'Wicked' Has Dollar Signs In Its Eyes (Pay No Attention To The Movie Behind The Curtain)
#298: "Wicked," "Red One," "Meet Me Next Christmas," "Sweet Smell of Success," "Say Nothing," "Dune: Prophecy"
Edition 298:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Wicked tries to be Barbie 2.0, but I ain’t buyin it. Then we’ll talk new Christmas movies (good and bad), a black-and-white dandy, and two splashy new prestige TV shows. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Cameron Diaz returns to movies for the first time in 10 years.
Wicked
My primary complaint with Marvel movies (I know I know, here we go again) has always been that their primary motivation for existing is to make money. If they are good, well, that’s a bonus. But primarily they are movie-shaped pieces of franchise management filling a content hole on a calendar set eight years in the past, assuring shareholders of consistent returns.
It’s an important framing for any discussion of Wicked. As badly as this movie wants to be Barbie 2.0 — doing a million product tie-ins as part of an all-out marketing blitz, right down to a release date matched with Gladiator II in the hopes of sparking a Barbenheimer effect — it’s really much closer to Spider-Man: No Way Home. (I genuinely, honestly, believe that the primary motivation for Barbie was to make a good movie and that it was allowed to exist as pirate ship inside the studio system because of its commercial potential.)
Case in point: stop for a second and try to think of a reason why a three-hour stage musical would be adapted into two separate movies that will each last 2hr45min, other than money?
More very rarely means better, proven by everything from the countless TV series that stretch a movie’s worth of ideas into 10 hour-long episodes, to the last 10 years of Martin Scorcese’s career. But more always means more money. And money is a powerful motivator. Believe me, if the Broadway theaters could lock everyone out of the Wicked stage show at the intermission and make them buy a second ticket to get back in for the second act, they would.
Admittedly, and regrettably, I haven’t seen Wicked live (I want to!). It’s one of the highest-grossing Broadway shows ever, and after all the marketing I’m sure you know by now that this is something like a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch of the West is recast as a kind of feminist icon rather than the most obvious bad guy in movie history.
I can’t compare what may have been added to fill all that additional time. The big song and dance numbers are definitely blown out, and it’s no surprise that they are the strongest part of the movie. We’re talking giant 1960s MGM style musical numbers with dozens of extras and soaring melodies, once again laying waste to the dumb circulating theory that audiences categorically reject musicals.
That’s the main reason why you’d want to cast Cynthia Erivo as the green-skinned, magically gifted Elphaba, packing an absolute bazooka of a singing voice and a talent for playing one very specific kind of role (she is the shy, conscientious one in everything). Ariana Grande, likewise, brings a strong music background and not a lot of subtlety to her portrayal of sparkly Galinda.
This is not the kind of movie one comes to expecting super deep or complex characters or story, so I know this will probably shock you, but Elphaba gets picked on at magician college because she has green skin. Galinda is popular because…she wears pink? And these things wouldn’t necessarily feel like obstacles if the movie wasn’t trying to double its runtime with more scenes about the school’s social dynamics that feel decidedly like an early 2000s high school (what do you know, the stage show debuted in 2003).
The movie certainly has time to hit all the stations of the IP cross. If you’ve ever watched The Wizard of Oz and wondered how that darned yellow brick road became yellow (what’s that? you haven’t?!) this movie will explain it to you with all the reverence it deserves (none). You may think that the Wicked Witch was green and wore a witch’s hat and a cape and rode around on a broom because it’s the most stereotypical thing an evil witch could do (it was), now each of those features can get a back story.
Oh, and the obligatory wink wink back to the original cast that literally every blockbuster is doing these days? Yep, the movie pauses five minutes for OG Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth to have a musical number. Don’t worry ladies, take your time we’ve got plenty of it!
The thing about all that fan service is that people gobble it up like candy. For some of you, when I mentioned Spider-Man earlier, you said wait, I loved Spider-Man 3! And with the ~state of the world~ it’s true that people are looking for a big, dumb source for entertainment. Maybe they are 13 years old, maybe they wish they could be 13 years old again.
That’s the strategy anyway. Wicked is expected to be a big hit for Universal. The movie is tracking for a big $100-130 million opening weekend domestically.
I admit constantly that I may be the one out of step here. I’ve always been allergic to director John M. Chu’s visual style (Now You See Me 2, Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights), which is aggressively artificial and here almost entirely digitally painted. The dialogue is charming enough (in a very jazz hands sort of way) and it’s clear that everyone involved is having a ton of fun, which is clearly contagious to the viewer.
So don’t let me be the curmudgeon here. It was impossible for me to shed my cynicism, but if you go see this movie and love it, please reply to the email and let me know I’m an idiot.
Something New
Red One (Theaters): A couple of times a year, my newsletter subs seem to enjoy me absolutely ripping a movie to shreds, which is exactly what the assignment would’ve been here, but I spared myself the misery. This movie, in which (try not to laugh) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as the North Pole’s head of security tracking down a kidnapped Santa Claus (jacked J.K. Simmons) with the help of a bounty hunter (Chris Evans), represents everything I hate about modern blockbusters. You may have seen the scene where he’s fighting CGI snowmen on a beach??
The funniest and most telling thing about this movie is that Amazon set the embargo for reviews of this movie to lift at midnight ET on election night. Think about that for a second. They were preemptively hoping, PRAYING, that everyone was too distracted to take a peak at what people would say about this movie. And on top of that, the movie is bombing at the box office!
The Rock is nothing if not savvy (I will be reporting out how much he made from this movie for Forbes, but I promise it’s $50M+), and if this movie is the turning point on public sentiment about his bankability as a movie star, he’s one step ahead with the GQ cover story released this same week, in which he’s doing image rehab by playing up his upcoming prestige movie with Benny Safdie. (In the story, he mentions that he picks release dates before he even has a script for his movies, which I think says all you need to know).
Bottom line, do yourself a favor and skip this one in theaters!
Meet Me Next Christmas (Netflix): The reputation of Christmas movies has been significantly cheapened in recent years by Hallmark and Netflix flooding the zone with formulaic B-movies. I’m not even hating when I say that! A ton of people watch and love these movies because they know exactly what they’re signing up for. It’s not that they’re BAD (most are), it’s that they’re all the same.
Meet Me Next Christmas is no bastion of ambitious creativity in this cookie-cutter landscape, but it’s definitely the tastiest cookie of the season. That could be thanks to a little extra sugar…err I mean budget, by putting the a cappella band Pentatonix at the center of the story and portraying their Christmas Eve show as some can’t-miss event. As with all of these, the whole movie is right there in the premise — a couple meets-cute in an airport and agree to meet the next Christmas Eve at the Pentatonix show, but because it’s completely sold out (reminder it’s SUCH a hot ticket, a must-have!), the woman has to hire a hunky concierge to get her in. Uh oh. Sparks fly.
Romantic movies live and die on the chemistry of their leads, and there is palpable electricity between Christina Milian and Devale Ellis, who adventure across New York City (rom-coms shouldn’t be set anywhere else) with enough cute little encounters to make any cold-hearted viewer fall in love with the both of them. It’s got funny best friend characters, musical numbers and that classic running-into-each-other’s-arms finish. I’m not above these things when they’re done right!
Something Old
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Amazon Prime): Given my disdain in this newsletter (and real life) for the PR profession, it was only a matter of time before I discovered this movie, about a “press agent” as they were called back then, who lies and schemes and manipulates (standard PR fare) in order to get into the good graces of an all-powerful gossip columnist. There are many things dated about the movie, including its treatment of women as pawns on the chessboard and the idea that journalists would hold so much influence in society, but its razor sharp dialogue and clever plotting are better than anything put out today.
Burt Lancaster, a Golden Age movie star if there ever was one, turns in an awesome performance as the imposing, god-like columnist whose own bullying and scheming matches every bit the evil of the press agent played by the great Tony Curtis. Their rat-a-tat banter keeps the movie buzzing along, setting traps for the viewer as we’re left guessing who is double crossing whom at any given moment.
I haven’t been diligent on knocking off the must-see black-and-white movies lately, and if you’re in the same boat, here’s a great place to (re)start.
Something To Stream
Say Nothing (Hulu): I’ve watched less television this year than in the past several, so I’m not sure I’m qualified to be making definitive statements like this, but this limited series about The Troubles in Northern Ireland has to be among the very best of 2024 (up there with Shogun, Industry, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Tokyo Vice and Ripley for me). You’d think this adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s nonfiction book about the never-ending war between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast would be heady, like homework, but it’s an equally propulsive and captivating tale full of bank robberies, shootouts and espionage.
My only advice would be to watch the first two episodes together like a movie, because the first episode is a table-setter for a genuinely emotional (and intense) second episode that endears you to the characters and hooks you on wanting to binge the rest of the season.
Dune: Prophecy (Max): The Dune movies are a triumph on just about every level. But did anyone stop to think that maybe the reason they are so good might have to do with the brilliant filmmaking — three years of work from a master director with a $200 million budget, plus the appearance of like every hot, charismatic actor in Hollywood — and not an unquenchable love of the lore? Never once did I ask while watching Dune 2, “hmmm, this is cool but I wonder what these people were up to 10,000 years ago?”
It turns out…they’re doing the exact same thing, still obsessed with securing bloodlines and still fighting over spice on Arrakis! If you’re someone who liked “House of the Dragon,” which is like a discount scratching of the “Game of Thrones” itch, then maybe you’ll like this, which is discount of the discount of the discount version of Dune (except, according to reporting, still quite an expensive show).
Trailer Watch: Back In Action
Cameron Diaz has not appeared in a movie in 10 years. 10 years!! In case you were wondering if Netflix still throws around that “give them an offer they can’t refuse” money. On the scale of Jamie Foxx Netflix shlocky genre movies, this one looks way closer to Day Shift than They Cloned Tyrone (for Diaz, this is Knight and Day 2.0). It looks like a perfect entry in the new genre Netflix has created — “vaguely entertaining slop for you to half-watch while you scroll on your phone.”