What is this Feeling: Five stages of grief before watching the Wicked movie

To say that I had some thoughts about the movie Wicked is an understatement. I had feelings. I first came across the stage source material at the tender age of 14, and if Spotify was working in Romania before 2018, it would surely be the only album featured in my Spotify Wrapped, and for good reason. Wicked is the perfect musical for all teenage outcasts, marginalised for their queerness, neurodivergence or just plain weirdness. And let’s face it, if you were a theatre kid, you are at least one of those things. 

It is an adaptation of a much darker and politically charged novel of the same name by Jeremy Maguire. While it diverges in the content, especially later on, it has the same premise. It tells the journey of one marginalised green-skinned sorceress, called Elphaba, to become the Wicked Witch of the West, the famous antagonist of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum (whose initials are cleverly incorporated into the character’s name). 

We first meet her while she is attending college, because I guess Oz has one of those, where she meets her roommate, rival (lover?) and future Good Witch of the North, Galinda (later known as Glinda). There is also this guy called Fyero, but he’s not important. The first act, and the 2024 movie, focuses on Elphaba and Galinda’s homoerotic enemies-to-besties journey and Elphaba’s personal arc of animal activism that leads to her radicalisation and disillusionment with her hero, the Wizard, who turns out to be behind the disenfranchising of the animals. It’s a story that every leftie can relate to, to some extent.

So when I heard that this musical is getting adapted to the screen, I had feelings to process.

Denial

It is hard to be a musical fan. Tickets to shows are expensive and often involve additional costs of travel and stay in a different city, if not country. Most theatres still guard access to their pro-shots like dragons guarding their treasure, and movie adaptations are usually extremely disappointing. Following the announcement of a movie adaptation of Wicked, the musical that was one of the great awakenings for my love of the medium, I was very sceptical.

It might be impossible for people who are not deeply entrenched in the musical world to understand how long the fans of this musical have waited for this adaptation. In recent years, movie musicals have been, with some exceptions, critical and financial failures, made with an evident lack of understanding for the medium. For every La La Land or The Greatest Showman, which were controversial among musical fans but overall successful to the general public, there was Les Misérables, Cats and Dear Evan Hansen; bad, completely devoid of passion husks of movies. Disney was by far the best at releasing a significant quantity of musicals, if only because of the number of soulless live action remakes of their successful productions from the 80s and 90s. 

The journey of Wicked, the movie, onto the big screen was long and painful. Every couple of years someone would announce that the movie is in the works, only for the project to fizzle away. So, frankly, the premiere showing of this movie actually took me by surprise. I didn’t really believe that this movie would be made, and once the marketing campaign had launched, I didn’t want to believe it would actually be good.

Anger

One day, I decided that I hate this movie. With passion and burning desire, I began loudly complaining about this movie and especially its marketing campaign, with my hope being for it to be as spectacular a failure as Cats. I counted the days until the movie premiered to see the reviews pour in, bashing the movie to bits. The oversaturation of Wicked-related content on every single online platform promised such a satisfying Schadenfreude if the movie turned out to be a flop.

There is something extremely gratifying about the idea that a studio spent a lot of money to promote an obvious disaster. And I don’t think I was just being mean. The Wicked campaign was aggressive and social media algorithms intensified it further. If you were on any platform you just couldn’t avoid the movie, from influencers showing off hauls of Wicked-related merch, to posters being plastered on every corner, to Wicked-branded clothes and makeup trying to capitalise on the increasing hype.

And then there were preview screenings so widespread that it felt like everyone had already seen the movie before the premiere had even happened. The masses saw the movie and began, organically or not, “holding space” and uploading makeup videos to the songs. They were doing the promotional campaign for the movie themselves, while also filling Universal’s pockets with all of the profits of Wicked-branded stuff that they were buying.

There is something extremely annoying about the inescapable hype culture that is undoubtedly manufactured by marketing teams. I’m sure a lot of the influencers genuinely enjoyed the movie, but I wonder if as many of them would have joined the hype train if they hadn’t received all that sweet Wicked merch that they can resell at an upcharge. The hype around and overconsumption of “exclusive items” is frustrating not only because of the obvious ethical and environmental concerns linked to any seasonal trend, but because it also made me feel like I can no longer enjoy something without being a cog in the algorithmic machine. I like to rewatch Lindsey Ellis videos but I know exactly why YT recommended to me that one video about the Wicked Witch of the West for over a month.

Bargaining 

Somewhere along this journey, I pitched this article, even before having watched the movie. As positive reviews piled up, I began doubting my first judgement, and I started to accept that I am definitely going to go see the movie. I thought that maybe there is nothing wrong with something being popular and trending, if it is actually enjoyable. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to at least give it a chance, and maybe I don’t have to be such a hard-core contrarian. 

Depression

Then again, what if I liked the movie, even if it was terrible? Knowing that I was going to see the movie, having already committed to writing this article, made me feel a weird sort of dread. What if the movie is bad, not because of its own faults, but because the original was never good in the first place? I know there is a lot to criticise about this theatre show. For one, it introduces a very unnecessary love triangle into an explicitly queer-coded story, written by a gay man in the United States in the 1990s. It hints at romantic feelings between Elphaba and Glinda but ultimately declares them to be “best friends” torn apart to some extent by divergent politics but mainly by a guy. Yes, Elphaba does have an affair with Fyero in the book, but Glinda was never “the other woman.” The author explores the relationship between the Witches outside of their relationship with another man. The adaption shallows their relationship by implying that the arc of their friendship is based on their romantic rivalry. 

Beyond that, Wicked, the musical, is politically extremely sanitised compared to the book. Ultimately, it ends on the very cynical message that, for all the effort Elphaba has put into combatting the system, it is the liberal-minded, ambition-driven Glinda who complies with its rules who will be able to bring about actual change, and that is a sentiment I know I do not agree with.

But I still love this show, maybe less so now than when I was in high school, but I love it nonetheless, and the chance that the movie would reveal to me things I didn’t actually want to know scared me. Nobody likes to realise that the things that contributed to who they’ve become were bad.

Acceptance

When I finally went out to see the movie, I was pretty settled for the fact that it ultimately doesn’t matter whether the movie is good or not. The original musical was important to me, and that will not change. The movie can exist, annoying marketing campaigns and all. People can enjoy it and make stupid TikTok videos about it and “hold space,” and whatever else they feel inspired to do. It will not take away from my experience of listening to this musical for the first time. Then I went to see it. And I was wrong. About some of it at least. 

Admittedly, it is difficult to judge this movie on its own, seeing as it is fundamentally incomplete without its sequel. I would argue that seeing the movie can be compared to going to see The Sound of Music but only getting to see the part where Julie Andrews falls in love with and marries Christopher Plummer, and then having to wait another year to see part two, where the Nazis invade Austria and the family has to flee the country. You can’t tell whether the end result is good based on one half of a complete story.

Unfortunately, half of the time the movie looks like there were days Jon M. Chu woke up and forgot how to shoot a musical, only to go to sleep again and remember what movie he is directing. The absolutely stunning sets are terribly backlit and washed out, which is particularly unforgivable given this movie’s relation to the 1939 The Wizard of Oz, which was revolutionary in its use of technicolour, and where the Witch’s green skin first originated.

That being said, I think Wicked: Part I does a good job of translating the first act of the stage musical to the screen. It (mostly) understands the medium it adapts and is not ashamed of the form it takes, which sounds like the bare minimum but is surprisingly rare to see in movie musicals. I am relieved to see that the cast is largely well-suited for what their roles required, and Cynthia Erivo in particular fits her role of Elphaba, even if I think that her (and all other) Oscar nominations are a bit of a stretch. Jonathan Bailey’s rendition might genuinely be my favourite Fyero and Dancing Through Life might be the only song for which I would pick the movie album over the original cast recording. Michelle Yeoh is a fantastic Madame Morrible despite her singing being a bit sub par, but nobody can be great at everything, everywhere, all at once. And as much as I wish Peter Dinklage was cast as the Wizard, where his charisma could really shine through instead of voicing over a CGI goat, I guess Jeff Goldblum was fine too. 

I don’t have a satisfying punchline that would snappily sum up my journey of coming to terms with this movie, except maybe for this: if there is something that you have a lot of feelings for, even if you haven’t experienced it yet, the best thing to do is to take a leap of faith and just give it a shot. You might surprise yourself with what you end up liking. Or, at the very least, you may write a piece on it; that could turn out to be kind of fun.