My family went to see Wicked on Christmas Day and it was really a mixed bag for me. On one hand a lot of the design and look of the film was good. The musical numbers and choreography seemed lively and entertaining. I was most surprised by the acting which I wasn't expecting to be noteworthy but actually was quite good.

But the story...

The story is very much a left-wing fable, at least that's how it came across to me in the theater. The plot is about the Wizard of Oz crushing a disfavored minority group (talking animals) and how the main character, Elpheba, becomes woke to this injustice in college and sets herself on a course to bring down the government to set things right. And it's about how the government responds by labeling her the wicked witch.

I saw the musical maybe 10 years ago in Hollywood and I really enjoyed it. I don't remember thinking at the time that it was entirely a metaphor for becoming a social justice warrior. In fact, I had to look back at the plot of the musical to see if it had been changed substantially for the film. Best I can tell it hasn't changed all that much. I guess the biggest change is that Elpheba is now played by a black actress which makes the whole thing about her being an outcast because of her skin color a pretty on-the-nose reference for racism. Again it was probably always that obvious but somehow in the theater version it wasn't as strident as it is in the film version.

One reason this might be the case is time. The original show was about 2 1/2 hours long. The film, which just covers the first half of the show, is 2 hours and 40 minutes. This means everything gets stretched out and repeated until you really get the point.

Obviously the concept here, based on a book published in the mid-90s, was always to invert the story of the Wizard of Oz. But watching the film I was struck by how much that's true. It's not just that the Wicked Witch is the star it's really the whole framework of the original film that is being inverted and rejected.

The Wizard of Oz is ultimately a story about a young girl who goes on an imaginary adventure where she works through her problems and just wants to get home. Home is a simple farm where he friends and family love her.

Wicked turns home into a hateful place of childhood misery. The lesson here is not about going home but getting away from home to become a fighter for a progressive cause, which is presented as the only valid option for anyone with a heart. Progressive filmmaker Adam McKay pointed out just how left wing this movie is.

On a pure storytelling level Wicked Part 1 is right up there as one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made.

I know Part 2 swings back to the center a bit but Part 1 is nakedly about radicalization in the face of careerism, fascism, propaganda.

— Adam McKay (@ZombiePanther2) December 23, 2024

And because it’s Twitter the “always be reviewing everything all the time”crowd immediately goes to “Wow. You really liked Wicked THAT much?”

I’m not reviewing the movie. I’m talking about the story and POV as a commercial worldwide film

— Adam McKay (@ZombiePanther2) December 24, 2024

He went on to suggest this movie could be "banned" in a few more years. That's silly but he's right that it is very self-consciously left-wing. It's a bit surprising that people on the right haven't pointed it out. Every kid camping on a campus for the Palestinian cause is going to see themselves as the hero in this movie. This is their film.

What saves the movie from its own heavy-handedness are the songs and the acting. The songs are mostly good and entertaining to watch regardless of the message. And there is one great scene in the film (the only great one, in my opinion) in which Glinda finally takes pity on a hopelessly unpopular Elpheba and dances with her at a party. It works in part because both lead actresses do a good job acting but also because it's the first moment in the narrative Glinda isn't just a cartoon "Karen" but a real person.

But for the most part this really is a story about becoming a social justice warrior. The real world message version of this film's message would probably be something about giving hormones to 10=year-olds so they they can "defy gravity" as trans kids. I guess I just like the message of the original Wizard of Oz much better than the inverted world of Wicked.

Finally, I watched Ben Shapiro's review and he talks about the anti-Wizard of Oz-ness of the film in passing but what really irritated him was that they ruined some of the songs by stretching them out for double or triple their original runtime. He confesses to being a musical theater nerd so this really bothered him. I think he has a point but for the most part he seems to have liked the movie.