A prequel to The Wizard of Oz, Elphaba navigates through magic school making friends and enemies alike as she begins to uncover foul machinations at play in Oz…

I have not had a preconceived bias towards a film for a long time, but I must confess, and it is much to my shame, that I did not expect to like Wicked. I admit this so that you take it from me how exceptional Wicked is.

There are other important notes to make here: I have never seen Wicked on stage. As of writing this, I have no cue what happens in Act 2. Prior to this film, I had heard one song. I come to you today as a Wicked convert, groveling before the masses of Wicked fans begging for forgiveness in my ignorance, and pleading with those of you who may be like I was.

Perhaps you’re thinking the film is made for kids, made for musical enthusiasts, or perhaps—most cynically—a cheap cash grab. And while I certainly take issue with the splitting of the film into two parts as an unabashed attempt at studio heads siphoning money out of the general populace and forcing the wonderfully articulate director to artistically justify the choice, Wicked is far more than the production pitch meeting that the skeptics have in their heads.

There’s a clear vision director Jon M. Chu has for this world, keeping much of the practical design to harken back to the iconic visual aesthetic from The Wizard of Oz, but also adapting the frenetic energy of the stage to make Wickedfeel wholly unique for the new viewer.

You can hardly scour Twitter for a minute without coming across opinions (generally made in bad faith, in my opinion) regarding Chu’s direction, and though there is certainly criticism to be addressed, there is much to be lauded. The camerawork is pristine, precise, and calculated adding such a strong visual implication to the choreography so as to make one assume the musical was built for the movies as opposed to the stage.

Oftentimes, the camera feels like the lead dancer, guiding the meticulous movements and pronouncing nuances in performance and musicality that otherwise would be left to only eagle-eyed viewers. Wickedis smart in its simplicity this way, never reaching far to add that small token of visual intrigue, but always layering it in to showcase Chu’s reverence for the material.

Plenty has been said about Wicked’s immaculate songs and score (this adaptation taking special care to add influences and homages aplenty), but even more praise can be added to the iconic vocal performances in the film. Erivo is a powerhouse vocalist, but her performance is at its very best in the quiet moments between the action that Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox take care to layout in giving space to the action.

But the star of the show is Ariana Grande who beautifully takes space (if you caught that, you’re too online) to make Galinda a multifaceted character built for more than comic relief. Grande’s choices are so sincere and lived in that a simple embellishment of emphasized theatricality becomes an authentic eccentricity of the character.

The rest of the ensemble cast certainly shines—perhaps too brightly with the film’s seeming insistence on over-exposure in the lighting—but it is Grande at the film’s center that grounds the film with emphatic gravitas. Of course, the film is far from perfect. At its core, the pacing of a two-act structure cannot support two feature length films. 

Wicked’s biggest flaw is that it ends just as the story actually begins, a triumphant crescendo to a cinematic climax that definitely leaves the audience on a high as they watch what is essentially a superhero transformation is abruptly cut short. It sounds gluttonous to say, but I would have preferred an intermission and Wicked Part 2 to be available in one swoop, and damn the world if they complain about a 4 hour runtime (as Roger Ebert once said, a good film can never be long enough).

(Slight spoilers in the next sentence) There are simply too many moving pieces that all have to fit neatly into place between A Sentimental Man and Defying Gravity, and it feels unjust to the story’s pacing to rush through Elphaba going from golden girl to an international terrorist in the span of a half an hour.

The audience is forced to buy-in on quite a lot, but perhaps nothing is more confounding than buying into the fact that a world with talking animals would be so off-put by a girl simply being green. Yet, accepting Wicked at face value is part of what makes this fantasy so innately compelling.

As a genre, fantasy is meant to define our world through extreme circumstances in order for us to reflect on its emotional truth, and the truth at the center of Wickedstrikes to such a universal core. We have more to us than a binary code of wicked and good.

And also, sometimes, revolutions are defined not by the anarchists but by the story framed against them. (Please don’t spoil Act 2 for me as I would like to let Jon M. Chu and company do that themselves). 8.5/10