The 1939 masterpiece The Wizard of Oz is a tough act to precede. Directed by Victor Fleming, Wizard scored two Academy Awards in music categories and was nominated for three other Oscars: Best Picture, Art Direction, and Special Effects. The movie has been beloved by millions of moviegoers for decades and is an immensely popular pop cultural icon.
Wicked is based on characters created by novelist L. Frank Baum in 14 Oz books, starting in 1900; on MGM’s The Wizard of Oz screen adaptation; and on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (who shares screen credits with Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox), which was adapted for the stage in 2003 by Ms. Holzman, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.
Wicked imagines what happened before Dorothy (the unforgettable Judy Garland) arrived at Oz and was tasked with killing the eponymous Wicked Witch in order to be able to return home to Kansas. The movie tells the story of that Witch, named Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and tries to explain why she became wicked.
The first part of this blockbuster screen adaptation of the Broadway musical and Maguire’s novel is entirely set in the mythical realm—I don’t say “land,” as it’s located somewhere over the rainbow—of Oz. As a film historian, I’ve often wondered how audiences responded to the Technicolor cinematic splendor and spectacle of The Wizard of Oz, which earned Arnold A. Gillespie, the head of MGM’s special effects department, the first of his three Oscars. Every lover of the film will of course recall that Oz creatively used black and white for its Kansas sequences, and Technicolor once Dorothy went to Oz.
Wicked’s special and visual effects created by a vast team of ingenious artisans surpass its 85-year-old forebear’s FX and give the viewer a sense of what it may have been like to go see The Wizard and stroll down the Yellow Brick Road during the sparkling Golden Age of Hollywood (remarkably, Fleming helmed Gone with the Wind the same year he made Wizard, while John Ford directed 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath and Orson Welles wrought Citizen Kane in 1941, the latter two helmed by Gregg Toland). Wicked’s optical opulence is truly state of the art: The only other motion picture I’ve seen this year that’s in its league is Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. In surpassing its predecessor’s special FX, Wicked’s winged monkeys are scarier than ever.
As for the musical’s soundtrack, which I had the joy to experience in surround sound in a Dolby Theater, while lyricist/composer Schwartz’s songs are good as sung by Erivo, Ariana Grande (as Glinda, the putatively good witch), and Broadway veterans Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel (the original Glinda and Elphaba), who perform a wacky duet as the Wiz-o-mania Superstars (audience members in-the-know re: their Wicked pedigrees burst out into applause when they appeared onscreen). But Schwartz’s numbers are nowhere close to being in the same league as the immortal music by Yip Harburg, et al., as crooned by Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, and Ray Bolger. Grande’s (probably more of a singer than an actress) “Popular” was my favorite song in Wicked, but viewers are unlikely to leave the movie house humming this movie’s tunes, unlike a 1939 theatergoer who had a buffet of sounds to hum along and tap one’s tootsies to, starting with Garland’s legendary “Over the Rainbow.” Sorry, but to my ears Schwartz is a mere musical Munchkin when compared to Harburg and Harold Arlen, who most deservedly won the Best Music, Original Song Oscar, while Herbert Stothart received an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score. (Notably, Wicked didn’t win any Tonys for its music per se.)
The acting is good, and although he has a small role as Pfannee, SNL’s Bowen Yang is slyly droll, as ever. Michelle Yeoh is fun as Madame Morrible, a sort of headmistress for Shiz University. But at 31 and 37, Grande and Erivo are a little long in the tooth to be playing college students at the Hogwarts-type knockoff their characters attend. Not even all the green paint in the Emerald City can make Erivo look like she’s a teenager or 20-something.
Wicked’s plot and characters, derived from the books by Baum and Maguire, are intriguing. In reimagining their backstories, Maguire and co-screenwriters Ms. Holzman and Dana Fox have fleshed out their characters. Is Glinda truly such a goody-two-shoes? And is Elphaba really so irredeemably evil, as Margaret Hamilton was when she terrifyingly played the wicked witch (and the aptly named Miss Gulch!) in the 1939 MGM extravaganza? Ms. Holzman has a history of etching finely wrought screen portraits, and the gifted scribe’s literary oeuvre includes multiple episodes of the outstanding, novelistic 1990s TV series Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. Wicked’s dialogue also has some wickedly delicious wordplay.
However, some may find that at two hours and 40 minutes, Wicked’s saga sags and can be tough on those top two moviegoing organs. No, not the eyes, the bladder, and the brain! Victor Fleming’s version clocked in at an hour less. The current sprawling production about to hit IMAX and other screens is only Part I! So, some popcorn munchers, including children, may find Wicked to be way too long, and overblown, just as director Jon Chu’s mediocre, over-hyped 2018 Crazy Rich Asians and 2021’s In the Heights were.
Thematically, Wicked has some interesting, timely things to say. The gifted Erivo (who was Oscar-nommed for portraying the legendary Underground Railroad heroine in 2019’s Harriet) appeared on The View where the Emmy, Grammy, and Tony-winning Black Briton explained that she related to Elphaba because she has often felt herself to be an outsider. Elphaba is born out of wedlock and is green, which seems to be a metaphor for racism. (Lest we forget, there was an all-Black-cast musical version of The Wizard of Oz entitled The Wiz; the 1978 screen version starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.) Wicked appears to owe a debt to the 1948 movie The Boy with Green Hair starring Dean Stockwell, which was made by Hollywood Reds confronted by the Blacklist—screenwriters Ben Barzman and Alfred Lewis Levitt, director Joseph Losey—as a metaphor against racial discrimination. (Jon Chu’s film seems to also quote other non-Oz movies. For instance, in an aerial scene Elphaba runs toward the edge of cliffs where she exults, which appears to be an on-the-nose reference to Julie Andrews’ Alpine romp that opens 1965’s The Sound of Music.)
Elphaba’s younger sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), is a character in a wheelchair, which allows Wicked to critique “ableism.” Unlike in the 1939 original, none of the Munchkins in this production are played by small performers, probably as an effort to be sensitive to little people, etc. However, the 4-foot, 5-inch Peter Dinklage (HBO’s Game of Thrones) voices the goat, Dr. Dillamond. Here, Wicked’s politics are sharp. Dr. Dillamond is a history professor at Shiz University who is canceled by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), in an effort to suppress Oz’s intelligent animals. This sets Elphaba on a collision course with the Wizard. When Dr. Dillamond is hauled out of a classroom by stormtrooper-like goons and prevented from teaching history, I couldn’t help but think of the Jewish academics similarly silenced and banished after Hitler took power in Nazi Germany. Or of Trump’s threats of mass deportation of migrants and the banning of teaching history in schools.
Wicked’s fascistic references also include the Wizard proclaiming that “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.” You don’t have to be Noam Chomsky to deduce that this could very well be the motto of Trump and his MAGA Munchkins.
Now, for readers who may think I’m out in left field, for decades there have been theories that Baum’s Oz series, which began in 1900, was a political allegory that I’ll only touch upon here, involving “bimetallism”: The era’s “Free Silver” movement, the gold standard, presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, the Populist Party, etc. According to this analysis, the Scarecrow represents farmers, the Tin Man industrial workers, “Oz” is a reference to “ounces,” and so on. (See here for more on this.)
It’s also worth remembering that Yip Harburg, who wrote the words for “Over the Rainbow,” also penned the lyrics for the Depression’s hard times anthem “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” During the witch-hunt hysteria of the Red Scare, Harburg was blacklisted.
Overall, I was enthralled by this Wizard of Oz prequel. In the first part of Wicked, Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow are only very briefly glimpsed—don’t blink, or you’ll miss them. I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing how the epic is resolved and worked out in part two next year when we’ll all be off to see the Wicked again. Talk about cliffhangers!
Wicked theatrically opens in theaters everywhere—from Earth to Oz—starting November 22. The trailer can be viewed here.
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