What Hollywood loves most about hit Broadway musicals is the possibility of turning them into hit movie musicals. West Side Story (1961) is a good example.
Hollywood also likes to milk every last drop money they can from a blockbuster classic movie. The technicolor classic Wizard of Oz (1939, directed by Victor Fleming who also directed Gone with the Wind the same year) was followed by The Wiz (1978) a Motown version of the Wizard of Oz starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.
Then along came Wicked which was a smash Broadway hit for decades, starring Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. It was a clever re-telling of the Oz story, from the point of view of the wicked witch.
It’s a great story device. Author Percival Everett recently used it in writing James, the best-selling 2024 novel that reimagines Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as told from the perspective of Huckleberry’s friend Jim, who was a slave. The shifting of the storyteller’s point of view can open up fresh new insights into stories, characters and relationships.
Wicked (the movie and play) opens with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West and the celebration of the Munchkins. The movie version quickly flashes back to the birth of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) who later becomes the dreaded Wicked Witch of the West. She is an illegitimate child born with green skin -- two strikes against her that will shape her life.
She grows up and follows her wheelchair bound sister to college. Elphaba and the instructors soon discover that she possesses frightening magical powers that are unleashed when she is angered.
She soon finds herself in the tutelage of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) who takes an interest in her supernatural abilities. Later, Elphaba gains an audience with the wise and powerful Wizard of Oz himself, played by Jeff Goldblum in a portrayal that bears little resemblance to the Wizard in the original film played by Frank Morgan.
Part of the hook with Wicked is the re-shuffling of familiar characters and relationships, starting with the initially strained friendship between Elphaba and Galinda (Ariana Grande) who we know as the Good Witch from the 1939 classic. In this version of the story, she is a spoiled brat rich girl with pathological-level narcissism. Initially, these future witches do not get along. The rocky road to their sisterly relationship and mutual love is the heart of the movie.
There is an abundance of storytelling and songs along the way, totaling 2 hours and 40 minutes of run time. It’s a slow, steady climb to a final reel climax guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.
The casting of the female leads and supporting talent is pitch perfect in Wicked. The performances Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are remarkable with regard to their singing and acting. They more than live up to the high expectations of diehard Wicked fans, young and old.
Along the movie’s journey, we discover the origin of the iconic black witch hat and how the frightening flying monkeys got their wings. And, we begin to see how the Wicked Witch came to be wicked.
We also see the untold backstory of two young women transformed by events that changed the course of their lives and turned them into classic movie characters forever etched into our collective memory.