I have regrets

There was simply no way I was going to like Wicked as much on the second viewing.

I watched it again last night, realizing only yesterday that the release date for Wicked: For Good was coming up already this week. If I were going to watch the first one, my #2 movie of 2024, as preparation for the concluding half of the story, Saturday night was the last weekend night I'd be able to do that, assuming I'm going to try to get on the sequel early in its release in order to review it. And you need a weekend night for a movie like this with its 160-minute running time.

I knew almost from the moment I started watching that Wicked was not going to do it for me the way it did it for me on the first viewing.

And I don't think it's just a year's worth of realizing what everyone else thinks of Wicked, of inevitable Wicked backlash, of other cinephiles you know and love -- and more to the point, respect -- thinking your aesthetic judgment is compromised if you have made this movie essentially your vice president of 2024 movies. That's right, if The Substance ever died, Wicked would become president of my 2024 movies. (Because I saw The Substance first, fortunately, Wicked was never in a position where it was actually ranked #1 in my rankings in progress.)

No, I think it's just that my first Wicked viewing occurred under circumstances that could never be duplicated, even if they were unremarkable circumstances in most respects.

When I saw the movie around this same time last year, it was as a weekend matinee, possibly even a pre-11 a.m. start time. I've been eyeballing movies with early start times like this this year as well. It's a way for me to get in a few extra screenings in the theater, especially since we're getting to the time when I'll have a harder time seeing these on video before my mid-January ranking deadline. 

Wicked I viewed as sort of an obligation. I put on my "ReelGood is a paper of record" hat and went to see it so we could get a review up. (If you don't know what that means, a "paper of record" is how journalists describe a newspaper that wants to in some way include all the news that's out there. If it happened, you'll find it somewhere in the pages of the newspaper.)

I was not expecting to hate Wicked, of course, but I had no attachment to the source material, never having seen it or really knowing much about it other than its obvious placement within the Wizard of Oz universe. I was expecting to find it middling with a possible high-end outcome of being sort of good. Crucially, I saw it early enough that I had not even heard what others thought, so I was able to go in with these low expectations. 

Then of course I was floored by it, and I cried during the scene at the dance. 

Tears go along way toward clouding my judgment about a movie. You may remember I have expressed some similar regrets at times about The Whale, which found me in a similar vulnerable spot emotionally (at a similar time of the day, wondering if that's related), and that elevated it all the way to my #1 of 2022. Tears are the purest expression we have that whatever sparks them is having a profound impact on us, and when that's a piece of art, it means there is something fundamentally good, or at least effective, about that art.

I never got to an equivalent place in the rest of Wicked as I did with that scene at the dance, but I was already a goner for this movie at that point. I had already computed the five stars in my head.

After last night's viewing, I'm thinking "Four? Three and a half?"

Because I've lived with my opinion of Wicked for a year and enshrined it in permanence when I published my rankings, I cannot comprehend nor abide such a drop in my feelings toward it. But let me try to delve into it:

1) This time I came in on guard. I had sort of convinced myself that my affection for Wicked gave me something in common not with the cinephiles I respect, but with a less discriminating form of moviegoer. I'm supposed to be above the more conventional movie tactics that speak to those sorts of moviegoers. And though I do know plenty of "respected critics" who felt strongly about the movie, it's the snobs' opinions we always remember, that eat away at some inner insecurity in us. 

2) I was a lot more distracted by the many digital effects in the film. Maybe that's just a year more in our collective shunning of digital effects weighing on me there. But I did really notice how much of this movie is not really there.

3) I started watching it at 10:30, after a handful of drinks. (Drinks also being a factor in my Friday night viewing of Friendship, as I wrote about yesterday. Okay, maybe drinks before movies is not a good idea.)

I think the last factor is the one that prevents me from having quite so much despair about liking Wicked so much less.

Whereas I suspected I might have missed some moments in Friendship, I know I missed some of Wicked's 160 minutes due to short bouts of sleep. It couldn't have been a lot, becaue I still finished around 2 after naps of indeterminate lengths in which I paused the film. But I definitely missed some. I usually pause a movie when I fall asleep, but that's only if I see it happen and I don't try to fight it. When I try to fight it, sometimes I lose.

I also was pretty sure it wouldn't matter if I slept during some of Wicked. I'd already seen it. This was basically just a refresher to put me in a Wicked: For Good mindset. 

So I don't think it really made a difference that I missed some of it. I think I just liked it less.

Ariana Grande's performance had been one of my favorite parts of my first viewing. It was here too, but I didn't remember as many moments where I felt so charmed and disarmed by a particular choice. There was definitely an element of surprise in that the first time, and obviously you don't get surprised by things on a second viewing.

My second Wicked experience reminds me even more of an underlying reality of ranking movies: You can't possibly know which will endure in your hearts. You can make educated guesses, but really, you are describing a moment in time, an exact set of circumstances that existed in both you, as the viewer, and the cinematic landscape at large. I saw Wicked a couple weeks after Trump was reelected. Did that have something to do with it, particuarly in the case of a Black actress playing an outcast in the person of Cynthia Erivo? Sure it could have. I may have even consciously acknowledged that to myself at the time. Now I'm just a year more dead inside due to the Trump presidency in progress, more resigned to cynicism with my emotions less on the surface.

The reason I'm writing this post is, well, because I post most days and I am usually writing about one of my most recent experiences as a movie lover. But there may be an extra boost of urgency here, because I think I do want you, my readers, to know that although I think Wicked is a very good film, I no longer feel the five-star enthusiasm that I felt this time last year.

Maybe now I can adopt a position that splits the difference between what the most serious cinephiles in my orbit, and what the lovers of big spectacle and musical theater in my orbit, think of this movie. 

Which franchises do we actually need?

I was out with two of the critics who write for my site last, who each write separately as well as jointly with each other, as what has historically been called "The ReelGood Christmas Party." This is actually a thing that has only happened about four of the 11 years I have been associated with the site, five at the very most, and at some point I think it happened another time of the year entirely, but was still called that. We used to record a podcast and then we would go out for many libations, but my new house is by a main road and not advantageous from a sound perspective, plus I'd have to remind myself how to work the recording technology. 

To give you some idea of the scarcity of these parties, this was our first since 2020. Yes, we did have one during the pandemic, when that might have been hard, though that summer (it's summer in Australia) we were essentially COVID-free for a blissful couple of months. And then we have not had one since, when it would have been easier. In fact, we almost cancelled this one when one of the two guys couldn't make the original date, which was next Friday. Instead of delaying it until an unspecified time early in 2025 (which would likely mean it would never happen), we pushed it forward a week and had it last night. I had the guys over for drinks and BBQ in my back yard (even though it was lightly raining) and then we went out for drinks afterward. 

I'm telling you all this because of course we talked about movies almost non-stop. In fact, it was one of those conversations where when you get to the end of it, you think of all things you might have discussed that just never came up. Always better that way than running out of things to say halfway through the evening.

And as inevitably happens, we talked about franchise fatigue, about how many intellectual properties had completely run their course, but Hollywood was too risk averse to abandon them in favor of new ideas. And believe me, I get that. New ideas often fail spectacularly, and Hollywood is not a business that can afford to fail with any regularity.

And then this question occurred to me:

"Well, we have to have some franchises. Which are the ones we actually need?"

No one had a satisfying answer to this question.

And if you are reading this piece in the hopes that I have come up with the answers in the 14 hours since this conversation occurred, many of which have been spent sleeping and severely hungover, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

One of the guys ventured that some of the horror franchises had continued to sustain interest, a theory I did not openly disagree with, though I do sort of disagree with it. But I countered that horror franchises were always going to be a different story because although they appealed to a passionate subsection of the moviegoing populace that's eager and willing to spend their money, they were never going to rake in $300 or $400 million at the box office. For that you need something that can appeal to everyone in the family.

And no one could think of an example.

We didn't linger on the topic very long. In movie conversations, there's always another fruitful tangent to be followed. 

But I've lingered on it in my mind, a bit, at least enough to write this post. I still don't really have answers, but I have a few ideas. 

What you're really looking for, here, is an intellectual property that's new enough to not have exhausted us through a half-dozen or more cinematic incarnations, but reliable enough to be an easy green light for a studio. Dune was one idea I had. We're not sick of Dune yet, and I think this version of the franchise with these characters could sustain at least two more features before we reach that point. But Dune is also a bit of an anomaly, a fundamentally sort of inaccessible text that was matched up with a director who could really enthrall us. Dune is not your everyday reliable IP.

Using recency bias, I suggested Wicked. But immediately kind of ate my own words. There will only be one more Wicked, though if it's as big of a hit as this one, I could see spinoffs like Scarecrow: From the World of Wicked. Still, in trying to produce answers to this question, we're not talking about something that is fresh and new (even if its origins go back some 30 years to the publication of the novel), we're talking about something we already knew was viable a month ago. Then again, I guess Wizard of Oz is really the franchise here, so that's been going on a lot longer. 

I have no idea if they're making a Barbie sequel -- I'd be surprised if someone wouldn't want to do it, even if that person is not Greta Gerwig. But a single sequel is almost guaranteed to be the most more we could take of the concept without really turning on it, and it's far more likely to be a creative failure than a success.

If you try to look for guidance from the biggest franchise in movie history -- Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Jurassic Park, etc. -- it's really hard to find one that has been relatively judicious in its engagement with the cinematic landscape, enough not to wear us out by the year 2024. It doesn't mean we, especially I as a critic and a completist, won't see these movies. It just means we won't be enthusiastic about the prospect, and will grouse about them at film website Christmas parties when given the chance.

There's one franchise, though, that I specifically excluded from the list in the previous paragraph. Because we were also talking about this as a continuation of a discussion in a message thread earlier in the week, I proposed that I would really look forward to another Star Wars movie. It's been five years now, and as I sit here, I don't actually know if any of the proposed plans for future trilogies is actually going forward at this point. I know the Patty Jenkins movie was scrapped, and I think the various creative teams who had been assigned an idea -- like the Game of Thrones guys -- are also in some sort of turnaround. I suspect we'll get something before 2030, but I don't know what it will be.

And when I realized that made me sad, it also made me realize that I do, in fact, have an answer to this. We need Star Wars.

These guys are younger than I am -- one 12 years younger, one 17 -- so I had the opportunity to regale them (not for the first time) with the story about how I had seen the original Star Wars in the theater on its initial release. But instead of that just being another rehashed story, not unlike the franchises themselves -- and we had a talk about rehashed personal stories too last night, though not related to this -- it was an opportunity for me to lay the groundwork for why I will give Star Wars an unlimited number of additional chances to wow me. Any time I see a new character activating a lightsaber in a setting I've never seen before, it will stir the excitement of that child who saw the first lightsaber ever extended. 

And it's not the same to see it in a TV show. I think Disney ultimately knows this. In fact, I have only watched one episode total from the most recent two Star Wars series.

We all know that the movies are where franchises truly live, truly exceed the limitations of the small screen to exist in all their glory and grandeur.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but I need Star Wars to prop up my personal cinematic landscape.  

OMG (Oh my Grande)

There is a familiar process I go through in terms of accepting "frivolous" pop stars as people I can consider useful and extend my grudging respect. 

First comes the awareness. At first awareness, I am usually wary. Showing me as the old man that I am becoming -- though I'd say I've been doing this even since someone like Britney Spears came on the scene -- I immediately write them off as proof of the poor taste of young people. I tend to consider them as staking a claim to some percentage of our collective attention that they do not deserve, through spectacle that covers up poor craft -- even when this does not accurately describe their public persona. I brand these people as flashes in the pan, and think less of anyone who cannot see that.

Then I hear a song that I like a little bit. There's almost always at least one song by every pop artist that I like a little bit, even if I don't love their total output. The ice starts to thaw.

Then they've been on the scene for five years, and I decide they are not flashes in the pan, but potentially artists with genuine staying power. They are also five years older, so they may seem more mature to me, less reliant on showy displays designed to call attention to themselves.

After ten years, they are cultural mainstays who have done at least a couple things to ingratiate me to them, and I accept them. 

This has happened with people like Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez. (I haven't gotten there yet with Miley Cyrus, perhaps because I've found her to become more ridiculous as she's gotten older.) Usually their appearance in a movie or TV show helps get me over the hump, because now I am allowed to think of them as a "serious person."

Ariana Grande has been around long enough for her to have graduated through those steps, but she has not. My initial distrust of her validity stuck with me. Perhaps part of that problem is that I never found that bit of her music that broke through, possibly because I could not, as I sit here today, tell you a song I know for sure that she sings. Chances are she has made music that I like, but since I don't know that it belongs to her, it has not helped her join the ranks of those I respect. Then there's still the stain of her relationship with Mac Miller, that rapper who died of a drug overdose, since I understand their relationship was tumultuous. I don't know much about that just as I don't know what songs she sings, but it left a negative impression on me. 

Enter Wicked.

There are countless breathtaking adjectives I could use to describe Wicked, which I absolutely loved. But rarely does my breath escape me more -- in only 48 hours since I've seen it -- than when talking about how good Ariana Grande is in this movie. 

To establish a baseline, I had no previous experience with Wicked as a cultural institution. I knew what it was about and some of the ways it was about it, plus I am familiar with its big number "Defying Gravity." But the rest of the songs, and the individual plot moments on the path to where the story is obviously going, were unknown to me.

So I did not have Kristin Chenowith or Idina Menzel (Adelle Dazeem) to compare Grande or Cynthia Erivo to when I watched Wicked. (Both original Broadway stars make cameos in the movie.) Erivo is also great, but I've chosen to focus on Grande in this post because Erivo was first introduced to me as an actor (in Bad Times at the El Royale), so she never had to go through any part of my personal vetting process for pop stars. 

Therefore, Grande's portrayal of Glinda the Good/Galinda was, as far as I was concerned, wholly her creation, and what a creation it is.

There are certainly sympathetic elements of Grande's performance, especially as the movie goes on, but the thing that struck me was how perfectly she walks the line between a self-centered brat who fails to notice how she's projecting to other people -- possibly because they lap it up -- and a person capable of actually being good, rather than just "performing goodness." And for most of the movie, even after she has achieved some sort of redemption, she's still a frivolous rich girl batting her hair and eyelashes.

But this frivolity -- unlike the frivolity I initially loathe in a pop star who's newly introduced to me -- is absolutely chef's kiss.

A friend has told me Grande was a drama kid from way back, but this does not show in how she's spent her career so far. Opting for the undoubtedly greater financial rewards of music, she has become a pop megastar. In fact, if you go through her credits on IMDB, 90% of them are her own music videos. The only time I believe I have seen her on screen was when she played a pop star, if memory serves, in Don't Look Up, which I liked, but still found her contribution at least mildly annoying.

If she has chosen now to unleash herself on the rest of us who aren't teenagers or weren't when she made her debut, then it is to our great benefit. 

In my review of Wicked, which you can read here, I likened her to Lucille Ball. Am I getting carried away with myself? Possibly. But I just couldn't think of a better comparison for her combination of physical comedy, excellent line deliveries and just overall ability to make us laugh.

It's there in every look she gives, ever flipping of her hair -- a character trademark -- and every recomputation of her circumstances, which she uses her whole body to produce. She pulls off being absolutely vapid while also not making us hate her. They could have chosen to make her a Regina George, but she isn't that, and the story is all the better for it. She is literally learning empathy as she goes, having never previously in her life been confronted with a situation that actually called for it, and it was one moment where she displays her newfound skill this that actually made me tear up. Even within that context, though, she's still a self-centered brat, and that's a smart choice.

Words are escaping me to properly explain why Grande is so good here. She just executes every moment perfectly, which is a credit also to her director, Jon M. Chu.

And because I'm not doing such a good job saying what I want to say, I invite you instead to just go see Wicked, if you haven't already. Small spoiler alert: We'll have more of her Glinda/Galinda to look forward to with the release of Wicked: Part 2.

And so Ariana Grande has belatedly arrived to my respect, with a bullet. May she continue to flourish, though it's hard to know if she'll have regular opportunities for more roles like this, or if she'll even want/need them.

After all, pop music pays very well.