Road to the Oscars Review: One Week Into Trump’s Term the Parallels in ‘Wicked’ are Hard to Ignore

Every year, in the time between when the Academy Award nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OUT FRONT Magazine movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for Best Picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot move of the movies are now available on streaming.

Last year was the first year since they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 that River managed to make it through all 10 nominated films, and as she did so, she wrote reviews of them for OFM. This year, she aims to do it again, watching all 10 nominated films and writing about them for this site. She already saw and reviewed Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here as part of her coverage of this year’s 47th Annual Denver Film Festival. That leaves her with eight films to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10 films again? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

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Wicked is certainly a movie we should have reviewed, or even written about, much earlier at a publication like OUT FRONT Magazine. Truly, what queer magazine passes up the opportunity to review the biggest movie musical of the year? Sadly, our film reviews are most commonly handled by me and me alone, and I’m pretty busy working between about four different publications, so I tend to gravitate towards covering festivals and reviewing the movies I’m specifically invited to review by the studios. So I’m glad that Wicked—or, more appropriately, Wicked Part I—was nominated for Best Picture at this year’s 97th Academy Awards because it gives me a chance to review it as part of my Road to the Oscars series here at OUT FRONT and, boy, was I glad to finally get a chance to see this spectacular film brought to life by the visionary direction of John M. Chu.

One of the main reasons I didn’t immediately jump at the chance to see Wicked when it came out was that I figured I had seen the stage musical many years ago and, while I remember enjoying it, it did mean I had already seen it. Well, first of all, I had forgotten how much I really enjoyed this musical, and how much of a creative idea the story is. Leave it to the post-modern generations to take a simple melodrama like The Wizard of Oz and find a way to morally complicate its narrative. Wicked changes everything about a very familiar story, and it’s too compellingly told to keep it out of your mind the next time you watch The Wizard of Oz.

Secondly, I didn’t count on how much more detail the movie was going to add to the original stage musical. While I don’t love the tradition in popular movies—started with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—of taking a single story and turning it into a two-part movie, the details added to Wicked the movie from the musical that took it from being something you could watch in one sitting in a theater into something that’s being released in two separate parts a year apart definitely enhanced the story.

For the uninitiated (and this is going to get a tad spoilery), Wicked is the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West from the classic L. Frank Baum novel and subsequent 1939 film adaptation, The Wizard of Oz. Based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Wicked tells the story of how the Wicked Witch, whose name is Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and how the perception of her “wickedness” is due in part to prejudice over her green skin and partially because of her daring to defy the state. At the beginning of the story, Elphaba comes to the Shiz school to enroll her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), and is talked into joining the school as a private student of the Dean of Sorcery, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).

After being placed in the same dorm room as the perky and popular Galinda (Ariana Granda), Elphaba and Galinda first become enemies, with Galinda acting as a bully to Elphaba, but eventually Galinda recognizes that she has gone too far and softens, becoming Elphaba’s best friend. But things are not all pleasant in Oz, as a new prejudice against sentient animals, who were once treated as equals to the people of Oz, now has animals being harassed and pulled from their jobs. Elphaba finds herself siding with the animals, especially after seeing the unfair treatment delivered to one of her favorite teachers, a talking goat named Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage). Once Elphaba is summoned to meet the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Golblum) because of her exceptional work, she requests his assistance in helping the animals win their rights, only to discover that the Wizard is the one behind their oppression. Elphaba flees, determined to expose the Wizard as a fraud, only to be branded a “wicked witch” and made an enemy of the state.

For such a fantastical tale full of wizards, munchkins, and talking animals, the film did a surprisingly good job of depicting the creeping rise of fascism. As I write this about a week into the second presidential term of Donald Trump, I can’t help but notice the odd parallels between the authorities of Oz arresting Dr. Dillamond for daring to continue doing his job as the state started cracking down on animal rights and the recent government crackdowns on DEI programs and the surprise raids by ICE including the one of a small business in Newark that was done with no warrant and rounded up a number of people, many of them U.S. citizens, one of them an American military veteran. It may be a film literally about The Wizard of Oz, but the similarities to the current state of affairs in the United States were absolutely chilling.

It’s not necessarily traditional to cast a Black woman in the role of Elphaba in Wicked, as the actress who first launched the role on Broadway, Idina Menzal (who cameos in this film alongside the original Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth) is of Russian and Jewish descent. That being said, the way that Elphaba is treated in the movie is a metaphor for how we treat any number of minorities, particularly those with different color skin than that which is considered “the norm” in society, so casting a Black woman like Cynthia Erivo makes the metaphor all the more apparent. And Erivo carries the film on her shoulders splendidly, delivering an outstanding performance that makes a classic villain into a misunderstood hero. Granted, the script does a lot of the heavy lifting of making Elphaba sympathetic, but it was Erivo’s endearing performance that sells the brilliant writing.

Glinda, or Galinda, is a really complex character to play, and I feel like the movie complicated her character even more than the musical, although I admit it’s been about 15 years since I saw the show on a stage. The way I always remembered Glinda in the show was less as an antagonist and more of the oblivious white friend who offers only superficial support for her friend who is being discriminated against. I suppose the show always had the song “What is This Feeling?” which describes Galinda and Elphaba’s loathing for each other, but I remember them becoming friends rather quickly in the musical. Whether it’s something they changed for the movie or a fault in my memory, the Galinda in the movie felt like she oscillated between greater extremes in the movie, moving from a thoroughly detestable bully to Elphaba’s best friend in a way that felt surprisingly organic. It’s a hard swing to pull off and keep the character in any way relatable, but somehow Ariana Grande keeps you from hating Glinda entirely, even when there are very good reasons to do so.

Although the film is split into two parts, they did find a perfect moment to split the story on, right at the moment when Elphaba strikes out on her own to defy the Wizard. It’s a key turning point in the narrative that serves as a great cliffhanger, but it also serves as a fitting end for part one as both Elphaba and Glinda go through significant character arcs to get to this point. Despite the fact that there’s still more story to be told, the emotional story of Elphaba and Glinda becoming friends meets a natural end at the end of the movie. They’ve come a long way by that point, and have significantly grown as people. Furthermore, putting the most famous song of the entire show, “Defying Gravity,” right at the end of Part I made for the perfect ending to the first film.

(Like last year, I’m going to be referring to the Vegas odds on the Oscars because I think they’re a handy guide to gauge the likelihood of a film winning a particular award, but I do want to emphasize that betting on the Oscars is not legal in the state of Colorado and this is just something I bring up for fun in my predictions. We are not endorsing anyone gambling on the Oscars in an area where it isn’t legal.)

Currently, the Vegas odds on the Oscars have Wicked with a pretty slim chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar, as it is currently ranking sixth out of the 10 nominated movies in terms of how likely they are to pick up the Best Picture award. Cynthia Erivo similarly is predicted to be a long-shot for Best Actress, but Ariana Grande is sitting in a rather distant second place in terms of the Best Supporting Actress award behind Zoe Saldana for Emilia Pérez. (I would argue that Saldana is the star of Emilia Pérez and Karla Sofia Gascon is the supporting actress, but The Oscars have a long history of not understanding who the main actor and supporting actor are in movies.)

I don’t see Wicked picking up a lot of awards this time around, but I think the Oscar voters might be more inclined to wait until Wicked Part II to start giving out awards to this one. I think back to The Lord of the Rings trilogy where all three installments were given Oscar nominations, but only the third film, The Return of the King, actually picked up the big awards, making it only the second sequel to ever win a Best Picture Oscar (the first being Godfather Part II) and the only sequel to ever win a Best Picture Oscar where the original film didn’t win one. Many viewed this as the Academy basically giving the third installment of the trilogy an award in honor of all three parts. I think you might see that happen with this, with Wicked Part II picking up some awards that are really meant to honor Parts I and II as a whole, which means Part I might not get anything. Still, it’s a fantastic spectacle and well worthy of the nomination, and the eventual awards that Part II might receive.

Rating: 96/100

Wicked is currently still in some theaters and also available to rent and own at home. Learn how to watch the movie here.

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