The big-screen adaptation of “Wicked: Part One” delves into the untold story of the witches of Oz. It follows Elphaba, a young woman misunderstood because of her green skin, and Galinda, a popular and privileged young woman, as they meet at Shiz University and form an unlikely friendship. Unlike the Broadway version, the movie explores Elphaba’s biography more deeply.
It tracks her to Shiz, where she rooms with her frenemy Galinda, whose jealousy of Elphaba’s magical powers leads to conflict. The film also unearths a darker narrative beneath the surface. When Elphaba uses magic to defend her sister, she unwittingly destroys a courtyard mural of the Wizard at Shiz.
Big-screen adaptation reveals untold narrative
This outburst shatters the wall and reveals an intentionally covered-up image of the school’s original founders – animal professors whose ability to speak, teach humans, and organize politically posed a threat to the Wizard’s autocratic reign. At the end of the movie, Elphaba is left suspended in midair on her broom, made a scapegoat by the Wizard as Madam Morrible, the Shiz professor, falsely warns the people of Oz about an enemy who must be captured.
Madam Morrible blasts on the loudspeaker, “Her green skin is but an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This wicked witch!”
Director Jon M. Chu explained, “If Part One is about choices, Part Two is about consequences.” By breaking the story into two movies, the emphasis in “Part One” shifts to a nation’s potential decline into authoritarianism, drawing parallels to our current political moment.
The film stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, Michelle Yeoh as Madam Morrible, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Ethan Slater as Boq, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. It opened on November 22 and has set a record as the highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway musical in domestic box office history.
