2024, books, Fantasy, Movies, Music, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Wicked. Really?

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I’ve said before that I’d love to have been in the room when someone first proposed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  My guess is that everybody in the room dismissed the idea; the one who didn’t laughed all the way to the bank.

It’s fascinating to me how certain decisions get made and the decisions that Hollywood makes are the most mysterious.  You all know that I often get worked up by the changes that Hollywood makes to good books.  Shining Through by Susan Isaacs, Dune by Frank Herbert, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  And I’m sure I’ve ranted before about The Hunchback of Notre Dame made into a Disney musical for kids.  Truly that meeting would have been legend.  “Let’s take a long, bleak historical novel in which every single major character is dead by the last page, add some peppy songs and make a happy ending for everybody.” 

So why am I ranting again?  A couple of weeks ago I saw a commercial for Wicked, a movie coming out this winter.  I had never actually read Wicked by Gregory Maguire but I knew it was quite long so assumed there were some differences between the book and the musical (which I HAVE actually seen). You all know me well enough to know what came next; I went and got the book from the library.

What a shock.  Without really giving anything away, here are the only similarities between the novel and the musical.  There is a green gal.  She goes to school, meets someone who becomes a friend and is taught by a speaking animal.  Some flying monkeys.  That’s about it… while some of the characters in the book show up in the musical, it’s in name only – they aren’t really the same as in the book.   The book is incredibly detailed and political although certainly not satire.  It is not even remotely light hearted and the ending is not happy at all; it’s a bit like Hunchback – a lot of bodies have piled up by the end.

Of course, the initial Wizard of Oz movie differed from the book but the jump from Wicked to the musical is such a leap that I’m still a little stunned, even a week after finishing the book.  Once again, I try to imagine the conversation that got the book transformed to a musical that is so different.  Somebody in that room must have laughed all the way to the bank.  And it wouldn’t have been me.

What’s the most incomprehensible movie you’ve ever seen?

25 thoughts on “Wicked. Really?”

        1. I can’t find any evidence he had a prosthetic leg. Why isn’t he wearing a crown? Are you sure it’s King George?
          Incomprehensible!

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        2. I guess it’s supposed to be “England”, not necessarily King George (my bad) and because of the colonists bad behavior, England is “maimed and forced to go with a staff”.

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        5. Thanks… when I was trying to source the photo I didn’t come across the page you have linked, but another page with not as much info. Hard to believe sometimes what’s out there!!!

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  3. Cats – the movie. When the musical first came out, I was a theater geek teenager and loved the musical – why, I don’t know. I will blame the 1980s and being a teenager. Saw the live show again as an adult and wondered if the whole thing was based on a dare – “Hey, ALW – bet you can’t make a hit musical out of this book of poems…” ALW, “…hold my beer…” And then they turned it into a movie. I will never get that time back. It has Dame Judi Dench in it – surely, I thought, it won’t be as bad as they say. It was. Somehow turning it into a movie made it even weirder.

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  6. Better Late than Never,

    Matt Damon had a movie that was disorienting. I never felt that I could attach to the movie in anyway. I may have walked out of it. It might have been Invictus. Ugh.

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  7. Martin Scorsese‘s after hours was a wonderful incomprehensible film. Another was the movie Brazil, which was so far out and left field. I just kept going wow through the whole movie.

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