On November 22, 2024, Wicked hit theaters, leaving many people in awe of how the story came to life in movie form. In 1995, the novel Wicked came out written by Gregory Maguire. Eight years later, the novel was adapted into a Broadway musical. This is when the story of two witches, Glinda the Good Witch, and Elphaba the Wicked Witch, became more popular than ever before.
Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba), and Ariana Grande (Glinda), the two witches. Wicked also stars Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum. This film is the story of how Glinda and Elphaba meet at school, Shiz University, and form an unlikely friendship, which shows that two completely different people can become friends. Elphaba arrives at Shiz, and immediately gets stared at by all of her classmates, because she is green.
At first when Glinda meets Elphaba, they don’t see eye to eye, until a little later in the film. Their friendship shows the true image of girlhood. Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth also had a guest appearance in the movie which was really cool, as they were the original Elphaba and Glinda on Broadway. This film includes multiple amazing songs including, “No One Mourns The Wicked,” “Popular,” “I’m Not That Girl,” and the extraordinary, “Defying Gravity.” Wicked is being released in two parts, the second part expected to arrive in theaters on November 21, 2025. After seeing the first movie, waiting an entire year for the second one to come out has me jumping out of my skin, but I know that it will be worth the wait and I can’t wait to see it.
My review for Wicked is definitely a 10/10. This movie stayed true to the original story, and I was fully invested in every moment of the movie. When I was younger, I saw Wicked on Broadway three times, so seeing it come to the big screen was honestly such an amazing experience and really moved me. Many scenes during the movie were very moving, and the one scene that really moved me was in the beginning, when they were singing, “No One Mourns the Wicked.”
This scene focused on Glinda appearing in Munchkinland to officially announce the death of Elphaba. When Glinda is singing this, you can tell that she is sad, because she really was friends with Elphaba and now had to pretend to be happy she was dead. Ariana Grande did an amazing job in this moment and she really did an amazing job showing emotion. Someone then asks Glinda if she was friends with Elphaba, and that’s when she tells the story of how they became friends.
During the song “Defying Gravity,” at the end of the film, I was truly blown away with the way Cynthia brought this scene to life. It shows Elphaba, flying on her broom throughout Oz, and Cynthia did her own stunts during this scene which makes it even more unbelievably amazing. Overall, I would highly recommend that everybody goes to see Wicked as it was a cinematic masterpiece. It shows the true beauty of being different, but still being accepted by people around you, just like Elphaba was accepted by Glinda.
