This movie looked terrible. Like corporate and performative-feminist-without-understanding-what-makes-good-female-characters sludge. Basically the trailer gave me the same vibes of all the Disney live-action remakes. When the movie actually came out, things did not improve. The trailers that play before the movie have me convinced that culture is dead. Humanity is no longer capable of creating anything creative or caring about anything original. We are all spiraling inexorably towards the shutdown of our higher brain functions, and it's all Disney's fault.
What's The Movie About?
Someone watched the Wizard of Oz and thought, "What if the Wicked Witch of the West was a good person?" and wrote a book about it. Then somebody read the book and thought "This should be more like Mean Girls." for some Ozma-forsaken reason.
The Green Stuff.
Elphaba is a very cool character. I like that because she has lived her entire life being hated, she is prepared for everyone's questions and knows how to deal with rude people. I like her connection with animal people and the plot line of her trying to help them out. Her growing out of her selfish desire to change her skin color and instead making her greatest wish for the Wizard to be to help out the animals. Speaking of which, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz was a great cast, and I like how sinister they make him. There's literally an illusion to The Great Dictator while he's doing "magic" to impress Elphaba and Glinda. I also weirdly like the Winkie prince? I thought he was going to be deplorable when he started singing about how great it is to be stupid, but he actually has some depth that I thought was really interesting. I really like the Defying Gravity song. I think it being the cap on this movie was really smart, and I like the escape action scene that it was paired up with. This movie also looks pretty good. the effects are nice, the sets are colorful, and the costuming is a lot of fun. I want Elphaba's glasses.
The Pink Stuff.
I don't know if I have hated a character in a movie this year more than I hate Glinda in this movie. The amount of hate I have for her is rivaled only by my hatred for Hitler and myself. They took a character who was underlyingly very smart and plotting and turn her into a vapid idiot who talks like a someone who got dropped as a baby. I understand that is the point. But the movie harps on and on about it. Two hours of this movie is just pointing out how stupid and self-centered this pink bitch is. It honestly makes me think that the writer actually thinks that vanity and cliques are top notch, but know if they admit that they'll get in trouble, so instead just shows off as much as possible of that while throwing a brief "But don't be like that" moment at the very end. It definitely doesn't help that Glinda has no character arc in the movie. The movie pretends she does, there's a little dance she does with Elphaba and I guess they are best friend snow for some reason? But there's no build-up to this moment. The two are literally singing about how much they hate each other, Glinda does something selfish that accidentally benefits Elphaba's sister, so Elphaba does something nice for her in return because she's an actual good and empathetic person. So that means Glinda feels guilty about tricking Elphaba getting made fun of IN A SCENERIO SHE SET UP so she does a stupid dance with her. She's at a different place, sure, but there's no path there. She just teleported there. Naturally after that point comes a scene that made me, a trans person, fell personally attacked, so cool. It also doesn't help that Ariana Grande triggers my fight or flight instinct for some reason.
All the extras and Ozian residents are terrible people as well. That's fucking cool. This movie is single-handedly crushing my childhood dreams of living in Quadling Country, but whatever. Life's easier when you're dead inside, right Disney? I don't understand why everyone is racist in this movie. I mean, I get why the animals are being discriminated against. It's for a stupid, convoluted conspiracy about drought and the Wizard creating a enemy to unite the people of Oz, which now that I'm typing this out doesn't make any sense since he's literally turning the people he rules against each other. But that could be something that's explained in the next movie. No, what I mean is I don't understand why everyone hates Elphaba for being green. She's the only person who is green, it's heavily implied that no one know why she's that way, yet everyone is horrified and disgusted by her. Even though skin aside, she's incredible pretty! These people act like this isn't a land where unique creatures are a common sight! Sure, there's a lot of talking animals, but how many cyborgs are there in the land of Oz? Or talking, dancing scarecrows? No one hates the Tin Woodsman or the Scarecrow.
This movie also makes some changes from the book/original movie I find questionable. From the trailers I found the fact that Elphaba was being played a black woman weird, but it's fine in the context of the movie. What's less fine is the fact that her sister is in a wheelchair. Again, nothing wrong with having disabled characters and I like that Disney actually got a disabled actress to play Nessarose. But I absolutely hate the fact that Dorothy killed a disabled woman. Because that's who Nessarose is, she's the Wicked Witch of the East. You see her get the slippers in the movie. (Although they aren't ruby slippers because Disney doesn't have the rights to the original movie. Yet.) I'm also bothered by the lack of color importance. It's not something that is exclusive to this movie to be fair, but colors are very important in the book. Every country in Oz has a specific color and certain colors are only worn by certain types of people. For example: Witches are the only people in Oz who wear white and black. When Dorothy shows up, her blue and white checkered dress helps the Munchkins instantly trust her and know she's good. None of the movies follow this philosophy. The Wicked Witch of the West wears black, but that's it and could just be because she's the villain and they wanted to color-code her to be darker than everyone else. Glinda wearing pink irrationally bugs me. It's fine in the original Wizard of Oz movie since they make no reference to the Gillikin Country and she's explicitly a good opposite to the green villain. They are supposed to clash. This movie frames Glinda and Elphaba as friends by the end of it, and there's more references to the book as a whole. Glinda should be purple. Purple and green are more complimentary than pink and green. Speaking of Green, the Emerald City looks TERRIBLE. I can't really understand why, since pretty much everything else looks good. But something about the Emerald City when it is shown in the background looks fake as hell.
Much like this review, this movie is far too long. Fuckin' Wizard of Oz movie thinks its Dune. Seriously, why the hell is this movie 3 hours long? If you consider the fact that this is a two-parter, it's actually more like SIX hours long, but I shouldn't judge a movie before it comes out. Let's keep judging this one. Why is Bock in the movie? I wanted to like him at first since he's an underdog and infatuated with a terrible woman who literally never gives him a first thought, let alone a second. But his subplot with Dessarose is so auxiliary to what is going on in the actual story. Cut that out of the movie. There's a random part where Elphaba and the prince save what I guess is supposed to be the Cowardly Lion, and there's a tiny bit of characterization but it's really just there to remind the audience that this movie is connected to a much better movie. Cut the scene. Honestly, all of Shiz could be cut out of the movie and it would be infinitely better, but I guess we wouldn't have a catalyst for the animal storyline. Actually, Elphaba was raised by a bear since her dad immediately disowned her, you could have her get introduced to the animals disappearing and becoming speechless through her. If you must keep Glinda in the movie, make he less prominent of a character. Or just show off how shallow and vain she is for twenty minutes instead of TWO HOURS.
Actually, I don't even know why this movie is in two parts. This first part is a perfectly serviceable movie on it's own. You see Elphaba become a "bad guy", you see Glinda's "rise" to being a "good" witch. Is the second part just going to be sweeping up little crumbs of plot left over, like the Prince? I don't want to watch that. I have a feeling the second part is going to be more interesting than the first just because Shiz won't be in it, but it will probably have Glinda even more since her and Alphaba split up at the end of this one. I dunno, what even is this paragraph.
Final terrible issue with Wicked, I hate most of the songs. I mentioned already that the only song I really like is Defying Gravity. Some song are alright but really forgettable, others are unfortunately not. People who like being around me are very lucky I don't know how to get access to a firearm, because if I hear that Popular song again I would blow my brains out. I doesn't help the the song is full of the annoying "cutesy" dialogue where Glinda adds unnecessary suffixes to every word longer that two syllables. Why does the movie do that? Glinda is the worse culprit, but Michelle Yeoh does it a lot in the movie too. People of Oz don't talk like that in the book, and I'm 95% sure the original movie wasn't like that either. It's not whimsical, it's ANNOYING. What's whimsical is the talking animals and people doing magic.
The thing is, all of this is in the play. Or it's intentionally terrible. So if you are reading this as a fan of the play or book, you're probably reading this wondering...
What The Fuck Is Wrong With Me.
A lot, you got time? Let's start with this. I have a hard time watching stuff like Mean Girls because I've got traumatic history with my high school years. I don't like movies that focus on the drama of being popular. I think it's a stupid goal. I'm also starting to realize I don't like parodies or deconstructions of things I like non-ironically. Like superhero comics. I don't like stories that point out how silly or stupid tropes of that genre can be, even if they are well-written, because I enjoy the fantasy of straight forward moral conflict of good versus evil where good usually wins. I know it's not realistic, I'm reading a story about people in spandex who can fly, why would I think it's realistic. Oz is the same way for me. It is a socialist utopia run by a lesbian goddess, is separated into five color-coded states filled with talking animals and living constructs, and is literally surrounded by a desert that is impassable called the Impassable Desert. It's not a realistic setting. It doesn't need to be. Adding fantastical elements into mundane settings or turning a boring thing into something exciting and magical is awesome. Unfortunately the reverse is not true. I don't know why anyone would think that the thing missing from a magical road trip would be a college filled with catty students, but I hard disagree. It just makes the interesting world feel... too similar, I suppose. "Even though there is talking animals, there's still things you hate Roan!" this movie tells me, "There's still school, and bullying, and racism! The idea of a place that just nice to be and exist in and everyone is nice to each other is a complete lie!"
That's why I'm a nihilist. Because progress relies on people working together and the only thing humanity hates more than helping others is helping themselves.
Final Summation.
If you like the stage play you'll like Wicked. One might question why you need to watch the movie if you've seen the stage play, but one wouldn't like the movie to begin with. One would also desire to shove a double-barrel shotgun inside their mouth and firing upwards after enduring the whole movie. One also liked Red One and Borderlands so I guess one's opinion is dogshit and too literal or whatever other criticism you have for one that doesn't actually mean anything MOTHER!
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