Everything Is Falling Apart So I Am Going to Bitch About the Wicked Movie

you can see yourself out

It ain’t your fault, ladies, good job!

I have been writing about the movie Wicked over the past few days, because my brain would not let it go. It was torturing me, which is very frustrating, but when that happens I have to give the ADHD what it wants.

I was not going to post this, as I have mostly outgrown cultural Hot Takes. But someone said they wanted to hear what I had to say, so why not? We all need to read stuff that isn’t about politics or sad stuff every so often!

Many will disagree with me here. I think friendly, spirited disagreement is Healthy so long as it does not become abusive! I am tired of feeling like I have to like everything. I don’t take it personally when someone doesn’t like something that I like, as long as they are willing to engage respectfully!

This is but the humble opinion of one Lady Playwright who really did not want to deal with The Horrors anymore this week.

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My general opinion on Wicked - the Broadway show - has always been pretty much this:

I know Wicked means a great deal to many, especially to queer millennials younger than me, so this isn’t really a knock on the show¹. I just think by the time I saw it, I was into Different Things.

Act 1 is Pretty Good, but “Defying Gravity” is one of the most exhilarating things I have ever seen on a stage. To this day, it will make me cry pretty much no matter what.

I know Act 2 happened, but I couldn’t really tell you one thing that stood out for me.

And that’s the extent of my relationship with this show.

You may be asking, “If you don’t like Wicked, why did you watch it?”.

Honestly? I was sick of hearing about it.

I don’t like to watch things at Peak Hype, because I hate being told how I should feel about stuff before I even get a chance to make up my own mind. So, I did not want to pay a lot of money to see it in the movie theater. I don’t generally shell out serious cash on things I’m “meh” about.

It is now streaming on Peacock, which I pay $12.99/mo for, so when I got home from a particularly heinous commute, I settled in with a glass of wine and a cheese plate. I was prepared to have issues, but at least I’d have a good cry at the end!

I did not cry. I wanted to, believe me.

Let’s start with the Positives.

• Jon M. Chu is a fantastic director and was the right person for the job.

• I like they folded some of the book in, even if it feels a little Anti-Fash for Dummies. I remind myself that this is a book written for literal children.

• I liked the casting (mostly), even if Ariana Grande annoys the absolute shit out of me. Cynthia Errivo is a legend and was incredible.

• The vocals were generally good to excellent all around.

• The flying monkeys were cool.

• The costumes and styling were Top Notch.

• Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenowith are National Treasures and it was a delight to see them in a cute cameo.

• Jeff Goldblum is always welcome on my screen.

The Problems:

• The musical Wicked - if you see it in a theater - is two hours and forty five minutes. The movie version of Wicked is also two hours and forty five minutes. And it is only Act 1. ². There will be an entire second movie based on Act 2. I had issues with this both in theory and in execution.

• The dialogue wasn’t great in the new scenes, which is unfortunate.

• WHY would you build such gorgeous practical sets and then load them with CGI cheese? Some of it wasn’t even good! To quote the AV Club review:

  Wicked has plenty of practical sets, costumes, and make-up, and through the ineffable magic of digital moviemaking, most of it still looks like those Marvel movies they shoot in Georgia parking lots.

• Elphaba is constantly crying real tears when we all know she dies because she gets melted by water. I know this is a silly nitpick but it bothered me.

• My Most Contentious Opinion: They absolutely ruined “Defying Gravity”, which means the ending sucked for me, which frankly was most of the reason I watched this.

*SPOILERS if you have not seen the play or the film*

When “Defying Gravity” at long last begins, Elphaba is in peril - with the Wizard, Mrs. Marrvel, and the (terrifying) Flying Monkeys in hot pursuit.

I was so excited. I saw Cynthia Errivo SLAY this song on the Oscars³, and I was here for it. I hit pause to go pee, because I was here for catharsis, and no one can experience catharsis with a full bladder.

Imagine my shock when I realized there were twenty four minutes left to go. WTF? How in the name of sweet tapdancing Christ was this going to be twenty four minutes long? The musical version is roughly 8 minutes long!

To be fair, there is some interstitial dialogue in the OG version. I figured they had Elphaba and Galinda chat it up a little longer, or maybe had Jeff Goldblum do some more Wizardy Stuff. No big deal.

That is not what happened.

They broke the song up into to tiny pieces.

This was a huge fail.

As a playwright, I am always paying attention to narrative, motivation, and through line. The dramatic sequence of the song is as follows (from Elphaba’s perspective, anyway): I just found out the Wizard sucks, I’m gonna go, uh oh they’re about to murder me, are you with me or not Galinda cause I GOTTA GO RIGHT TF NOW, ok bye love u girl, oh hell yeah I’m flying!!

So please explain why it takes Elphaba and Galinda two business days to get tf out of there? In the most baffling section, they spend a good four minutes in a backlit room looking through dusty old trunks for a cape.

??????????????????????

We also see a lot of other action that is supposed to convey Intensity and Peril but there was already a sufficient amount of that. We didn’t need to keep cutting back to the other characters.

By the time Errivo nails that last note and flies away, I had watched twenty four minutes of CGI Boogaloo that added absolutely nothing to the experience.

To break up that rhyming couplet at the end….just…why.

The endless pause before that final belt????

WHY.

WHYYYY??!?!?!??!?

You had Cynthia! She can sing anything! She can tell a whole story with her face!

You could have had your two leads stand on a rooftop and just sing the damn song, and it would have been stellar. But alas, after the fourth time the song was interrupted, I was straight up annoyed.

I ended the film dry eyed and disappointed.

When you take an 8 minute song and drag it out to 24 minutes, you are not actually making it better.

The big climactic numbers from stage musicals have momentum built in. That’s a part of why the songs are so great! That’s why you shell out the big bucks for Broadway tickets! It’s a song, not a handjob - the climax doesn’t improve the longer you drag it out.⁴ If “One Day More” in Les Miserables was 25 minutes long, you’d be like “omg please go get killed already, I’m bored”.

More is not better.

More is just…more.

This is a lesson I think can be applied to many things in our current culture.

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If you made it this far, thank you for reading. We gave the Dopamine Monkey what it wanted (thank god it didn’t ask for wings).

Please feel free to vent about pop culture annoyances in the comments!

1. I will still go to bat for The Phantom of the Opera, because I was 12 when I got obsessed with it, and we all know those First Great Loves stay with you forever!

2. Yes, they took a one hour and 20 minute act one and doubled the length so they could make TWO movies. This is sold as an artistic choice when we all know it’s so they can make more money. I spent much of the time being like “My god, there’s still [x] amount of time left? HOW???”.

3. The effortlessness! Like this is not even hard for her! To be fair, I kind of enjoy watching every other actress who has played this role FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIFE to hit that last note, and knowing they have to do that 8 times a week.

4. I feel like we can trace this back to the three fake endings in the last Lord of the Rings movie. Which I did like, by the way.