Summary of the previous chapter.
The director and the producer surprised audiences when they released the cinematic version of the musical Wicked.
A version that took many years to develop, and at the end of the process it turned out they did a good job.
It was a good film, with perfect and surprising casting, that also enjoyed major box office success, at a time when stage musical adaptations often disappoint artistically or commercially.
However, there was one irritating decision. To split the film, which was shot continuously, into two separate films. On stage Wicked runs for two hours and forty five minutes, with a short intermission.
In theaters, Wicked became two films with a combined length of nearly five hours, and a one year break in between.
Artistically, this is infuriating. Commercially, the gamble paid off.
After Wicked broke box office records, ticket sales ahead of the premieres showed that theaters were largely full.
The audience did not just want the second act. It wanted an encore.
Wicked Part Two arrives in theaters with clear hit potential, but also with an open secret.
Anyone who has seen the stage version knows that the second act is significantly weaker than the first.
The first act is a coming of age comedy at a school for young witches, and the story of how two students meet and become friends.
Glinda, who will become the good witch, and Elphaba, who will grow into the wicked witch of the west.
The second act is already a Greek tragedy, with some sweetness added. In terms of songs, much like a vinyl record from the seventies, all the big hits are on the first side.
The leftovers are on the second. The first act ends with a powerful crescendo, when Elphaba discovers she can fly while singing Defying Gravity. The second act ends with what everyone already knows.
The ending is told at the beginning of the story, and if you have seen The Wizard of Oz, the ending appears there as well.
The fact that the plot of The Wizard of Oz is woven directly into the story was also a problem for me.
It is one thing to create a work inspired by another and offer a new interpretation.
It is another when a canonical story like The Wizard of Oz becomes the fourth leg holding Wicked in the air once the energy fades.
The origin story of Glinda and Elphaba is brilliant and entertaining.
The explicit and direct connection to The Wizard of Oz felt lazy and forced.
Despite all this, and despite the built in weaknesses of this act, the filmmakers still did solid work here, even though this is the darker part of the story.
If the first part showed how characters we thought were evil were actually misunderstood, the second part shows how such a reality is created.
How a country called Oz and a city called Emerald City slide into a racist and fascist dictatorship.
How a ruler controls narratives and reality through media advisors.
How citizens quickly cooperate with racist and anti democratic decrees. Even the yellow bricks, an iconic image, are presented as the result of forced labor in work camps.
There is something in Wicked that slightly undermines The Wizard of Oz, when it becomes clear that it is essentially a metaphor for a totalitarian regime. Considering that the stage show was created years ago and the film was shot much later, it is remarkable how Wicked Part Two managed to tap into a frequency that always existed and now feels especially present in reality, in politics, in media, in America and beyond. Wicked is not a film about a witch. It is about a freedom fighter. It is striking that such a colorful, sweet, and classically polished film manages to be current and relevant in an almost prophetic way. This is entertainment.