Wow, just wow, I was cautiously optimistic going into this, simply because this film has had arguably the most chaotic build ups if any films ever, not to mention how hit or miss musical adaptations have been recently, for every West Side Storys and Tick Tick Booms, there’s your Cats and Dear Evan Hansons, but I’m happy to say that this film is so close to perfection for me, and I’ll explain why. 

First off, the performances, everyone gives it their all in this one, despite my personal feelings towards Cynthia Erivo, she was amazing as Elphaba, both in of acting and vocals, Jonathan Bailey was extremely charismatic, despite Ethan Slater’s affair on set, he was also really fun. While Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum aren’t singers, they’re still really good in this, and luckily their singing is kept minimal and doesn’t overstay their welcome like Russell Crowe in Les Mis. To my utter shock, hands down my favourite performance in this film was Ariana Granola, like I’ve only ever seen her act in Victorious and clips of her in Hairspray, but wow, she’s so good in this. Her singing and dancing’s on point, as expected, but her comedic timing is also really good, easily the funniest character in this film, but she also sells the dramatic moments, especially during Defying Gravity, her facial expressions and line delivery makes this moment more emotionally impactful. 

I feel like a lot of us were nervous when we heard that this musical was going to be split into two parts, with each part being two and a half hours, like this felt like a relic from the young adult adaptations from eons ago, and was only being done for the sake of making more money. But here’s the crazy thing, I believe that the extended runtime genuinely makes the story of act 1 better. Like the fast pacing works better for musical theatre, but the extended runtime of this film allows the audience to connect more with the characters and further explore different plot points of the stage version, it genuinely feels like they made act 1 longer for the sake of improving the story, not the box office. 

Of course, this is a musical, and as a theatre kid who was obsessed with this soundtrack for almost an entire year at one point, I’m happy to say that most of these songs have been adapted incredibly to the medium of film. ‘What is This Feeling’ is filled with creative direction, ‘Dancing Through Life’ is incredibly choreographed with cool rotating bookshelves, ‘The Wizard and I’ builds itself up really well, ‘Popular’ is so much fun, and of course ‘Defying Gravity’ is incredibly paced and builds up to an immaculate climax that had me breathless. 

But I feel like I need to address my biggest issue with this film, and it’s something that pretty much everyone’s talked about, the colour grading. I’m sorry, I wish I could say that this didn’t bother me, but the light is so fucking bright for absolutely no reason during some sequences and it really bothers me. While I imagine this wouldn’t bother most people, but as someone who takes colour grading more seriously than the average Joe Shmoe, this really bothered me how some sequences were dampened by the horrible lighting, and it wouldn’t even be that hard to fix, I kept looking at certain parts thinking ‘Give me some time on Da Vinci Resolve and I could make that better’. 

All in all, while this movie just slightly missed the 10/10 rating for me, this is still one of the best musical adaptions of all time and so much better than Gladiator 2, STOP TRYING TO MAKE GLICKED HAPPEN! IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! The reason why Barbenheimer worked was because despite the fact that both films couldn’t be more different, they were around the same level of quality, while Wicked is miles ahead of Gladiator 2 (I liked Gladiator 2 by the way, I’m just saying I’m in no rush to rewatch it). So yeah, I highly recommend Wicked, and I can’t wait for part 2 to come out.