What ‘Wicked’ Has to Say About Our Current Political Moment

In the big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) makes use of magic to defend her sister and unwittingly destroys a courtyard mural of the Wizard at Shiz University. When her outburst shatters the wall, it additionally finds a picture that has been deliberately coated up: the college’s authentic founders, animal professors whose capacity to talk, train people, and manage politically posed a risk to the Wizard’s autocratic reign.

This stunning truth is revealed early on, however as I watched it, I spotted Elphaba’s discovery got here too late.

As a repeat viewer of Broadway’s “Wicked,” I’m often fascinated by how the story’s retrospective lens encourages us to sympathize with Elphaba, who finally will turn into the Wicked Witch of the West. Her wealthy again story — she’s a perennial outsider and extremely empathetic individual — has compelled me to rethink my assumptions about her and mirror on how simply I accepted L. Frank Baum’s personal prejudices and his illustration of her as a one-dimensional villain in his novel, “The Wizard of Oz.”

But, not like the stage model, which tracks Elphaba as a younger grownup to her fateful encounter with Dorothy, the film delves much more into Elphaba’s biography. It follows her to Shiz University, the place she finally ends up rooming together with her frenemy, Galinda, later renamed Glinda (Ariana Grande), whose jealousy of Elphaba’s magical powers results in battle. The movie ends on the characters’ climactic midpoints. “If Part One is about decisions,” the director, Jon M. Chu, not too long ago informed Entertainment Weekly, “Part Two is about penalties.”

But for now that additionally means the story stays unresolved. At the tip of the Broadway model, there’s aid within the shock ending after we study that the Wicked Witch was far kinder than we gave her credit score for and that she efficiently challenged the Wizard’s dominance.

Instead, onscreen, Elphaba is left suspended in midair (on her broom), made a scapegoat by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) because the Shiz professor Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), falsely warns the individuals of Oz about an enemy who should be captured. Madam Morrible goes even additional, blasting on the loudspeaker, “Her inexperienced pores and skin is however an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This depraved witch!”