'Wicked' was almost perfect

A small note from me before I begin:

I just wanted to apologise for the significant lack of substack posts since my return to University! Term time is a very busy time for me, whether I’m in exam season or not, as my course is all theory (meaning a lot of reading and writing). As much as I adore writing these pieces, the sheer amount of writing I do for my course can get a little tiring sometimes, which has caused me to strip back a little on here!

Whenever it’s out of university season (which, to be honest, is about 50% of the year), I will be posting significantly more frequently on here as I’m nowhere near as busy!

I hope you all understand and continue to support my work. This is truly a great passion of mine, and I’m so grateful that you’re even reading this in the first place!

‘Wicked’ Was Almost Perfect:

After 14 years of production hell, Jon M. Chu’s screen adaptation of the classic Broadway musical ‘Wicked’ came out last Friday, and it was surprisingly great. I'm a huge theatre nerd before anything else; I grew up singing songs from ‘Wicked’ in theatre company showcases, listening to the musical and obsessing over finding the best ‘slime tutorials’ for my favourite productions; it is safe to say I was extremely excited for this film to come out finally. On top of this, I’ve always been a huge fan of Ariana Grande, ‘eternal sunshine’ might be my favourite album from this year (sorry, Taylor), and I always get emotional watching the video of her being given the role of Glinda knowing how badly she wanted this. ‘Wicked’ had all the ingredients to make a great movie (that is absolutely going to break a billion), but has it lived up to its hype?

Credit: Universal Pictures (2024)

As you may have already seen on my Letterboxd, I really enjoyed ‘Wicked’ overall. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Absolutely not! But who cares when it’s this fun? Maybe my rating was a little high, but that’s for me to rate and for you to live with. Above anything else, this movie is a blast, with its greatest moments coming from its performances from both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Both Erivo and Grande bring starkly different performances to the table, yet they complement each other so well. I’m so sick of seeing the “X was better than Y” discourse surrounding the two because it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Let’s not pit two beautiful ladies against each other. I hope that everybody who doubted Ariana Grande’s acting abilities has a terrible night’s sleep for the rest of their lives, she was phenomenal. I am being deadly serious when I say that she will more than likely be nominated for “Best Supporting Actress” at this year’s Oscars and will likely win. If anything, she will at least take the Golden Globe. Cynthia Erivo has more talent in one of her eyelashes than I do in my entire body. The ‘Defying Gravity’ sequence omitted chills all the way down my spine. What’s even more impressive is that the version of the song in the film was sung completely live. She is one of our greatest talents; it's no surprise at all that she’s that close to EGOT status. The supporting cast was excellent, too, with highlights being Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum as Madame Morrible and The Wizard of Oz.

I adored most things about this film and would not be surprised if I found myself seated for a second viewing very soon, but that does not come without my main gripes with it.

Credit: Universal Pictures (2024)

The colour grading for this movie is hideous, and I’m not the only person to think that. In the words of many angry film people on the internet: “We don’t need any more influencers, we need colour gradists.” I could not agree more. Oz is supposed to be vibrant and colourful. Instead, we’ve been slapped with the (almost) trademark blockbuster grey. It’s extremely disappointing seeing how beautiful the set and costume design are and what lengths they reached to achieve such phenomenal production design, just to have it overshadowed by the most boring colour grade possible. I was watching Karsten Runquist’s YouTube video on ‘Wicked’ this morning, and it brought an interview question. Director Jon M. Chu was asked about the colour grading, only to be given the most boring, disappointing answer imaginable. He answered that it was “intended to immerse people into Oz”, emphasising realism being a necessity for the audience to emotionally invest in the characters, arguing that a dream-like version of Oz would harm the emotional resonance within the film (interview) As a viewer and fan of the source material, this response was not only boring but borderline insulting, suggesting that audiences today lack basic empathy.

My other gripe with the film is it’s runtime. I’m usually the last person to rant about “movies being too long” these days, I’m just as sick of the “movies should be under 2 hours” arguments as you. However, this movie should have shaved around 30 minutes off of its runtime. That does not mean that I don’t agree that it shouldn’t have been split into two, this is a rare case where the split works. There’s simply too much material in both parts to successfully flesh out both the characters and the worldbuilding for it to be a single, 3 hour film.

Credit: Universal Pictures (2024)

When posing the idea that a film should shorten its runtime, you must pose the question of “what would you shave off”, which is where many people get stuck. I would propose shaving off some of the mid-song dialogue, focusing more on showing instead of telling, shaving a little bit off of the first 30 minutes of introductory worldbuilding and shaving a small amount off of the Emerald City sequence. Finally, I’m a huge advocate for a tiny change at the end of the film that would have made it much more impactful. They should have cut to black with the shot of Elphaba in the sky at the end of ‘Defying Gravity’. Elphaba flying away at the end seemed unnecessary and took away some of the emotional impact of Erivo’s gorgeous performance for me.

Regardless of the “issues” (if you can even call it that) I had with this film, it’s still a great time. It’s okay to not take movies seriously sometimes, and this is one of those cases. Just go, turn the pretentious side of your brain off, and you will have fun.

My Rating: 4.5/5