Wicked (2024)

In a year of movies taking established intellectual property dependance to a whole new level, we got a movie based on a 21-year-old musical, itself based on a 29-year-old book, itself inspired by a now 125-year-old book that had already produced countless adaptations including a ground-breaking, 85-year-old movie.

And to make matters even more interesting as far a cinema trends go it was yet another “Part 1” movie.

As one would expect, the visuals, art design, and modern film techniques are all top-notch. The two leads are incredible talents, and the song set pieces were wonderful. That said, the story—by today’s standards—felt like a cliché high school rivalry story. The overarching theme of the movie—bad people are merely misunderstood, and it is actually the system itself that is evil and out to get you—while very popular today, is a slightly concerning trend.

Yes. The “other” is automatically and unfairly demonized in our (and all human) culture. That said, that does not automatically make the “other” merely a misunderstood good. Having not seen the musical, I wonder how the second part is going to deal with the evil side of the Wicked Witch of the West. In the source material, she is truly evil. Child murderers are evil.

And, true, the system can have flaws and even be evil. Societies like Western Civilization are built on systems designed to identify flaws and evil when they emerge, and root them out. It is not a perfect system, but still better than barbaric antiquity that embraced those flaws and evil in a “the strong rule the weak” mentality. Con-men like the Wizard do need to be pointed out and not allowed to con people. However, they are not worse than child murderers, even if you want to argue they aren’t better.

I wonder how this film will impact kids viewing of the original “Wizard of Oz.” That is, after all a kid’s movie despite all the hyperventilating over how traumatic it is. All the great children literature addresses the evil and scary parts of the world. The lessons learned are not as helpful if they gloss over how dangerous the world can be.