(courtesy IMP Awards)
Having the loftiest of your hopes and dreams fulfilled in life is a very rare thing.
Oh, we are very good at going big and large when it comes to how good things can be or how they might play out – unless you’re a glass half-empty kind of person, in which case, as you were – but life does not always play along and we can end up wondering what happened to the thing or event we envisaged was going to be the best thing ever.
Disappointment reigns supreme, which is why the first half of the movie adaptation of Wicked – yes, the title would suggest it is just one movie but it is, in fact, Part 1 with Part 2 a year away from release in November 2025 – is such a viscerally, enchanting, effervescent bubble of incandescently joyful delight; it defies the odds and emerges into the cold, critical slight of the modern digital world as a film that meets and then exceeds any expectations you might have.
That it does that, and seemingly effortlessly, is testament to the vision of director John Chu, working to a screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, who, for a movie rooted in technicolour fantasy and magical wonderment, makes everything as real as possible.
Thus, Munchkinland, Shiz University, the Emerald City and the vivaciously colourful and iconic tulip fields that surround it are all very real, part of a push by the director to make the film feel immersively real for audiences.
‘My goal was to go beyond the matte paintings, beyond a digital world, and really let the audience step into Oz,’ he notes. ‘The emotions in Wicked are so deep and true. I didn’t just want a fantasy world beyond our reach. I wanted an immersive space where our characters could come to life.’ (Architectural Digest)
This commitment to relying on real buildings and landscapes imbues Wicked with a realness which matches much of the truth about the human (and animal) condition that sits at the core.
For all of its wondrously lovely scenes, and its greens and pinks and glorious emerald, the film sits, many times, in a very dark place.
The unlikely friendship between Galinda Upland aka Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande who dazzles with rapturously good singing and superbly on-point comic timing) and green-skinned Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo who is the vulnerable but also determined heart and MVP of the film) aka the eventual Wicked Witch of the West initially gives great hope that prejudice and bigotry can be overcome with empathy and an open heart and mind.
While Elphaba encounters terrible hatred and social ostracism when she arrives at Shiz University with her younger sister Nessarose Thropp (Marissa Bode) – she is not even meant to be a student but is essentially dragooned into it by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), the sorcery professor and head of the institution, who sees her power and determines much can be done with it – and Galinda is, at first, an eager participant in her roommate’s bullying, the pink, vapid bombshell with a good heart (ish) eventually gives into the better angel of her nature and gives Elphaba an hitherto unknown level of popular acceptance.
They are vastly different people, of course, one raised by rich and influential parents to believe everything she is does is good and wonderful and she can always get her way – this leads to one of the best delivered lines in the film; “Something terrible just happened! I didn’t get my way” – while the other is scorned by her own father and only finds unconditional love through her nanny, Dulcibear (Sharon D. Clarke).
It is the popular centre meets the unloved outer margins of society and while it lasts, and you could well argue it never ends as the opening scenes, set after Elphaba’s death in the original Wizard of Oz (1939) film, their friendship is everything that is right good and proper about Oz, and indeed any world where lost souls find each other.
So, while a song like “Popular” might simply sound like a burbling ode to the joys of ascending the dizzying heights of social acceptability, it’s really about the fervent hopefulness of what lies ahead when life suddenly seems bigger and more possible.
Galinda, of course, never doubted it was that big or possible, but watching Elphaba begin to realise she might have a shot of going to the Emerald City and meeting the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and fulfilling her deepest and fondest dreams is a giddy joy because suddenly she has options.
Wicked, employing sprawlingly immersive musical set pieces, mostly notably with “Defying Gravity” which ends the film, and indeed ushers in the interval on the stage, is all about what might happen if you are only given the chance.
In that respect, it is all sunny and bright and vibrantly optimistic; but it’s also well and truly aware, and heartrendingly so, that darkness can rear its head in the most unexpected of places, and that for all the people who are racing ahead eagerly to new, inclusive, hopeful horizons, there are those all too eager to grab it all back and reduce life to stark, bland, micromanaged nothingness.
The battle between these two forces informs every last piece of narrative DNA and music in Wicked which is brought to the big screen with so much enthusiastic intent and such a love for the work of Stephen Schwarz and Winnie Holzman that it feels like a verdant letter to not just the musical itself but to every last piece of messaging contained within.
This is a musical that celebrates difference, animal or human, and which, in every single memorable song and witty line of dialogue, reminds us that diversity is a strength and plus and that we are always so much richer when we lean into it and not its fearfully narrow and bigoted counterpoint which is really the Big Bad in Wicked.
This film is an adrenaline shot of pure hope and joy, taking everything good and uplifting about the musical, from its beautiful songs to its richly-realised characters (including some brilliantly surprising cameos; keep your eyes peeled) and its sparklingly thoughtful and funny dialogue, and taking it still further to mesmerisingly rewarding and soul-enriching effect.
Not only does Wicked do complete justice to the stage musical, with wondrously thoughtful and evocative motifs throughout, but it adds its own magnificent flavour too, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande superlatively good in a wildly imaginative and alive take on the stage musical that consumes the senses, fills the heart and helps you remember that dreaming big, and defying convention of all kinds, is always worth the time.
Go behind the scenes …