That magic begins by inverting the original Wizard of Oz story so thoroughly that it’s easy to speculate that this will become the definitive telling of Oz for millions to come. Like the stage show, Wicked begins where we traditionally associate the ending of L. Frank Baum’s story (and its 1939 movie). The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, and all of Oz is celebrating her melting. Munchkins dance along the Yellow Brick Road, children laugh and play in the poppy fields, and effigies of the green woman are all but burned by a crowd that gives Glinda the Good Witch (Grande, who is credited as Ariana Grande-Butera in the movie) serious pause. See, Glinda more than knew the “Wicked Witch;” she was her best friend back in college at Shiz, and she comes down from her flying bubble to tell the mob all about it.
When Glinda met the woman who would become Wicked, things were different. For starters, Glinda went by her full-name of Galinda, and the Wicked Witch was simply Elphaba (Erivo), a studious and lonely young woman who initially is only on campus to see her sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) off on her first day. Nessarose is wheelchair-bound and eager to conform. Elphaba claims to have zero interest in any such frivolity. She does, however, feel seen for the first time when headmistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) takes keen interest in Elphaba’s evident magical abilities. She recruits Elphaba to the school and forces her to be the roommate of the most popular, and seemingly shallow, girl in the freshman class, Galinda.
Much of the rest of the film is about a mutual disdain between Galinda and “Elphie” (Galinda’s nickname for her roomie) gradually thawing into admiration and friendship. Galinda belts bubbly pop ballads about making Elphie “Popular,” and gets her to dance with the roguish bad boy of the school, Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who doth protest too much when he sings a catchy anthem about setting low expectations by “Dancing Through Life.” Yet it all becomes radically secondary as Elphaba learns that Oz’s talking animals are being scapegoated and worse by authorities. When she and Galinda are offered a chance to go to the Emerald City and meet Oz the Great and Terrible (Jeff Goldblum), Elphie hopes it is an opportunity to stop the rise of hate crimes against minorities. What she finds, however, is a revolution.
Visually this is the most sumptuous Oz has looked onscreen since 1939. Director Chu and his production designer Nathan Crowley lean into the iconography of Hollywood’s Golden Age when echoing the elements we are more than familiar with: yellow bricks and poppy fields that might as well be growing rubies. But when getting to color outside the lines, and even in spite of Wicked‘s stagey origins, the movie is strikingly cinematic. Consider how the movie expands Shiz’s entryway from a simple gate to it instead being a network of Venice-like canals on which students arrive via gondola.
Paul Tazewell’s costumes are similarly stunning, particularly in all the shades of pink applied to Grande’s wardrobe, which runs the gamut from the familiar Good Witch gown to designer peignoirs. It’s a luscious production, albeit the color-grading strangely seeks to mute a film that should have leaned harder into its oversaturated MGM influences.
The designs of the film provide a beatific backdrop. Yet it is the movie’s old-fashioned theatrical impulses that prove to be its real superpower. Or, to put a finer point on it, Erivo and Grande can really sing, and they do so often in live and spectacular fashion. A friend I saw the picture with was even surprised to learn that most of their singing was performed in-camera, even when Erivo is being flung on wires and a broom 40 feet above the soundstage floor.