‘Wicked’ and other travellers on the yellow brick road

During ‘Defying Gravity’ a gaggle of young women near me broke into a not-particularly-synchronized version of Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel’s song from the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked. I didn’t mind because the visuals onscreen were so uninspired—the original number’s remarkable stagecraft (a dozen extras holding Elphaba aloft atop a platform, the train of her flowing dress covering up the modus operandi) reduced to a VFX-heavy, superhero-style ‘climactic fight’. Generally speaking, this is the problem with Wicked: it’s very good when Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are mostly left to their own devices, singing their hearts out. But whenever a scene calls for visual daring, unconventional staging and actual lighting, Chu opts for two-dimensional ‘music video direction’ instead.

Also read: Hanif Kureishi’s ‘Shattered’: A difficult patient’s notes on recovery

Down the years there has been a steady stream of Oz adaptations across film, TV, radio, comics and so on. In part, this is because of the universality of the basic storyline—a young girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. A classic ‘quest narrative’ ensues wherein she finds unlikely allies (the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion) and a formidable nemesis (the Wicked Witch of the West) who she has to defeat before she can dream of going home. In Baum’s original novel, of course, the whole thing is revealed to be Dorothy’s dream; ‘dream logic’ is therefore key to understanding the dynamics of Oz. 

Among other things, Wicked proved that the gold standard remains Victor Fleming’s 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland as Dorothy and Frank Morgan as the titular Wizard. The film’s songs, especially the Oscar-winning ‘Over the Rainbow’ have become cultural staples in America and between 1958 and 1999, the film was broadcast annually on free-to-air networks. The then-teenaged Garland became an international sensation and was given a ‘Juvenile Oscar’ for her memorable performance. 

Wicked isn’t the first creatively misfiring Oz adaptation (commercially, though, the film is a huge success, taking in $200 million globally). In 1978, Sidney Lumet directed The Wiz, a musical adaptation with an all-African-American cast, including singing superstars Diana Ross and Michael Jackson as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, respectively. The film’s central conceit was audacious and fun for about twenty minutes. But the poor screenplay basically killed any chances the film had, which is a pity because a young Jackson brought an infectious sense of nervous energy to the Scarecrow. Joel Schumacher, who wrote the much-panned screenplay, would later tank the Batman franchise in the 90s with Batman and Robin (1997), featuring George Clooney in the infamous “nipple suit" bat-gear. 

Genre-movie maestro Sam Raimi brought his keen visual sense and raw kinetic energy to Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) but it wasn’t nearly enough. Since the 80s Raimi has rejuvenated many genres: horror (the Evil Dead films), superhero (the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films), Westerns (The Quick and the Dead), noir (A Simple Plan). And yet, Raimi couldn’t quite coax a serviceable performance from his male lead, James Franco who played a younger version of the Wizard of Oz. Somehow, the role brought out the worst aspects of Franco the performer — smarminess, poor diction, a syllable-gobbling delivery style. Most notably, a kind of semi-permanent stoner vibe, as though Franco hadn’t quite mentally checked out of the Seth Rogen slacker movies (This is the End, Pineapple Express) he had been shooting in the preceding years.      

The handprints of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are clearly visible across several generations of Hollywood films across genres. Think of Labyrinth (1986) by Jim Henson, the puppeteer, animator and creator of the Muppets. This is the story of 16-year-old Sarah (Jennifer Connolly) who literally wishes her younger brother away to the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowie). Sarah then embarks on a journey to the titular maze-like super-powered world, in order to confront Jareth and rescue her brother. The film wasn’t especially well-received in its time but has since undergone a critical re-evaluation and is now considered a cult classic. 

Henson, interestingly, was supposed to be the puppeteer ‘controlling’ the Yoda-doll in the Star Wars movies, but he suggested Frank Oz for the role instead. The original Star Wars trilogy is itself heavily inspired by Oz—think of R2D2, very much a ‘pet droid’ a la Toto, C3PO a comic-relief cowardly character, a kind-of Cowardly Lion in a Tin Man suit. The 2022 horror film Pearl had a number of Oz references in the story—the titular character hankers for a Hollywood career, the film industry being a stand-in for the magical land of Oz. Pearl is a farm girl like Dorothy and of course, there’s the disturbing scene where she dances and then masturbates with a scarecrow in a cornfield. 

The filmmaker whose career shows the clearest influence of this story, however, is David Lynch, by any standards one of the most interesting directors alive. The 2022 documentary Oz/Lynch takes a deep dive into the parallels therein—its intriguing premise is that Lynch’s entire career, basically, has been one long trip through Oz metaphors and imagery. This is clearest in ‘quest narrative’ films like Wild at Heart (1991), which even had lines directly from Baum’s novel. It’s less obvious in stuff like Twin Peaks, until you start to notice little touches like the preponderance of curtains (the Wizard of Oz hides behind a curtain in Baum’s novel), or the decidedly Freudian sense of eroticism shared by both Oz and Lynch. 

I think I would have enjoyed Wicked much more if it had been more willing to embrace the darker, less apparent aspects of the Oz story, like Lynch and others have done in the past. However, Chu is content to play it safe, with twee choreography and desaturated colours. As a result, we never really leave Kansas, so to speak, and that’s an awful shame.  

Also read: IPL: 10 auction strategies used by franchises to get the players they wanted