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Wicked (2024): An Exercise in Mediocrity

Eve O'Dea

In the spirit of transparency, I admit that I did not expect to like John Chu's cinematic adaptation of Wicked based on my vague familiarity with the stage musical and omnipresent promotional materials that have been plaguing my life, both online and off, for the past six months. Still, I was determined to give this seemingly universally beloved film a fair chance. It would not be the first time one that I was expecting to despise pleasantly surprised me. I was willing to put aside my expectations and allow myself to be entertained by a near-three hour display of fantasy and friendship that showcased at the very least a degree of cinematic competency and artistry.

Reader, it was worse than I could have imagined.

It didn't take long for me to realize where this train was going. It must occur to every director that a film's opening shot is an opportunity to introduce one's vision within the first few seconds of a project, to set the tone and infer what the audience can expect for the next two hours (or more). Chu, with a budget of over 140 million dollars, lets us know exactly what to expect with an absolutely illegible and ill-constructed opening shot. It is dark, messy, and generally unattractive. At the very least, Chu is consistent, because these descriptors are applicable to the rest of the film's ghastly spectacle. Immediately, I can see that Chu and his production team have conceded to the worst trends of modern blockbuster filmmaking, abandoning any coherent style in favour of shallow grey sludge.

Chu’s excuse for the muted colour palette? He claims that he wanted Oz to feel like a real place in order to ground the film and its conflicts:


"Because if it was a fake place, if it was a dream in someone’s mind, then the real relationships and the stakes that these two girls are going through wouldn’t feel real." (from Chu's interview with Variety)


I wonder what Chu would have to say about the films of Pedro Almodóvar or Wes Anderson, two filmmakers who strategically employ colour to accentuate the stories they tell and the characters they create. Powell & Pressburger, my favourite filmmaking duo, told some of the most humanistic, grounded stories ever put to film through opulent colour and dreamy cinematographic excellence. The Wizard of Oz, for that matter, one of the most splendidly colourful films ever made, never detracts from Dorothy's journey and growth as a character, or the danger following her. Chu's aversion to colour and insistence on constant backlighting makes the whole film, to put it mildly, ugly. If you are so intent on realism, maybe you shouldn’t be making a film about witches and wizards and talking animals. Maybe you shouldn’t even be making a musical, a genre which embraces film’s inherent artifice to justify its existence, and relishes in dreams and imagination.

Before the film's title card, we find ourselves in Munchkinland for some handy exposition. While I want to refrain from resorting to constant comparisons between Wicked and The Wizard of Oz, I find myself compelled to do so in this instance. The differences are egregious. Dorothy’s entrance into Munchkinland, during which the The Wizard of Oz transforms from rich sepia-tone to glorious Technicolor, is one of the most visually powerful moments in film history, and welcomes the audience to take in some of the most beautifully designed sets ever built. In Wicked, Munchkinland, in both lighting and construction, looks like a parking lot. The sets in the film are essentially paid dust by way of poor framing and relentlessly unfocused editing, resulting in a lack of scale that makes this version of Oz seem temporary and susceptible to collapse from a gust of wind.

When the stage musical Wicked premiered in the early 2000's, critics acknowledged its potential to become a cultural juggernaut, but struggled with the overall production and story. Many found the music to be trite and unimpressive, the characters dull, and the story too self-aware and sermon-like. These shortcomings are unfortunately not mitigated by the film production. While perhaps a cutting-edge idea to portray a retconned version of the Wicked Witch of the West in 2003 (and even more so in the 1995 novel on the which the show is based) villain origin stories have since been done to death, as a consequence our insatiable desire for nostalgic content across all forms of media. The result is a film that knows it can get away with dialogue and plot based on deftly-dropped Easter Eggs and references to a much better movie (in re: an overlong sequence about a certain-coloured brick-road). It makes the audience feel good to recognize these hints, no matter how conspicuous, but the outcome is something as self-sufficient as a live-action Disney remake. I'd like to say that the film is at the very least made tolerable by an ensemble of talented performers, but the cast is lost within the structure, and the gibberish-filled musical numbers, nonsensical dialogue, and TikTok-friendly dance choreography do little to showcase any actor's particular ability. Wicked does for song and dance what the MCU has done for action sequences, replacing compelling choreography and skilled camerawork with breakneck editing and amateurish blocking that leaves no lasting impression on the audience.

As if the film's visual incompetence wasn't enough, another glaring issue is the person for whom we are supposed to be rooting: Elphaba, the most tooth achingly sympathetic character in recent cinematic memory. She was never an evildoer determined to kill an innocent young Kansan for a pair of fabulous shoes. In fact, she has never done anything wrong in her life ever, and maintains a perfect record of moral righteousness. Considering that the story of Wicked is supposed to exist in an effort to challenge the established binary of good vs. evil, the film’s depiction of these forces is remarkably uninterested in any such complexity regarding our heroine. Not only are people moustache-twistingly cruel to her, she is a good person to a nauseating extent, and so so clever, giving the audience permission to do as little thinking as possible and once again feel good about themselves for being on the “right side” of the film’s after-school-special depiction of bullying and morality. Even Cynthia Erivo, an undeniably talented singer and performer, is unable to add any depth to this one-note character weighed-down by "not-like-other-girls-ness".

This is not the first time I have found myself disenchanted by a film otherwise positively received by critics and audiences. Just last year, I found myself at odds with champions of Oppenheimer, which I found to be exceptionally hollow and worryingly amoral. Still, I understood how skillful cinematography, an all-star cast, and the gravity of the scenario tricked people into thinking it was a worthwhile way to spend 180-minutes of their time. I even understood why our overlords at the Academy believed it a deserving recipient of their top prize, considering that the Academy Awards have proven themselves time and time again to be an utterly unserious institution. When it comes to Wicked, however, I am baffled by this dichotomy of opinion between general audiences and myself. What others found "dazzling" I found dull, what made some laugh made me groan, the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda moved some to tears as I rolled my eyes in exhaustion. I became all the more forlorn every time I remembered that this was only part 1 of 2, and this insufferable cultural phenomenon would remain in my peripheral view for at least another year.

At some point, I started become exhausted by my own antagonism. My thoughts started become insular. Why was I so upset? Why does my opinion matter? To answer the latter, I can confidently say: it doesn't. The former question, however, is worth investigating. David Ehrlich, chief critic at Indie Wire, recently found himself in a similar predicament:


"I’m unsure of what it means for me to hate a piece of art at a time when hair-trigger hostility is so deeply suffused into the air we breathe"


I understand Ehrlich's apprehension to lambast a beloved film for the sake of one's own catharsis. Only, I don't think my frustrations towards Wicked come from a place of unjustified loathing. In the parlance of a caring parent: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. I'm disappointed by the acceptance of mediocrity, I'm disappointed that studios can feed us something of no substance and we'll thank them for it. We are so easy to please, so desperate for distraction, that the bar for entertainment has gotten alarmingly low. I want people to raise their expectations. I want us to want more, and tell the people who make our entertainment as much, to expect talent and have the ability to see through proverbial set dressing. To experiment and fail is one thing, but to deliver something utterly devoid of artistic competency is a waste of time, and frankly unacceptable. Studios have a stupid amount of money at their disposal, and over a hundred years of masterpieces from which to draw inspiration.

To this I say: do better. Study the classics.






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