Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

Wicked: Part 1 has long been poised to be one of the biggest movies of 2024. The stage musical on which it’s based is both wildly successful and beloved. I really can’t emphasize the last point enough. People are still head over heels for it 21 years after its debut, pushing it into a rare level of cultural recognition. 

I couldn’t escape the fever pitch of its early years, and yet, walking into this movie version, I realized that I didn’t know the plot of Wicked. I’d never seen the musical nor read the book on which the musical is loosely based. I did know songs like Defying Gravity and Popular and For Good, the latter of which closed the mixed CD my friend group made for high school graduation.

The bit I knew was that it’s backstory for The Wizard of Oz, focusing on the younger years of the Wicked Witch of the West , here called Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and the Good Witch of the North, aka Glinda (Ariana Grande). I didn’t know that it involved talking animals, nor that they are central to the reframing of the Wicked Witch.

There’s also a ton of other characters, like the cocky prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), the besotted Boq (Ethan Slater), and Nessarose (Marissa Bode), Elphaba’s younger sister who yearns for independence. As someone unfamiliar with where this will go in Part 2, many of these characters seemed superfluous. What mattered in the story was Elphaba and Glinda’s love-hate relationship and Elphaba’s uneasy as the most powerful and despised student at their university.

Much of Elphaba’s powers, which she has little control over throughout Part 1, crop up when prejudice comes to the surface. Her green skin has always ostracized her, making her indignant to all injustice. This is where the talking animals come in, because they are being removed from society, their voices taken away. Elphaba seems to be the only human willing to stand up for them, her consciousness putting her at odds with the shallow Glinda.

The contrast between our two main characters’ reactions makes the subplot weave in seamlessly, and the emotional weight is horrifyingly conveyed through Dr. Dillamond, a goat professor at the university who’s voiced by Peter Dinklage. 

The rest of the subplots, unfortunately, don’t integrate as well. Nessarose and Boq seem destined for a tragic romance, but they’re two characters who don’t need to exist for the story to work. Neither are well defined, slotted in for unknown reasons through Part 1. Perhaps they’ll expand and prove their worth in Part 2? Maybe, but this is a weak foundation to build on. Fiyero at least is an interesting fellow, at once providing a love triangle for our main duo and bringing a rakish charm to the proceedings (even if his song does go on too long).

Those songs, though. They were the only thing I knew going in, and they lived up to my every expectation. Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo obviously has the pipes for the musical’s biggest number, Defying Gravity, and Ariana Grande delivers on every self-involved inflection Glinda requires. Director Jon M. Chu proves perfect at conjuring magical spectacle, even if he doesn’t  quite hit the high note he achieved with Crazy Rich Asians’ wedding scene. More importantly, he sustains the vibe in Wicked: Part 1, blowing the story well out of the confines of a stage. No two numbers feel the same, and there’s always something eye-popping to look at. Kudos must also extend to everyone who produced those lush sets and decadent costumes.

But Wicked truly lives and dies on the chemistry between Elphaba and Glinda, so in this case Erivo and Grande, and they are the film’s biggest success. There’s a cheeky air to both of them, reviling in everything the beloved musical asks of them with the kind of theater kid energy that isn’t too much. Both do come from the stage (some won’t know that Grande was on Broadway before getting snagged by Nickelodeon). Both also have done plenty of work in front of a camera, and somehow all that experience and skill allowed them to hit the exact note Wicked needed. They seem to be, quite simply, having fun, and that’s what the legions of fans want.

The uninitiated will be thoroughly charmed as well, because Wicked truly is a magical thing. The story has gone from book to stage and now to film without feeling beholden to any of its previous iterations. Everyone involved made Wicked: Part 1 into a truly joyous movie. Here’s hoping Part 2 meets the now sky-high expectations.

Release: Available now in theaters
Director: Jon M. Chu
Writers: Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Peter Dinklage