Winter Magazine 2024-2025 | Page 37

to acting , so take this part of the review with a grain of salt . Other than the smirking , Cynthia Erivo did a job well done on the acting part . I could feel the emotions coming from her acting . Not only Cynthia Erivo , but Ariana Grande did absolutely amazing ! I came into the movie theater knowing that Ariana Grande was playing Glinda , and expected to be reminded of that throughout the entire movie . I thought I would only see Ariana Grande on screen , not Glinda . To my surprise ? Ariana embodied Glinda perfectly . When I saw Glinda in the movie , her acting clearly showed that this was Glinda , not the pop star Ariana Grande . I honestly believed that the movie would exploit Ariana Grande ’ s popularity to make the movie more popular . I ’ m pleasantly surprised that they didn ’ t !
This movie was also very colorful ( or maybe movies today have just become more vague in color ). Either way , each scene felt very magical with the pop of color . In Glinda ’ s song , “ Popular ”, you can very much see the pink light behind her during her solo , and since Glinda ’ s signature color is pink , you can pretty much see the symbolism . The CGI , especially , was used at a minimum , and made it seem more real while being so magical at the same time . You can see here in the Emerald City ( Most of the set was built and didn ’ t use CGI at all ), and it shows that the director really put effort into making this place look like the perfect and beautiful utopia .
Conclusion
Overall ? This movie is a solid 9 / 10 . The vocals and soundtrack are absolutely amazing , definitely did not disappoint . The set design ? Completely stunned me , considering they got all this , from just the set pieces from the original Broadway musical . The acting felt like there was actual effort put into it , like they really were their characters . However , there ’ s a little extra that I ’ d like to discuss . The first time I watched the movie , I had higher than high expectations . Throughout the 2-hour movie , I felt intrigued by the story … but I was definitely a bit disappointed . I can ’ t blame the movie for this , since it is based off of a Broadway musical , which is loosely based off the book , as far as I know . However , I felt like the movie didn ’ t explain the conflict that well . Was it Elphaba struggling to fit in ? Was it Elphaba trying to save the animals ? Since it ended on the climax of the original musical , I felt like it ended with nothing ( other than the satisfaction of Elphaba fighting for what she wanted ). Because it ’ s split up into two , I probably should ’ ve expected to feel like it was incomplete . Either way , Wicked showed us into the glimmering world of Oz that the movie definitely didn ’ t fail to portray .

9 / 10

A wonderful , magical movie !

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