#thank you for letting me ramble hdfkjgh ❤

[dollopheadsandclotpoles]

Aight let's hear the thoughts on the difference between wicked the film and play lol 🙈 I saw the tags and I'm intrigued

Ok so disclaimer, it has been a long time since I watched the play or any of the bootlegs so I might be forgetting some details, but I did used to watch the bootlegs all the time and saw the play when I was in the US, and Wicked was even my foray into writing fanfiction so it's always had a very special place in my heart.

I will say to start that I really loved the movie and thought it was incredibly fun. I love that they adapted it in a way that embraced the spectacle potential of the stage play, and while there are obviously going to be some things I prefer from the stage play (as a long time fan of it), I still think it was an incredibly well done adaptation.

The one biggest difference though, I felt, was in the portrayal of Elphaba. Initially I couldn't really put my finger on what felt off about it aside from the fact that they had her crying a lot more than I remember. But after discussing the movie with some friends who had never seen the play, one girl said that she felt Elphaba's turn-around into risking it all for the Animals felt too sudden. That was kinda when it struck me — she wasn't as angry as she was in the original.

In the play, Elphaba is incredibly angry by the injustice of being treated like she's an outsider just for the way she looks, and when she sees the Animals being treated the same way, she feels an immediate kinship with them. The Elphaba of the play is angry yet resigned (her 'I'm Not That Girl' is more of a resigned 'this was bound to happen' vs. the sad realisation moment the movie made it out to be). She's sarcastic, she's loud. She first greets Fiyero by shouting at him and whacking him on the head with a book. She is hurt and sad also (of course) but it is buried so deep that it is only Glinda that actually sees it, making the Ozdust dance moment the impactful moment that it is.

I then came across a discussion on Reddit where someone was saying a similar thing — that Elphaba wasn't as angry as she was in the play. But someone else responded with the fact that 'it would have been hard to watch a 3 hour movie of someone being so angry.' Another commenter bemoaned the fact that they mellowed both the main characters down because they didn't want 'two unlikeable female leads.' And that kinda got me thinking about how they likely 'softened' her to make her more 'likeable' and that kinda felt off to me... because that kinda goes against the point? The female rage is a point of the story that struck a chord with me. It is a story that allows it's lead to be angry, JUSTIFIES it. There are angry men who have led countless movies and shows and who are celebrated and fawned over and embraced, but having an angry young woman in a lead role is risky? I never found Elphaba unlikeable and clearly neither did most of the other people who saw the play (would it be the success it was if they did?) but now that it's reaching a wider audience were they afraid making her too 'angry' would make fewer people root for her? I do think classifying Elphaba as an 'angry' character is a disservice to the nuanced nature of the character, but I did feel like the movie highlighted the sad/hurt aspects of her character more than they did the side that is angry at injustice, but still strangely idealistic and resigned, still believing till the very end that there is an easy solution and the Wizard can just 'fix' everything that's wrong. And so while I do love the adaptation, I feel a bit cheated that they gave us a version of Elphaba with some of her more sharpened edges sanded off, so to speak. I also think the reason her 'turn around' felt too abrupt was because we don't get to see her anger. If you don't see how angry she feels at the world, you don't understand how close to the surface this outburst was, just waiting to bubble out of her. You don't get to see why it was so easy to paint her as a 'Wicked Witch' for a moment of passion when she's been treated like crap her whole life and had to hide behind his anger in order to survive. You don't truly understand why she was willing to risk it all for the Animals because you don't understand how this is her moment of finally deciding to let her rage free and USE it to make the stand she's been wanting to make her whole life.

I still feel it was a brilliant adaptation, I just felt like I missed that aspect of it a lot and it made her character feel a little less nuanced to me. But I could be forgetting certain details, or remembering wrong, or just be plain off — happy to listen to opposing viewpoints.