Wicked: Part I
Directed by Jon M. Chu
Written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox
Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum 
Runtime 2 hours, 40 minutes
Rated PG
In theaters November 22

by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

As someone who’s been a fan of Wicked for half my life, I’ve spent the last two years theorizing, speculating, and guessing how they’d adapt the stage show into a movie (this current iteration at least), and then into two movies when the split was announced. I’ve ranted to roommates, coworkers, family members, and friends. I’ve thought about possible lyric changes, casting choices, and how to make the costuming that’s so intricate on Broadway come to life on screen. I’ve made every person who visits me in New York see Wicked with me. I’m possibly the most annoying person on Earth.

And after all that time and then finally seeing Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: Part 1, I feel fine. The film is solidly okay. Not exactly the result I wanted (a new favorite film) or feared (a bad adaptation), but it’s the world we live in! So how did we get here?

Well, I think the biggest stumbling block for this movie is that it’s, well, not a complete movie. It’s the plot of Act 1, with an incredible, show-stopping closing song. But it’s not a satisfying movie. And it certainly doesn’t have enough plot for more than two and a half hours. All of the set up is there: Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) as an outcast, Galinda (Ariana Grande) the popular girl, the magical world of Oz where the Wizard is convincing people to shun the talking Animals who are also part of society. But with the exception of Elphaba’s storyline, it’s all set up, no pay off. “Defying Gravity” is incredible, but it’s not the actual end of the story.

To be fair, that was a problem I expected this film to have. So what else is going on here?

As far as additions for the film, I think most of them work. I love the scenes with younger Elphaba, especially how they set up our understanding of her and her relationship with her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), quite well. The one noticeable addition, in terms of content from the book, is that there are more references to Animals and their place in society before the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) came. That explanation helps make the audience understand the shift a bit more, when Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) starts discussing how “something bad is happening in Oz.”

But because the promotion cycle focused on how there were absolutely necessary changes to expand the story, justifying the split into two movies, I don’t actually think there are that many additions present.

Mostly, it seems like Act 1 has been stretched out. Several of the big group numbers feel longer now, especially “No One Mourns the Wicked” and “Dancing Through Life.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that it seems there really weren’t that many necessary additions from Gregory Maguire’s original book or The Wizard of Oz.

There are some subtle shifts in how things happen in the movie that affect the character dynamics, possibly in unintended ways. If we’re supposed to buy that Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) is actually interested in Galinda, I’m not sure the reworked meeting between Elphaba and Fiyero works to serve that dynamic. And the choices to stage “What Is This Feeling” while Elphaba and Galinda are in bed leads to a clearer queer reading of the text that, while always present in the stage show for those with a hope and a dream, perhaps wasn’t intentional. 

But there are some positives: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are singing their absolute faces off. Cynthia seems to be doing more of her own take on the music, while Ariana is about 50/50 on sounding like Kristen Chenoweth’s performance and her own riffs. None of the other characters have more than a song to work with, really, but everyone’s doing pretty well.

I’ve been thinking about the costuming in the film since the first character images were announced. Taken on its own, I can understand why the costume designer, Paul Tazewell, wanted to keep the characters in their own specific colors. And in fact, I understand why they’d want to use some of the iconic colors and props from The Wizard of Oz that the Broadway production wasn’t able to use due to copyright. (Specifically, Glinda’s pink dress and Elphaba’s black hat were both changed. Glinda’s bubble dress became blue and Elphaba’s hat a very, very dark navy.)

But I find the rigid color palette for each character to be less visually interesting on the whole. Galinda’s in a muted pink for almost the entire film, with a brighter pink coming out for the big scenes. (In the stage show, she’s primarily in white, blue, and yellow monochrome outfits throughout Act 1.) Fiyero’s in almost exclusively blue in the film, whereas the stage show has him in bright red, maroon, and shades of brown, contrasting with the blue Shiz uniforms. Someone’s also decided to put Jonathan Bailey in blue contacts, which I found super distracting. Elphaba’s color palette is the only one that stays pretty consistent with the stage show: usually black dresses with the occasional appearance of Shiz blue.

And then there’s the visual storytelling in broader scope. A couple scenes are really stunning, notably where Jon Chu and his team made big choices. But there are way too many shots of backlit characters in shadowy rooms, where everything just looks blah. The lighting and color grading are really letting this film down, at least from what I can tell in the behind-the-scenes pictures. Why go to all these lengths to build colorful sets only to make them more muted in the final product?

There are plenty of nods to the musical and to The Wizard of Oz. I’m not sure that all of them work; in fact, I’d say that the subtler ones were more effective for me than the elaborate, drawn-out references. But I appreciated quite a few of them! I just wish the film itself was more reminiscent of either, in terms of how it looks. Taking the movie on its own, there are a lot of side characters and plot points that don’t seem super important to the narrative. Obviously, they’ll have stronger conclusions in Part 2, but that brings us back to this movie not quite feeling like a complete story. 

Because of who I am as a person, I’ll probably spend the next year speculating on how Part 2 will go, only to be whelmed again. But a girl can dream, can’t she?