Jon M. Chu’s big-budget, big-screen, big-effects, big-everything adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked is … well … big. Sometimes the enormity of it all—the sets, the costumes, the dazzling arrays of computer-generated wonderworlds and flights of fancy—threaten to overwhelm, swallow, and digest the story’s emotional resonance. But, in the end, Chu manages to wring out of the excess moments that are genuinely touching, poignant, and politically resonant. In the era of Trump 2.0, when raw power masquerading as public good is being put front and center and larger segments of the population are not just accepting but celebrating it, Wicked’s themes of persecution, bigotry, and the various masks behind which power manipulates the powerless and gullible feel particularly pertinent.

Not having seen the musical or read the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel on which it is based, I have to take Wicked at screen value. And it is immediately apparent that Chu, working on a far grander scale than his previous efforts like Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and the Lin-Manual Miranda musical In the Heights (2021), wants to put it all up there and fast. A revisionist prequel to a beloved literary series and cinematic classic, Wicked takes its initial cues from Victor Fleming’s Technicolor marvel The Wizard of Oz (1939), but quickly heads off in its own, decidedly modern direction. As the title suggests, the idea is to tell the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West, in the process reinscribing the very nature of what it means to be “wicked” by stripping it of its affective, pejorative power and dramatizing it as a means by which outsiders are marginalized.

She-Who-Will-Become-the-Wicked-Witch, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), has lived her entire life under the weight of prejudice for her green skin and in the shadow of her younger, wheelchair-bound sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who is the apple of her disapproving father’s eye. As a young woman, she ends up a student at Shiz University, where Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) recognizes her magical abilities and becomes her mentor, much to the consternation of Galinda (Ariana Grande), her vacuous, blonde-haired, mean-girl roommate who is destined to become Glinda, the Good Witch. Much of the film’s plot involves the love-hate relationship between Elphaba and Galinda, who couldn’t be any more different, but ultimately learn to appreciate those differences and become best friends, even when a handsome narcissist-prince named Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) threatens to get between them.

Alongside the interpersonal drama there is a larger plot involving various political machinations that we imagine will eventually lead to Elphaba’s full ostracization, as much of it is aimed at running sentient animals out of positions of authority, particularly those who teach at Shiz. Chief among them is a history professor, a goat named Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), who sees the writing on the wall before he is literally hauled away in a scene of such stark humiliation that it lingers over the rest of the film. Those power moves are a foreshadowing of things to come, as Elphaba and Galinda travel to the fabled Emerald City to meet with the Wonderful Wizard himself (Jeff Goldblum), only to learn that there are darker forces at work and that everything Elphaba thought she was working toward is a ruse. Like so much of today’s politics, the surface is just distraction from a more sinister agenda, one that Elphaba rightly recognizes she must resist (cue “Part Two,” which is due next year).

As Elphaba, Cynthia Erivo, who was nominated for an Oscar a few years ago for her performance as Harriet Tubman in Harriet (2020), balances her character’s fear, resentment, anger, and wonder—all of which coalesce in the film’s show-stopping finale. Erivo is a singer-songwriter who has won a Daytime Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony, and it shows in her musical numbers, whose force and conviction rival all the CGI on screen. As Galinda, pop star Ariana Grande has a few good moments, and she plays her character’s wide-eyed ambition with a sly sense of humor, but her limitations as an actor and singer are clear, especially when on-screen with Erivo. One can see why she was cast, as she adds a heady dose of sparkling star power to a packaged deal already bursting at the seams, but she is definitely a weak link.

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