Wicked and The Art of Musicals-Turned-Movies
By JOHANNA HILLMAN ‘28
At 2 hours and 45 minutes, there’s no denying that Wicked is a long movie. Based on the Wizard of Oz-inspired novel Wicked: The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West by Gregory Maguire and the hit Broadway musical Wicked, the musical movie came out this Thanksgiving. Its cast was star-studded, with leads of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande playing Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Galinda (the Good Witch), respectively. It also included names like Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, and Jonathan Bailey.
While Wicked has been critically acclaimed, being nominated for four awards at the Golden Globes and boasting a rating of 88 percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes, a film-review website, some have criticized Wicked for the length of the film. And they’re not wrong. Wicked is 165 minutes long, over half an hour longer than the average film. If you watched Wicked in theaters like I did, you probably noticed its length. You might have also noticed that Wicked actually only covers the first half of the plot of the Broadway musical on which it was based; Wicked: Part Two is not due to be released until Thanksgiving 2025.
However, there is something that distinguishes Wicked from other recently released movie adaptations of Broadway musicals like In The Heights (2021), Matilda (2022), and Mean Girls (2024): not a single song from the original Broadway production was cut.
When songs are cut in movie adaptations of musicals, character development is often weakened, and beloved and creative songs lose their chance to be showcased. One example of this is the song “Everything I Know,” from In The Heights. I’m a little biased because this happens to be my all-time favorite song from this musical. But the song has many objective merits. It’s an amazing moment of personal development for the character it’s sung by, Nina, as she makes a very important decision during the course of the song. The song also serves to expand the role of another important character. Even further still, it’s an amazing vocal moment for the actress who plays Nina. In Wicked, the decision was made not to cut any songs. Due to this, the movie did not sacrifice any character development or plot that existed in the musical.
Furthermore, watching a movie is generally far less expensive than going to see a Broadway musical. By keeping movies as close to the original as possible, viewers are able to experience more closely the magic of the original musical. I’ve seen Wicked live, and it was an amazing experience. However, with ticket prices that can be over $200, not to mention the price of travel, accommodations, and food, seeing a musical live on Broadway just isn’t accessible to many. This is not the case for the movie Wicked, which can be rented on Amazon for $20—a price that will likely decrease as time passes. By keeping all the songs and much dialogue from the original musical, Wicked fans who don’t have the budget to see the show on Broadway can get an experience that more closely captures the magic of a Broadway production, and peoplewho have never heard of Wicked before now get to experience something that cuts as close to the Broadway musical as possible.
An additional point to consider is that once a movie goes to streaming, any individual person can make the choice to watch a movie in parts or skip scenes they feel are unnecessary. If 2 hours and 45 minutes is just too long for you, it’s possible to watch a movie over the span of a few days or simply fast forward through moments that don’t interest you. However, if the makers of a movie decide not to include a beloved song, viewers simply don’t have the ability to see that song—and thus, lose the musical theater magic it created.
So while I, and many others, might have appreciated if Wicked was just a bit shorter, ultimately, the length is worth it if it means that the adaptation is as close to the Broadway musical as possible—and thus allows thousands who might not have had the chance to experience the magic and ingenuity of the musical that Wicked is.
