Wicked

The Weight of the Western Sky

Adapting a cultural monolith like *Wicked* is less an act of filmmaking and more an act of civic management. The stage musical is not merely popular; it is a rite of passage, a commercial behemoth that has defined the vocal stylings of a generation. For director Jon M. Chu to approach this material, he had to navigate a treacherous path between reverence and reinvention. The result, a sprawling and visually saturated Part One, is a film that occasionally buckles under the sheer mass of its own production design, yet miraculously stays aloft on the thermal currents of its two lead performances.

Chu, whose previous work like *In the Heights* demonstrated a kinetic, almost restless camera, here adopts a more operatic stance. He treats Oz not as a whimsical backdrop, but as a totalitarian state in the making, draped in the trappings of a technicolor fantasy. The visual language is undeniably maximalist. Shiz University is rendered with a steampunk grandeur that feels suffocatingly real, a heavy architecture of stone and brass that contrasts with the candy-coated artifice of Glinda’s world. While there are moments where the digital seams show—particularly in the rendering of the talking animals, which veer dangerously close to the uncanny valley—the film largely succeeds in creating a sense of place that is both magical and menacing. The lighting, often criticized in modern blockbusters for being muddy, here embraces a theatrical vibrancy; the clash of pink and green is not just a color palette, but a dialectic.

However, the film’s decision to stretch the musical’s first act into a nearly three-hour runtime is a gamble that yields mixed results. There is a "breathlessness" to the pacing that feels paradoxical given the length; the film is so eager to expand every lore detail and deepen every backstory that it risks losing the narrative propulsion of the stage show. The "Defying Gravity" finale, while visually spectacular, feels less like a scene and more like a required destination.

Yet, where the structure threatens to sag, the humanity of the central pair buttresses the entire enterprise. This is, at its core, a tragic love story between two women, and Chu wisely clears the deck for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande to find the emotional truth beneath the heavy makeup. Grande, often underestimated as a pop product, delivers a performance of startling comedic precision. Her Glinda is a masterclass in weaponized femininity—a character who uses performative bubbliness as a shield against a world she doesn't quite understand. It is a fragile, funny, and deeply sad portrayal of the "mean girl" trope deconstructed.

Opposite her, Erivo grounds the film with a volcanic internal intensity. Her Elphaba is not simply a misunderstood teen; she is a political dissident in embryo. Erivo plays her with a guarded physicality, making the moments where she finally opens up—such as the pivotal "Dancing Through Life" sequence in the Ozdust Ballroom—devastatingly effective. When these two are on screen, the CGI noise fades, and we are left with a raw, intimate portrait of connection in a society demanding conformity.

Ultimately, *Wicked* succeeds not because of its flying monkeys or emerald towers, but because it treats the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda with the gravity of a historical epic. It is a film about how history is written by the winners, and how "wickedness" is often just a label applied to those who refuse to smile for the camera. While the decision to split the narrative leaves us hanging in mid-air, it is a suspension earned by the emotional weight of what came before. We are left looking to the western sky, not for the spectacle, but for the girl who dared to fly against the wind.