Directed by Jon Chu
Language: English
Year: 2024
Shaun’s Rating: 2.6/5 ★
Before Watching:
Yes, it’s been a minute—but I’ve been holding space for myself (and by myself, I mean grad school applications). Seriously, is “holding space” really supposed to be a phrase that we all knew more than two weeks ago? On the press tour for the new Wicked screen adaption, stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo provided perhaps the most nonsensical thirty seconds of celebrity interview footage from the past decade—a reporter shared that fans were “holding space” with the lyrics of “Defying Gravity”, Erivo reacted as if she had been told fans were pulling animals from burning buildings, and then the reporter immediately backpedaled by admitting it was just “a few posts.”1 Also, there was this whole “I am in queer media” bit, which… is debatable? Does that mean that Sin & Cinephilia is in queer media?
The fact that Jon Chu & Co. stretched the first act of a 150-minute musical into a 160-minute film was enough to raise an eyebrow. And, there was also this mishap, which was somehow (and I cannot stress this enough) 100% real:
In November 2024, the doll box and the manual for many dolls in the Wicked line were found to contain links to the website of the adult film studio Wicked Pictures (www.wicked.com) instead of the movie’s own website (www.wickedmovie.com). Mattel apologized for the error, and asked parents who had bought products with the incorrect website to destroy the packaging.
Most of you will know the plot well, so I won’t belabor a lengthy synopsis. Let it suffice to say that Wicked picks up where The Wizard of Oz leaves off: ding dong the “wicked witch” is dead, Munchkinland rejoices, and we enter a flashback to see just what made her so wicked. It turns out that she (named Elphaba, and played by Erivo) was actually roommates with Glinda the Good Witch (at that point named Galinda, and played by Grande) at a stressfully Cosmo-and-Wanda-ass colorful and upbeat university named Shiz. The film features lots of other randomly queer actors, but also Ethan Slater 🧽🤓, Michelle Yeoh as a Crazy Witch Asian, and heavily choreographed dance numbers—like Wonka if half of the cast were on PrEP.
The movie is cute, fun, and charming, but it is also gratingly bloated. They could chop out 45 minutes of content and leave the story unscathed—all of the New Jersey drones could finally be shot down by the time we finally finish “Defying Gravity.” Being subjected to endless wistful nostalgia and obnoxiously saccharine pinks and greens feels less like a Broadway Renaissance and more like the new season of Squid Game.
Wicked pulls off a distinctive but dismal magic trick: it turns other people’s cherished Broadway memories into a protracted form of punishment for the rest of us.
Any extra points I’d award for Cynthia Erivo (the Starlet Witch we didn’t deserve) are erased by Jeff Goldblum’s comically ineluctable idiosyncrasy. Also, if Christopher Scott is going to choreograph all of Jon Chu’s movies, he’s going to need to learn a new set of dance moves at some point—this was In The Heights for people who would be too scared to actually venture north of 116th Street.
And because the internet insists on handing Ben Shapiro a microphone, here’s his commentary, for balance. (Cue eye roll.) In the words of the Scarecrow, “some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.”
Wicked premiered in Sydney, Australia, and is available in theaters worldwide.
After Watching:
Why was every single shot back-lit and washed out? Ariana of Green Gay-bles—bless her translucent, ethereal heart—is completely lost in this atrocious cinematography. I had to rely on Luigi Mangione to teach me that it really is just about being popular.
Bilge Ebiri writes in Vulture:
Jon M. Chu has made one of the great musicals of our time, a phantasmagorical coming-of-age journey into a land of wide-eyed enchantment, wild dance moves, and colorful, magic bubbles. That movie was called Step Up 3D, and it came out in 2010. … Wicked is as enchanting as it is exhausting.
Sick burn, but I’m inclined to agree. I’m eternally concerned by the growing share of cinema held by recycled IP—sequels, prequels, adaptions, remakes, etc. now dramatically outnumber original stories at the AMC. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t “hold space” for releases like this, but the audience needs to be afforded something other than microwaved leftovers. Wicked (which is a movie based on a musical based on a book based on a movie based on a book), thrives on the brilliance of its source material, yet flounders under the weight of its adaptation. It’s a grainy photocopy that tries to be more, yet somehow ends up being less.
One perfect example of the swirling vat of recycled IP’s dangers is when Glinda and Elphaba are touring the Wizard’s studio and are given the chance to choose the color of the brick roads in Oz.2 As they cycle through (obviously incorrect) options, it’s as if Jon Chu begs the audience to scream out “oh my GOD it’s going to be YELLOW! I know this one, sweet Jesus it’s YELLOW like in the movies I’ve already seen! AAGHH!” It’s the hallmark of any lazy “origin story”: spoon-feeding a cheap-shot explanation of some part of the canon every fifteen minutes, as a sweet treat for good little viewers who keep buying more tickets.3 It’s dopamine-maxxing, allowing the chronically cine-pilled to feel like they’re smart enough to get intertextual winks while the story itself stagnates. No rest for the wicked (in this case, AMC Stubs members).
Also, in a later interview, both of the stars admitted they, too, had no idea what any of it meant. Word salad, everyone.
Which, it’s worth noting, was not present in the original musical.
I hate to say it, but it was only one step away from that meme-worthy scene in Fantastic Four (2015), which won Worst Director and Worst Picture at the Golden Raspberry Awards.