i’ve loved wicked since it was the first show i saw on the west end, and i’m so happy that it’s doing as well as it has, and i really enjoyed the film. however, i can’t pretend i don’t have plenty of thoughts…

ariana absolutely steals it for me, cynthia does a great job, jailey is stunning, and spongebob was fun (not while singing tho, then he turns into a simple sponge), jeff goldblum and michelle yeoh were great casting choices

all the extra time they put into magic and the lore of the world really paid off for me (although it misses some of the ambiguity that made it special in the show). and, how they leant into the politics felt really good to me.

i really appreciated that they changed almost all the jokes just enough that they still hit the same beats but didn’t feel tired.

unfortunately most of the vocals sound like the mic just happened to be on while they were singing absent-mindedly in the corridor outside, and they are quite over produced - especially when the dolls sing together, where they sound like synth strings (a real shame bc they sound incredible together live)

cynthia is a wonderful singer and does some good acting but elphaba is meant to be weird (like have you ever seen her without that hat on, she’s a weirdo) and bowen yang is not in enough of it to make up for how un-fun she is. also why did she sound like she’d snorted some of that poppy dust before she recorded the first half of Wizard and I

the one fault with ariana for me was that her poppy soprano doesn’t hold out over a chorus in the same way stage glindas’ do, but that’s not much of a problem till part 2

the interest and wonder is incredible up until like halfway through, but begins to decline from there and unfortunately chopping defying gravity up the way they did really takes the wind out of elphaba’s sails and distracts from the song (which cynthia sounds incredible on). i think it could’ve done with more music throughout and a lot more quirk visually.

also, i will be researching this, but did jonathan bailey do any of his own dancing bc it did not look like it to me

finally, i’m so interested to see how part 2 turns out, this was very much a family film but act 2 of the musical is so much darker and sexier, so i don’t know how they’ll package that for the film version.

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the above space is being held for the lyrics of defying gravity, i hope if you’re reading this you’re finding power in that