I enjoyed watching the movie, too.
The two main actresses sang many songs well.
Their harmony was so good.
I haven’t watched the movie The Wizard of Oz, but Wicked has many homages.
So many YouTubers said that.
The director of Wicked really likes and respects The Wizard of Oz, I guess.
I think that The Wizard of Oz is known to American people, just like Momotaro or Kaguya-hime is to Japanese people.
So, American people like Wicked, too.
Wicked has many metaphors.
It made me feel hurt.
When I watched the movie, I thought about school caste, lookism, human races, what justice is, good and evil, crowd mentality, people with a disabilities, LGBTQ and so on.
And two main characters have ambition or desire.
It seems that both of them are very thirsty or hungry.
They don’t know what is enough.
They want people to respect them and think that they are good people.
While watching the movie, I often overlapped my life with them or imagining people I know as their characters, and I realized that we are similar to two of them.
To tell the truth, it was not the main characters, but the way the crowd acted that made me feel uncomfortable.
Their reactions, their blind judgment, and the way they followed the strong without questioning felt too real.
I think the movie is packed what happens in this world.
The movie showed them to me for about three hours.
The musical softens real-world issues through fantasy, but it feels like so many problems are packed into it that it was hard for me to watch.
But I am looking forward to watching Wicked Pat2.
Thanks for your response, Olive.
'Wicked' is definitely packed with social commentary through metaphors that I believe were meant to trigger us and make us think. I'd say it is far more charged than the original 'Wizard of Oz' and it's not so necessary to see it before watching 'Wicked'. But I do recommend seeing the original production as it can give you more context for the main characters. It delivers a simpler message about the value of friendship and desirable vs. undesirable qualities of character.
'Wicked' appeals to me almost as a rebuttal to the simplistic portrayals of good and evil in 'The Wizard of Oz'. It encourages us to have more compassion toward what we presume to be evil and even we presume ourselves to be good, to be humble about it rather than proud.
I'm also looking forward to part two of 'Wicked' where I suspect it will draw even more from the original and portray the manner in which supposedly bad people can be good and how seemingly good people may actually be or ultimately become bad.
Thanks again for being a Real English Party person and responding to this topic: