Despite more than a year of build-up and an exhaustive – some might say exhausting – press tour that rivaled a Marvel movie in budget, there were still many people who did not know that Wicked, now the most successful film adaptation of a Broadway musical of all time, is actually one half of a pair.
To be fair to those who do not follow the entertainment industry, Universal billed the 2hr 40min film, which opens with Ariana Grande’s Glinda the Good Witch promising to tell the “whole story” of her long-lost friend Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), as just Wicked, not by its title card, Wicked: Part One. And Jon M Chu’s first act concludes with a wildly cathartic, very CGI-ed rendition of Defying Gravity – the rare musical tune to transcend theater-kid fandom and probably the one thing non-Wicked fans would know about the show.
