Unfortunately, Wicked is the dawn of the Musical Theater Universe

Good news! It’s dead! The myth that audiences won’t accept true blue big screen musicals has been shattered!

The movie version of the hit Broadway show evil yes Breaking box office records left and rightrecently deposed grease The highest-grossing Broadway play adaptation of all time. join in Strongly positive review, Oscar buzz is heating up rapidlyand “Part Two” expires in 2025and you have yourself a blockbuster success story and a ready-made franchise starter. back Decades of musical theater from stage to screen varying degrees of success, evil is bringing Broadway to The era of film IPmarking the dawn of MTU: The Musical Universe.

That’s right; just as Kevin Feige changed the industry by responding to superhero fans’ demands to bring their favorite childhood heroes to the screen, producer Marc Platt Marc Platt and David Stone also transformed their Broadway blockbusters into big-screen masterpieces, and above all, they stayed true to their performances on stage. Musical superfans can now join the Marvel crowd, transforming from a subset of nerd culture into the cool kids at the center of the zeitgeist. Comic book movie-centric websites usually focus on news about the latest Spider-Man or Avengers movies, but now they’re flooded with evil explainer. and seemingly niche knowledge about plot details. evilNow, Act II has become a mainstream topic, as in “what happens next?” Snapshot exist Avengers: Infinity War?

We may still be a long way from a shared cinematic universe with Elphaba and Glinda teaming up alexander hamilton or Evan Hansen. But there’s no doubt that the root cause of the Marvel Universe’s initial boom is at play here: nerd culture’s desire to see the nostalgic texts from their childhood faithfully and realistically visualized on the big screen, and the franchises of those texts to the point of waiting. situation.

The strategy paid dividends of huge success, an undeniable triumph for Broadway audiences who worked tirelessly to Opposition to casting non-singers in movie musicals and protesting every seemingly single-minded movie musical trailer masking any hint of the character suddenly breaking into song.from Sweeney Todd arrive into the woods arrive mean girls. this Casting of crooner Angourie Rice In the latter film, when evil Cynthia Erivo is undoubtedly one of our most gifted singers: she effortlessly moves from stage dynamics Her natural screen presence made her the perfect choice to play Elphaba in the movie.

The same goes for Ariana Grande, her Glinda Go to “Popular” Full of life and energy, clearly made for this kind of thing. Likewise, in the work of director Jon M. Chu, evil Found a translator from stage to screen First is the fans. Overall, they’re not afraid to make their movie musical a singing, dancing spectacle. For them and those who believed that Broadway movies could indeed achieve mainstream success, the box office returns seemed like validation.

However, as Glinda sings at the top evilAct Two, “There’s a cost, something’s lost…”

Much like the MCU series entries, evil This movie has a sweet feel to it. It satisfied those cravings for a family entertainment festival highlight, but didn’t make much of a splash outside of movie theaters. For better or worse, Chu delivers what is essentially a cinematic tribute to a musical that exists on stage: it’s high on fan service, imaginatively adapted, and almost destructively obsessed with not shaking things up and doing anything to incur outrage Fans of the show.

While the film is almost as long as the stage show, and still only gets us to the intermission, there’s confusingly little new material on screen: Here’s the first act evilpad to the gills. No songs were cut, no scenes rearranged. Everything about Broadway has been preserved and expanded upon, with little desire to create anything new and a focus on blowing away fan-favorite moments until every possible tear has been squeezed out. Glinda and Elphaba dance together for the first time A certain broom look has the same potential to please the crowd, e.g. Captain America grabs Thor’s hammer exist Avengers: Endgame.

This approach won’t make super fans complain. That said, anyone thinking of an actual film adaptation of this musical might be confused.

Remarkably, this simple reliance on nostalgia has been evil. Although the musical premiered on Broadway five years before Robert Downey Jr. first donned Iron Man, the musical featured Elphaba donning a black cape and peaked hat, or The first performance of holding a broomstick was exactly the kind of “so that is How It Happened” The origin story moments we’re used to seeing in everything Captain America: The First Avenger arrive Cruela these days. The show’s second act is a minefield of prequel settings The Wizard of Ozfrom how the scarecrow is stuffed to why the lion is so timid. (future evil: doing good Commentary title coming soon: “Who did Glinda mean when she said ‘her puppy Dodo’: 5 fun facts about Dorothy’s pets.”)

But this degraded mimeography of fan service is a bit frustrating, especially for avid fans of the film and Broadway musical. I want one evil Movies are particularly suited to the current moment, when a movie’s connections to other movies (or TV shows, comics, or whatever) are more valuable than the movie at hand. But the Chu family Evil: Part One Still feels like a weird copy of a copy, with The Wizard of Oz Almost forgotten, replaced by a crappy guy who had great success on stage. On the screen, when Elphaba grabs the broom, the movie is no longer about “The Birth of the Wicked Witch of the West”, but “The Birth of the Famous Character in the Musical.” It’s like Hello Dolly!dolly levy or GypsyMama Rose has her own Avenger moment.

This attitude toward treating stage performance as sacred has been a badge of honor for the creative team. say proudly Ariana Grande has often balked at changes to source material, saying, “That’s the Bible, you can’t take out that sentence.” But while the trust in the original is admirable, This idea is rigid, not far removed from toxic fandoms imposing ridiculous restrictions on comic book movies or Star Wars entries (e.g., “Luke Skywalker won’t throw his lightsaber off a cliff” or”Batman doesn’t eat cats“).

Not that one evil Stans has revealed that he possesses anything close to being vitriolic to some the last jedi Opponent. But the desire for every line of a musical about how the Wicked Witch of the West acquires a broomstick to be so precious and sacred—that it needed to be turned into two 160-minute movies—isn’t so different from impulse. inspired “Release the Snyder Cut” Bro.

There’s a way to stay spiritually true to a stage show while still creating something fresh for the screen that can exist on its own terms. That’s what Rob Marshall does chicago More than 20 years ago, she ditched six of the show’s songs and introduced a cinematic vision that highlighted Roxie Hart’s desire to become a star, turning the remaining songs into her Fragments of hallucinations in the mind. Since then, several filmmakers have shown similar courage in adapting Broadway: hairspray, Tick, tick… boom!with Steven Spielberg west side story are true screen adaptations, playing fast and loose with the source material without sacrificing any of the musical energy or vitality that made these shows so successful on stage.

In contrast, evil It feels as cold and dispassionate as the brand management—not just in stage-to-screen translation, but visually as well. The film’s cinematography is outdated and homogeneous have been criticized. Indeed, the film has the opportunity to reincorporate Elphaba and Glinda into the iconography of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Ozor at least draws on the film’s signature mastery of color and design. Indeed, we can imagine a livelier, more dynamic environment, with more tangible, tactile creatures – animatronics or puppet flying monkeys, disturbing and unsettling, where production design is more important dark crystal or maze and less Ant-Man and the Wasp: quantum or Thor: Ragnarok.

But perhaps the film’s most frustrating visual feast is its gravity-defying performances.

On stage, it’s a magic trick: A cherry picker, hidden in mist and mountains of black fabric, lifts an actress with a broom aloft into the air. But what we saw was a flight, not to mention one of the most exciting and iconic dramatic twists this century. On screen, it’s real and the magic is gone. Just as the maximalism of the splash pages in a Jack Kirby or John Byrne comic becomes smaller and less grand when translated into reality, expressionistic theatrical images full of wonder and power become the same old CGI We’ve seen sludge a million times.

In this case, safety means success. Success is beneficial to evil This movie, for Chu and Erivo and Grande, and for the fans who mean so much to it. A box office success for such a wonderful musical. evil A net positive for the genre.

But if MTU is like MCU, security also means impermanence. Making movies “for the fans” has become the only way to ensure that the project ultimately stands the test of time. That’s a big reason why Alfonso Cuarón Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Today, the film is more popular than Chris Columbus’ mindless adaptation Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Or why Marc Webb’s arguably more faithful Spider-Man movie still isn’t as culturally influential as Voice Interpretation by Sam Raimi. Note to future MTU filmmakers: love your source material and hire actors who can sing. but Make a movierather than a digital painterly facsimile of the performance as it existed on stage.

imagine a hamilton movie looks like Barry Lyndon but it feels like “This Is America” ​​by Childish Gambino music video. Or Rankin/Besserge’s claymation Urine Cityor a spring awakening style 24 hour party people. Shouldn’t we try to dream up more ambitious adaptations of Broadway material?

at present, evil Well done. It spreads the gospel of a Broadway show to people who have never had the chance to see it on stage and reminds die-hard fans why they fell in love with it all those years ago. But has it created its own unique fan base through its unique take on the material? I suspect that, after the initial hoopla surrounding its release, when the dust settles and we can actually take a look at the man behind the scenes, we’ll see a movie that’s more like the one Elphaba ultimately acknowledges at the end of the film. :limited.