“Together, we’re unlimited. Together we’ll be the greatest team there’s ever been. Glinda, dreams the way we planned ’em. If we work in tandem there’s no fight we cannot win. Just you and I, defying gravity. With you and I defying gravity, they’ll never bring us down.”
When considering the greatest years in film history, one year that keeps coming up is 1939. With such notable and timeless films as Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” John Ford’s “Stagecoach” and the eventual Best Picture winner “Gone With the Wind,” directed by Victor Fleming. Fleming would also go on to direct one more film that year, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wizard of Oz.” It, more than any other film from 1939, would leave an indelible and everlasting mark on American popular culture.
So, when the original novel entered the public domain, it was only a matter of time before someone would continue the story. The most famous of these was a reinterpretation called “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” painting the villain of the original story (named Elphaba as a tribute to L. Frank Baum) as a misunderstood protagonist. That book was turned into a popular Broadway musical, which won three Tony Awards in 2004.
Jon M. Chu, the director of 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians” and 2021’s “In the Heights,” was brought in to direct the film adaptation and made the decision to split it into two parts. He cast the two time Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo (star of 2019’s “Harriet”) as the titular Wicked Witch of the West and pop star Ariana Grande (star of the 2021 Best Picture nominee “Don’t Look Up”) as her friend and rival, Glinda the Good Witch.
The plot of the film adapts the first act of the original play, with Glinda (then known as Galinda) recounting her time at Shiz University, where she was roommates with Elphaba. Their fellow students include Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (played by Melissa Bode), Prince Fiyero (played by Jonathan Bailey), Galinda’s friend Pfannee (played by SNL star Bowen Yang), and the Munchkin Boq (played by Ethan Slater).
While Elphaba and Galinda started out on bad terms, they soon became very close friends and studied together under Dean Madame Morrible (played by the legendary Oscar Winner Michelle Yeoh, in her second film with Jon M. Chu after “Crazy Rich Asians”). But when their history professor, Dr. Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), is persecuted for being a talking goat, they both decide to go off to the Emerald City to see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (played by Jeff Goldblum) to help save the animals. What Elphaba learns shocks her to her core, and she takes a stand against the Wizard, being labeled as “Wicked” in the process.
The music featured throughout the film was fantastic. The songs all sounded great, and the cast did a great job with their vocals.
While the movie was a bit long, I struggled to think of any scene that I would elect to delete. While a few minutes could have been trimmed off the runtime, the filmmakers did a great job adapting as much of the original play as they could.
If I had to share one major criticism I had about the film, it would be that the dull color grade and washed out lighting significantly detracted from my enjoyment of the film at times. As a reinterpretation of “The Wizard of Oz”—one of the most famously colorful movies of all time—they really should have increased the saturation throughout the film’s runtime. They were able to use color properly for the “Popular” number, so this was simply a poor creative decision. #Make Oz Technicolorful Again.
The technical craft that went into making this film is nothing short of astonishing. All of the sets were built practically, including a field consisting of nine million hand planted tulips and a set of 360° rotating bookshelves. However, this was to be expected as the production designer, Nathan Crowley, previously worked on Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film “Interstellar,” where he similarly planted 300 acres of corn to be used for set decoration and sold them for a profit after filming concluded. He is now the frontrunner to win the Academy Award for Best Production Design on March 2.
The other Oscar prospects the film has include an almost guaranteed win for Best Costume Design. It will certainly be nominated for Best Picture, and both Grande and Erivo will likely get acting nominations as well.
I am excited to see how they will follow this up with “Wicked: Part Two,” coming out in Nov.r 2025. My rating for “Wicked: Part One” is a wonderful 9/10.