Today is the last day of classes! I don’t even have a lot to do: I have one class on Fridays, which is all student presentations, and then I’m free. Sort of. I have a bunch of grading to do, which I plan to wrap up this weekend, and I have to assemble a final exam that will be posted online on Monday. A lot of the pressure is off.
I chose to celebrate prematurely last night by walking to the theater to see Wicked. It was good, I enjoyed it, but of course I have a few complaints.
- It was long at 2½ hours, this is just the first half of the story, yet it stripped out almost all of the complexity of the Wicked novel. It’s fine to greatly change the story when adapting to a different medium, but as long as you’re doing that, why instead bloat it up rather than streamlining it? The first half of the movie took it’s time building up the character, but mostly omitted all the chaos and unrest of the book.
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Movies always do this one annoying thing: they take a character who is supposed to be unsettling and scary, and make her gorgeous. It’s the old trope of putting glasses on a beautiful women to signal that she’s ugly (she isn’t, not in the slightest) and whip them off to indicate that she’s now transformed into glorious beauty. I’m sorry, but Cynthia Erivo was stunning in the role of the Wicked Witch. She might have given me a green skin fetish now.
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I do miss Margaret Hamilton. Maybe Erivo will stop singing and start screeching in the next half.
- There are a lot of characters who are there to fill the stage, doing nothing. I hope they are given something to do in part 2.
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I will say that the flying monkeys are far more terrifying in this movie than they were in the 1939 movie, which is saying a lot, since many children were traumatized by the original monkeys.
Now it’s time to do the responsible adult thing and trudge through the ice and snow to get some work done. The semester isn’t really over until the grades have been submitted.
I had no idea about people being traumatised by the monkeys until this film came out and people started saying that they were. The monkeys didn’t bother me in the slightest when I was a kid; it was the Wicked Witch that scared the shit out of me, especially in the scene where she appears in a cloud of black smoke on the roof of the house along the Yellow Brick Road. That was scary!
The monkeys? Meh.
I wasn’t bothered by the monkeys, either. I wanted one as a pet.
I felt sad for the ’39 monkeys. They looked so miserable obeying the Witch, and they were clearly grateful when she melted, so at least they got a happy ending.
I have to confess I never understood the appeal of the musical Wicked. I enjoyed it but compared to the depth and complexity of the book it seems simplistic to the point of insipid and childish.
I really would like to see an adaptation of the book.
Many MANY years ago when VHS first came out, we were watching Wizard of Oz- my godchildren had never seen it. We adults were sitting on a couch and the kiddos were on the floor. When the Winged Monkeys appeared, I suddenly had one terrified child hanging onto each leg for dear life!
Once as a little kid, I was taken to a performance of The Wizard of Oz at the St. Louis Municipal Opera (an open-air amphitheater that shows Broadway musicals). I don’t remember monkeys specifically, but I distinctly remember hiding under the seats at one point.
Same behavior when my Grandmother took me to see Invaders from Mars and people were getting sucked down into holes that opened up.
Some Christians are saying watching Wicked in theaters can turn people twords witchcraft.
A good answer at Facebook was
“Christians sit in church 50 times a year without catching generosity and compassion”.
Speaking of movies, if Flow happens to show up in your local theatre, you might want to check it out. It features a black cat trying to survive in a flooding, humanless world. Several other animals, although no spiders that I noticed.
OK, tell me you missed the point without saying it directly.
The stage musical is what changed the plot, not the movie. The movie is pretty much faithful to the musical. In fact, the movie is bloated compared to the musical and decided to bring back some parts of the book. The movie only covers the first act and is as long as the entire stage musical.
The book is, to put it mildly, trash. Dozens of plot threads are introduced only to drop them. No indication of why they were important enough to go through, no significance to character development or even world-building, just there to fill pages with words. The story cannot make up its mind as to what it is trying to be: A retelling of The Wizard of Oz as seen from the Wicked Witch’s eyes? An “historical fiction” set in the world of Oz? An allegory on racism? On sexism? On politics? An attempt to “sexy” up the story? It isn’t that it can’t be all of them, but this goes back to the first point: Each of these ideas gets taken up only to be dropped in favor of the new shiny. Things happen for no reason, have no effect, and thus have no meaning in the end.
If you buy any modern copy of the book, Maguire points out that the musical is different from the book and that he understands the reason why that is so: A stage production has about two hours to tell the story and a musical has even less time due to the nature of the beast. Singing and dancing, even when integrated into the story-telling, is a slower process of telling the story than straight prose. Thus, you have to be clear as to what your story is. And for the musical, they decided to focus on the “historical fiction” set in the world of Oz that seeks to tell the story from the Wicked Witch’s perspective. It’s right there in the opening number: “Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?”
So yeah, a lot of people are going to buy the book and end up shocked that the book has little connection to the movie.
And they’re going to be so much happier that the movie decided to follow the musical, not the book.
Regarding your second point: You clearly missed the point. Even in the book, Elphaba is not considered ugly. There was never a “beautiful all along” moment. Not even in “Popular.” The only thing about Elphaba is that she’s green (remember the commentary about racism?) They even play on that in the makeover scene: Galinda takes Elphaba’s glasses off only to realize they should be kept on. That is a direct subversion of the trope: The homely character wears glasses and all they need to do is take them off and suddenly everybody sees how beautiful they are. No, Elphaba was always beautiful.
Regarding your third point: Why? If you wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz, then go watch it. This isn’t a remake.
Regarding your fourth point: You do understand how the ensemble of a musical works, yes? They are there for their voices so that the songs have a larger sound. And rather than have them singing off stage, they are characters on stage. They are not “doing nothing.”
You didn’t like it. Fine. Nothing is for all people (apologies to Kristin Chenoweth). But let’s not pretend it’s because the movie was a failure.
The whole ‘she’s not evil just misunderstood’ subtext did not appeal to me when I read the book.
I remember hiding behind the couch when the flying monkeys came into my living room. I still didn’t feel safe there.
I also remember not getting the joke about a “horse of a different color”, because I watched it on a black-and-white TV.
Wait, the movie was only “part 1” of the story? That makes me even more glad I didn’t watch it. I did like the musical though, even though that’s never been my favorite genre.
The witch in the movie Wizard of Oz scared me pretty badly! I remember seeing it at the house of a friend of my parents who made the best home made ice cream ever.
Invaders From Mars scared me so badly I couldn’t sleep the whole night . I was about 5 and I’m surprised I remember the movie . Wicked the book I thought was an interesting take on the Wizard of Oz but I’d never read the original books just saw the movie. I wouldn’t say it was the best best book I’d ever read but it wasn’t the worst ( which was probably a tossup between 50 Shades , Left Behind and a book called Arslan)
I found the original books of Wizard of Oz to be a (fun) random mess, so the random mess of the revisional history of the book Wicked seemed like an homage to me. I didn’t consider Baum to be a good writer, so my medium expectations were met by the new book.
I have no idea about the play, I have only heard some songs. The songs are fun?
Here in Los Angeles, movies are a business and a way for a lot of people to make a living. This particular movie is a $ success. It’s likely they’ll make another one.
When my daughter was somewhere around 10-12, as the flying monkeys were chasing Toto as he escaped, she yelled, “Fly you dumb monkeys, fly!