Wonderful
Jon M Chu’s screen adaptation of the blockbuster stage musical is as unapologetically exuberant as it is timely.
Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu • Writers: Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox, based on the musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman
Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum Jonathan Bailey
USA • 2hrs 40mins
Opens Hong Kong Nov 21 • I
Grade: A-
Before we get to the meat of the matter: Holy shit, Ariana Grande, amirite?
With that out of the way, the short answer to whether or not Jon M Chu’s adaptation of Stephen Schwartz’s 2003 award-winning, US$6 billion-grossing (one property, not 23 so suck it, Marvel) musical based on both L Frank Baum’s 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and, even more so, Gregory Maguire’s 1995 feminist, angry, confrontational, political reimagining Wicked is any good is a resounding Yes. There were early fears it would be a disaster, and the first trailers hit pushback from fans of the play. And TWoO is so ingrained into Western pop cultural and social lexicon – The Wiz, Zardoz, “friends of Dorothy”, “Monkeys’ll fly out of my butt,” conspiracy theories about Munchkin suicides, and so on – it can’t help but have a target on its back. Full disclosure: I hate The Wizard of Oz from 1939. I find it obnoxious. But Maguire’s book examining the origins of wickedness, otherness as fair game for fascist regimes and state-sanctioned silencing from society of those others was a beauty, and though the play is less grim (the main character is not the product of rape), the messages are still there – and they couldn’t be more timely.
Wicked is a straight-up old school musical, and if you’re the kind of person who suffers an aneurysm at the sight of people breaking into song while discussing dinner plans, then I suggest you move along. But if you were pissed at the lack of music in Joker: Folie à Deux, step right up. Chu has really found his groove since stumbling onto Step Up 2: The Streets in 2008, and he has a real knack for the frothy, girly, gay (in all meanings of the word) and glorious artifice of the form. Those filmmaking tendencies emerged ever so slightly in Jem and the Holograms and Now You See Me, fully blossoming in the underrated In the Heights. Though the big production numbers (choreographed by Christopher Scott) can border on frantic, Chu’s assembled a skilled strike force in cinematographer Alice Brooks (In the Heights), production designer Nathan Crowley (Wonka, First Man) and costume designer Paul Tazewell (Hamilton, West Side Story) that knows exactly how to realise this iteration of Oz. The end result is a shamelessly joyous, defiant and satisfying escape that makes you eager for Part II.
She can have me
We begin with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West – a heartbreakingly evocative puddle – and the arrival of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North (Grande) in Munchkinland as the residents celebrate freedom from her tyranny. As she’s about to leave, a Munchkin asks Glinda about her alleged friendship with the Wicked Witch, at which point we flashback to Glinda’s time at Shiz University with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo, Widows, Harriet) before she was Wicked. At the time Glinda is Galinda, a vain, entitled snob from a powerful family and Elphaba is Governor Thropp’s unloved daughter, a scorned outsider feared because she’s emerald green. Elphaba stumbles into Shiz when she drops her sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) – Thropp’s beloved daughter – off at school, and the legendary Sorcery Studies professor Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) notices her gift for magic. It just so happens aspiring but untalented witch Galinda really, really wants to take Morrible’s class and is entirely unfazed by Morrible’s abject disrespect. Forced to share a dorm with Elphaba but tolerating it because it could get her close to Morrible, Galinda and her gossipy squad of Pfannee and ShenShen (Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James) make Elphaba’s college experience miserable.
But there’s more going on at Shiz than meets the eye, as goat Professor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) tries to warn his self-involved students. It’s Oz. Animals talk. They always have. But now Oz’s animals are being labelled as subversives, stealthily disappeared and caged, and having their rights and freedoms stripped from them; Dillamond is targeted with vicious messages on the chalkboard and no one is doing anything about it. Elphaba recognises the threat immediately, and maybe so does transfer student and seemingly shallow cad Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey, Bridgerton, Broadchurch). Morrible makes a complaint to the capital in Emerald City, and before you know it Elphaba – along with the ambitious Glinda, after a performative name change – is off to see the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and have her worldview shattered.
It’s been well documented that Wicked, Part I, runs the same length as the stage version in its entirety, but Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman (1990s TV chestnut My So-Called Life) and Dana Fox (Cruella, The Lost City) know where to expand on the story in order to bring more to the characters and themes, and not just find an excuse for a new, Oscar-eligible song (ironically, there isn’t one). The added backstory gives context to Boq’s (Ethan Slater, who played Joel Grey in Fosse/Verdon, who played the Wizard on Broadway) crush on Galinda and unthinking behaviour towards Nessarose, and more punch to Fiyero’s wavering conscience and Galinda’s inner conflict.
But bottom line Erivo and Grande make up one of the year’s great duos. Is it awkward to say it? Well, too bad: As a Black actor, Erivo’s performance adds an extra layer of experiential depth to Elphaba, which she can focus on seeing as belting out “The Wizard and I” (a high point) and the Act I/Part I closer “Defying Gravity” (another) comes to her so effortlessly. She’s fantastic – which is entirely unsurprising. What is surprising is what a spry and worthy partner Grande is. No one’s arguing her vocal skills, but Grande’s never demonstrated a real sense of humour or feel for Broadway in the past, yet almost steals the movie from minute one – “It’s good to see me isn’t it?” – and if Erivo weren’t such a treasure she would. She is a delight, and her ultra-pink “Popular” centrepiece distills what makes the movie overall work: it’s campy, generous and knowing. Chu knows what the massive built-in audience wants and he delivers by the boatload. Much of Wicked’s success can be chalked up to live performances whenever possible and physical soundstages; CGI is dropped in to enhance the vibrant colour and scope like the tool it is. Bailey’s awesome “Dancing Through Life” is a great demo of how to combine the two. Wicked’s not perfect: it flirts with Harry Potter territory a bit too closely at times, especially at Shiz University, but when OG Elphaba and Galinda, Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth, show up? Fuck it. I give. Sold! Is it November 2025 yet?