On November 22, after a heavy period of promotions, the highly anticipated film adaptation “Wicked” released. The movie boasted a huge budget with famous names such as Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, and Cynthia Erivo. The movie is a direct adaptation of Act One of it’s broadway show, with the sequel, “Wicked Part Two” releasing in November 2025. Only 3 days after its release, Wicked received almost $163 million at the box office, surpassing it’s blockbuster rival “Gladiator II”. The film had been under production for many years, but was worth the wait.
“Wicked” is a film with the main message that the Wicked Witch isn’t as evil as she is portrayed to be in “The Wizard Of Oz”. The movie centers around Elphaba, a girl with strong magical powers who gets discriminated against for her green skin. While dropping off her sister, she gets enrolled into Shiz University and meets Galinda, the future Good Witch. The two characters, at first, loathe each other, but then become best of friends and go to visit the Wizard of Oz together.
For new viewers, the twist is revealed when the Wizard of Oz reveals has no powers, and he is the one behind the problems in Oz.When Elphaba disagrees with him, she is slandered as the villian, and escapes on her iconic broomstick. The movie makes many specific references to the Wizard of Oz, with Galinda holding the iconic ruby slippers, the making of the yellow brick road, and Glinda arriving in her pink bubble. The movie also stays very true to the play, with the same music from the original show, sung by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
The movie was a huge success and was deemed as the best movie of 2024 by the National Board of Review. Furthermore, it is heavily speculated to be a potential Oscar candidate, if not an Oscar winner. The success of the movie is also reflected in the actors performance, with many of the actors perfectly suiting their roles. Cynthia Erivo’s powerful voice and great singing ability make her great for Elphaba; Ariana Grande’s acting skills and her voice perfectly suit Galinda’s character; Jonathan Bailey has great chemistry with both Galinda and Elphaba allowing him perform his role wonderfully;Ethan Slater is able to be equally silly and serious in his role as Boq. Other notable acts consisted of Bowen Yang, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, and Peter Dinklage.
In addition to its success, the movie also makes a commentary on today’s society. The discrimination of Elphaba for her skin color is a clear portrayal of racism, with Elphaba being overlooked, mistreated, and publicly humiliated just for being green. The erasure of letting animals speak and removing many of their rights is another example of discrimination and animal abuse. The cast itself is also very diverse, including a wide range of actors of different skin colors, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and also disabled actors.
Overall, I thought that the movie would not be very good due to the fact that movies with lots of heavy promotion and famous cast usually never live up to the high standards that are set and end up being more of a “cgi dump”. However, my expectations were absolutely blown away after watching the movie. The songs were amazing and sung live despite all the stunts, the visuals were breathtaking, and despite the late release, I would say it is one of the best movies of 2024. Besides Cynthia’s poor wig, the movie is perfect, and a 5/5.