which actors would stand against a greenscreen with no awareness of what they were intended to be interacting with. The concept that Wicked works best in bite-sized chunks indicates that the marketing department was involved in the creative direction of the film since its inception.
Wicked’s expansion would feel less cynical if the film had attempted to expand on the material by making use of the cinematic medium. Unfortunately, the supporting characters that were only given a few standout moments in the original production aren’t given much more to do in the film. Jonathan Bailey adds a real sense of charisma with his performance as the dashing prince Fiyero Tigelaar, but is dropped from the story whenever he threatens to change the status quo. Similarly, a storyline involving the discrimination against the animals living in Oz (including a goat voiced by Peter Dinklage) is so heavy-handed in its parallels to current world events that it’s destined to elicit eyerolls. While it’s remembered as a heartwarming family classic, the 1939 The Wizard of Oz addressed themes of isolation and scapegoating without subjecting its viewers to expository passages.
2024 hasn’t been a great year for cinematic originality. Of the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year at the global box office, all but one (the family fantasy adventure IF) are sequels, prequels, remakes, based on existing material, or adaptations of books. However, the praise heaped upon Wicked stems from its fealty to an existing work, as to offer anything remotely challenging could be considered sacrilegious. Wicked will likely be a massive hit, and may even spark a series of similarly faithful Broadway adaptations stretched out to maximize profits. Unfortunately, the mode that Wicked is operating in isn’t sustainable.