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Wicked · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit. The podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. Perhaps thought Nanny Little Green Elphaba chose her own sex and her own color into hell with her parents. It's wicked and this film is Lit. Hello and welcome back to this film is like the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It is part one of our 2026 summer series. We're talking about 2024's Wicked. So much to talk about, so much to get into. As always, if you've done these been here for the summer series before, we do the episodes a little bit different. Normally I don't read the book, Katie does. Then we both watch the movie for the summer series. We both read the book, both watch the movie and then just kind of deep compare our points, our opinions. Dive in deep on these and see, you know, what they changed, what we like about it, what we didn't. Lots to talk about on this one, so we're gonna jump right in. If you have not read or watched Wicked, we're gonna give you a summary of the film. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
• 1:53
  Speaker B: This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. In the Land of Oz, Glinda the Good joins the citizens of Munchkin Land as they celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. When asked why wickedness happens, Glinda explains that the witch was the product of an affair between Governor Throp's wife Melaena and a mysterious traveling salesman. The salesman offered Melaena a green elixir, causing the witch to be born with green skin. Maligned from birth for her skin and impulsive use of magical powers, the witch fostered a wish to meet the wonderful wizard of Oz, the ruler of Oz, famed for his power to grant wishes. When the Munchkins ask if Glinda was friends with the witch, she reflects on their relationship back at school years earlier, green skinned Elphaba Throp escorts younger sister Nessa Rose on her first day at Shiz University. Nessa Rose's paraplegia causes the staff to patronize her, prompting an emotional outburst of Elphaba's powers. Shiz's Dean of Sorcery Studies, Madame Morrible, offers to enroll and privately tutor Elphaba in sorcery. She accepts, hoping she can fulfill her dream of working with the wizard. Elphaba clashes constantly with her roommate, the popular Galinda Upland, who longs to become Morrible's student. Elphaba's history professor is Dr. Dillamond, a talking goat who faces discrimination. As one of Shizz's last animal professors, she follows him to a meeting of animals off campus. Learning the animals are somehow losing their ability to speak, Elphaba assures Dillamund the wizard will set it right. Rebellious Prince and transfer student Fiyero takes a group of students to a party at the Ozdust Ballroom nightclub. When Munchkin Bok woodsman asks Galinda to accompany him, she convinces him to invite Nessa Rose so she can attend with Fierro instead. Nessarose is overjoyed, and in thanks, Elphaba convinces Morrible to allow Galinda to study sorcery as well. When Elphaba is ridiculed at the Ozdust for wearing an ugly black hat gifted by Galinda as a practical joke, a remorse Galinda dances with her and the two begin to bond. When Dillamund informs the class that animals are no longer allowed to teach at chiz, he is forcibly removed from the classroom and replaced by the unscrupulous Professor Nick Dick, who demonstrates a cage containing a frightened lion cub designed to prevent animals from learning to speak. Elphaba angrily spins poppy dust over the room and escapes with Fierro. When the class falls unconscious, they release the cub into the forest, and Elphaba laments her unrequited feelings for Fierro, who has chosen Galinda. Elphaba receives an invitation from the wizard, who has been made aware of her powers by Morrible. She arrives in the Emerald City with Galenda, now calling herself Glinda, in solidarity with Dillamund, who constantly mispronounced her name. Their meeting with the wizard, in which they're surprised to learn he's an ordinary man, is witnessed by Morrible. They induce Elphaba to cast a levitation spell from the sacred Grimory, a spell book that only powerful sorcerers can read and comprehend, causing the wizard's monkey guards to painfully sprout wings. As the wizard and Morrible rejoice over their newfound ability to use the monkeys as spies, Elphaba realizes they are the ones behind the animal's oppression and that the fraudulent wizard, unable to read the Grimory and lacking real magic of his own, used her to subjugate them. Further, a horrified Elphaba seizes the Grimory and flees. Glinda follows Elphaba, who refuses to apologize to the wizard, as Morrible denounces her to all of Oz. Elphaba tries to escape the Emerald City in the wizard's hot air balloon. But the way up is barred and the balloon burns up high in a palace attic. Elphaba repeats the levitation spell on a broom. She urges Glinda to come with her, but Glinda chooses to remain behind. The two share an emotional farewell. Fierro leaves Shiz on horseback amidst a mass evacuation, while Governor Throp suffers a fatal heart attack. When he and Nessa Rose receive the news, Elphaba flies west, leaving Glinda behind.
• 6:16
  Speaker A: All right, that was a summary of the film. Wicked. Format's a little bit different for these summer series. So we're gonna start by discussing all the stuff that we thought was better in the book.
• 6:28
  Speaker B: You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to. What do you like to read? Everything.
• 6:37
  Speaker A: My first note is a little dumb, nitpick thing that I just noticed is that in the movie, at the very beginning, when they're flying in. Not the very beginning, I guess, but near the very beginning when they're flying in and we fly into the town where the opening number takes place, we see a sign outside the town that says Munchkinland. But it's just outside this town. Which felt a little silly to me. Cause Munchkinland is an entire regional, like, province or whatever. And yeah, in the movie, it looks like it's kind of implying that this town is Munchkin Land. It's been fine.
• 7:12
  Speaker B: Like, it's been a very, very long time since I've seen the 1939 film. But I do wonder if that's, like, a direct reference to that. Like, if there is a sign in that movie.
• 7:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, it could be. I mean, like, the whole point is that they're just establishing where we are, which makes sense. And it. Like, it's not the end of the world. Because, again, you could have a sign for the whole area outside of it. It just feels a little like if you've read the book, you're like, well, that's not really. Again, doesn't really matter. But I still wanted to mention it.
• 7:45
  Speaker B: So the movie and the book start out kind of similarly where we get Elphaba's backstory, but I felt like the movie really simplifies her backstory a lot. I thought both of her parents were more interesting and complex characters, and her relationship with them. And with Nanny, who's a character that's not even in the movie.
• 8:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. I think you could argue is ostensibly kind of in the movie. But I think CeCe Bear, whatever her called it, Dulcie Bear is essentially kind of supposed to be Nanny.
• 8:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. But very different takes on.
• 8:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're nothing alike. I just think that that is who I think that Bear character is pulled from. Nanny would be my guess.
• 8:34
  Speaker B: But at any rate, I felt like Elphaba's relationship with her family in the book was a lot more, like, real, like, kind of messy, but realistic. And more realistic than just like, her mom is dead and her dad hates her, which is what the movie boils it down to. But there's a whole lot more going on in the book.
• 8:56
  Speaker A: No, I completely agree. This was a big note I had. And probably one of the things that I liked most about the book compared to the movie, and I guess the musical, by extension, was just how much we learn about her parents and their relationship. Like, for instance, in the movie they make her father the mayor and later the governor of Munchkinland, whereas in the book he is a priest or, like a preacher, which I thought was really interesting. And we'll get more into that in a little bit here, specifically about the religion, because that's another aspect of the book that I think is really compelling. But, like, stuff like that. And then I also thought that, like, in the movie, we kind of just see very quickly and briefly, like, her dad leaves for something, and then the wizard, we don't know in the moment, storms in and has an affair with her. And you're like, it's all very, like, okay, what's going on here? But in the book, we get a lot more explanation for, like, why Helaena, which is the name, which I don't even know if we know her name.
• 9:51
  Speaker B: It's Melena in the movie. In the book. Yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker A: No, I know. I'm saying the movie. I don't even know if they mentioned her name.
• 9:57
  Speaker B: I don't think her name is ever actually said.
• 9:59
  Speaker A: That was my point.
• 10:00
  Speaker B: Although it is in the Wikipedia summary.
• 10:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, was my point is, like, for instance, in the movie, we don't even know her name.
• 10:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:06
  Speaker A: But we know a lot more about Helena's. Her infidelity, why she's. Why she cheats on him and Stuff like that. And kind of the nature of their relationship I thought was really interesting and better explained in the book. I really liked the little. There's a little detail, and this is kind of just part of Elphaba's backstory that I liked in the book, which is that there's at one point Helena, while she's pregnant with Elphaba, like, says that she can sense that she knew that the baby would. He would be a singing child, which I thought was a funny little. Again, since we know it became a musical and it's not a he, it's a she, but also the nature of their relationship between Helaena and Frex.
• 10:47
  Speaker B: It is Melaena.
• 10:48
  Speaker A: Is it Melaena? It's not Helena. Oh, you're right, it is Melaina. I just wrote it down. Right, yeah. Melaena. Sorry, I knew that That's a character from, like, Dark. Not Dark Souls, maybe Dark. There's one of the most recent video games that came out. Melena's like a villain in that. And so my brain was like, well, it's not that. It's something else. Anyways, Malena, like, she has a great line early where she says about her she wasn't much given to worrying about moral failings as a rule. Having a minister as a husband seemed to stir enough religious thought for one couple. Yeah, they have this, like, contentious relationship that I think the book wants us to find kind of endearing and kind of is, but is also. This is interesting.
• 11:25
  Speaker B: It's. I feel like it is kind of a complicated, messy and maybe realistic relationship in that sense. Yeah, there's, like. There's kind of a lot of layers going on where I think, like, I think they do care about each other. Like, I think Melaena does care about Frax. I think she loves him in. In a way.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: In a way, yes.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: But also you get the sense that maybe, like, they fell in love young and, like, did not think about that. They were kind of ill suited to each other.
• 11:56
  Speaker A: Yes, she is. She is.
• 11:59
  Speaker B: She, like, comes from money or, like, power position.
• 12:03
  Speaker A: She has a title, technically. And, like, she. Yeah, she's the Throp second descending, I guess, or whatever. Because I believe Elphaba is the Throp third descending. And. Yeah, so she has, like, a title and a little bit of money and to her name and stuff like that. And he, as a preacher, lives a very.
• 12:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's interested.
• 12:21
  Speaker A: Aesthetic lifestyle.
• 12:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Living a very, like, spare kind of lifestyle. So she's like. She's, like, living in the backwoods with him.
• 12:29
  Speaker A: Tension there. And there was like lust and they had sex a lot in the earlier in their relationship but that has also faded and she is still a very lusty, lusty woman. They make point of several times in the story. And so that's part of the reason she. There's just a lot going on with their relationship that I thought was interesting. And specifically also between Elphaba and her father. A thing that I thought was really compelling that the movie doesn't touch on really at all is that they had. There's one line and the movie captures most of the general tension of their relationship which is that he likes Nessa more than her and cherishes her more. But there is a little line at some point in her childhood where FR whiddles her a little wooden bird and he also calls her Fabula or Fab or whatever. He has like a special name for her and he says that it's their pact against the world and he like cuddles with her and. And there's at least an implication that at least for some period of time he was, he did kind of become taken by her and wasn't. Didn't completely like reject her entire childhood.
• 13:29
  Speaker B: Yeah. I am interested to see if we interact with Frax at all in the second half.
• 13:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. If he shows back up or if he's just dead.
• 13:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. And like kind of see where he is because whereas the musical and the movie kind of boil the whole familial relationship down to the wife doesn't like the husband, then the father doesn't like the daughter.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:50
  Speaker B: In the book what we're getting is more complex and layered than that.
• 13:53
  Speaker A: Yes. It's like they all like each other and, and, and are. Yeah. Dislike each other for reasons that are myriad and make sense and are defensible in some ways and indefensible in other ways. And yeah, it is interesting. And another little detail that I thought that is in the book that I thought was really compelling, that it's kind of more of like world building stuff. But it is part of their backstory is that we find out like Frax is a Munchkin lander, but he's tall, as is Elphaba and like Ever and Melena. And we find out that it's because all well renowned bloodlines within Munchkin land married into height.
• 14:26
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 14:27
  Speaker A: So that peasant munchkins are short. But the like gentry. Yeah, the gentry gentrified Munchkins are tall. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting. Again, a little bit of world building that I thought was kind of compelling and makes sense, too. And you find out, like, will you be like, well, if Elphabet's from Munchkinland, why is she.
• 14:46
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because she appears to be like, a normal height.
• 14:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: But she's. She's like the peak of society for Munchkinland. Like, because her family is like, the ruler.
• 14:56
  Speaker A: Yes. There she is again. She's one of the. Within the bloodline of some of the ruling class of within Munchkinland. Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker B: I mentioned Nanny earlier. I really liked her character. I thought she was super interesting. And I'm very interested to see if. Or how the book uses her character moving forward.
• 15:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'd be interested to see what she does in the second half. But I completely agree. I thought she was a really compelling character in this first part of the book. She had some great moments that I thought that are really good. And she kind of acts as a little bit of the moral compass in relation to Elphaba, especially compared to the parents. She's kind of there to nudge them along to be good parents.
• 15:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. She's kind of a voice of reason. She shows up and they're both freaking out about the fact that their baby's green. Like, it's still a baby.
• 15:45
  Speaker A: Like, she has the line, have you. Have you even touched this child yet? You two. And then later, when she's talking to Elphaba, she tells Elphaba, nanny likes you. And then the text says she was lying through her teeth. But unlike Freck's, she believed some lies were sanctioned by heaven. And I like the idea that she. She's this very. She's also a complicated character who has these weird eccentricities that make her, like, not a great person.
• 16:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, she's. She has some unlikable stuff about.
• 16:15
  Speaker A: But she, at her core, seems to be a caring person who cares for these children and wants to keep them safe and, like, take care of them and stuff in a way that I thought was really compelling and kind of nice. She also corrects the parents. They call Elphaba, like, a little devil at some point, and she says, this child is no devil. And she kind of constantly corrects them and tries to coax them towards actually caring about this child, which I thought was nice. And that was. That's also where the line. And I guess it's not specific. It's not specifically, I guess. Yeah, she thinks it. But that's where the line from the intro that I read came from. It's the end of a chapter and it says, perhaps thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex in her own color. To hell with her parents. And you can tell there's this energy that Nanny kind of admires Elphaba as,
• 17:06
  Speaker B: like, she's a little rebellious.
• 17:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. She. She admires her spirit and her spunk and whatnot in a way that I thought is. Again, I like.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: So jumping back just like a teeny tiny bit to actually before Elphaba is born in the book, let's talk about the clock of the Time Dragon. Because I was not expecting this to be like, a whole thing at the beginning of this book. The time dragon is mentioned at the beginning of the movie and like Glinda's voiceover. And it's always a feature of the stage show's set.
• 17:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. I had forgotten about that while reading the book. And then when I read that note of yours, I was like, oh, that's right.
• 17:51
  Speaker B: It is part of the set. Yeah. I've seen Wicked a couple times and I guess it's just always how the set is done. It always has the dragon, the clock and the dragon over the entire set piece. But the way that it was utilized in the book I thought was really intriguing. It's like this weird little circus side show.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 18:15
  Speaker B: Comes to town and stirs up shit.
• 18:18
  Speaker A: Yes. It has started its own religion even.
• 18:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:21
  Speaker A: Called like, Tiktokism. That are like, people who like, worship the. The dragon clock. Yeah. There's a giant clockwork clock that these dwarves, I think they say. I think they say Dwarves drag around the countryside to towns and it like, shows up and acts out little puppet shows of the villagers. Transgressions.
• 18:38
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 18:39
  Speaker A: Like Freck sees one where it's a tale of some dude named Grind who cheats on his wife with a widow and her daughter. And it's explicit body.
• 18:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker A: Puppet show about where. Where they. They show him, like, having sex with these two women. And it. But it seems to be indicative of a thing that actually happened because then, like, he, like, gets run out of town and like.
• 19:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:01
  Speaker A: He seems to like, kind of admit to it basically. Like. Yeah.
• 19:04
  Speaker B: I mean, it. Yeah. It seems. I guess whether or not it's true is not really the point.
• 19:10
  Speaker A: No, it's not really the point, but it seems.
• 19:12
  Speaker B: But the point is that people believe it.
• 19:15
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 19:15
  Speaker B: When they see this, like, this little act put on, they buy the story that it's telling.
• 19:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I thought I got the implication, at least from that first story that it was true. That the thing about that the grind in those two women was true. And so I was like, okay, so maybe it does have some kind of magical something that it is able to know. Or it could just be a thing where it's. It's not magical, but it's. The dwarves have some sort of spies or something and they get this information about people and they. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know if we'll get more about that or if it's just kind of background world building, but it is interesting and I did enjoy that.
• 19:53
  Speaker B: And then so Phrex is. He's preaching against the Time Dragon because it's unholy.
• 19:59
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:00
  Speaker B: Sinful against his religion anyway, which is unionism.
• 20:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, we'll talk. I have a bunch of notes about the religion here in just a second.
• 20:09
  Speaker B: So he is away from his wife when Elphaba is born and he. The like. I forget exactly what the story. Like the story that the Time Dragon puppet show is. Is something about him.
• 20:24
  Speaker A: It's about him being like. Like stealing money. Like basically being like a fake preacher who's just like taking their money and like. Yeah.
• 20:32
  Speaker B: So he's hiding from Munchkin Landers trying to get him. And so.
• 20:39
  Speaker A: Which I guess you could argue is evidence that maybe it's not true.
• 20:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, because that was one of the things that I thought.
• 20:44
  Speaker A: He's not really like a. Yeah, there's
• 20:46
  Speaker B: no evidence of that. We know that Melena has some money because she comes from money. But there's. No, I don't. I didn't.
• 20:53
  Speaker A: There's no evidence that he's like a grifter. I guess you could argue that within the greater. Like, I think there's there's maybe some larger metatextual, like kind of not metatextual, but larger narrative that unionism, the religion is kind of a grift. A grift generally. And that like, it maybe is more of a criticism of unionism, which is this universe's Christianity, as like it's criticizing that and saying it's like a sham, a scam, as opposed to like him specifically being like somebody who's doing something. But it does imply that he is the one being like shady, which is not again, at least everything that we've seen. Not the case. He's a true believer who is like trying to be a preacher.
• 21:36
  Speaker B: But so then when Elphaba is born, these two women from the town help her help her mother. And I thought this was a really interesting scene because we know that the women in the town do not like Melaena. Yes, we've established this already. But there are a couple little Details that I really liked from this scene. It's like an old woman and a young woman helping her. And then the three of them make up the pagan concept of the maiden mother and crone during this scene. And then.
• 22:07
  Speaker A: Which makes it that paganism is referenced explicitly in this. And now I guess it's a different version of paganism. It's.
• 22:12
  Speaker B: Right.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: Asian paganism.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: Paganism. And there is, like, an old Asian pagan religion that is referenced often throughout the text. And she ends up giving birth actually inside the. The clock of the time dragon.
• 22:26
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 22:27
  Speaker B: And I also thought it was interesting that after Elphaba is born, the women have this initial disagreement about whether she's a boy or a girl.
• 22:35
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 22:36
  Speaker B: Or they're, like, looking at genitals and they're like, it's a boy. No, it's a girl.
• 22:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker B: And then Elphaba bites one of their fingers off. Because she's born with sharp teeth.
• 22:45
  Speaker A: She's born with sharp teeth. And so she bites one of their fingers off. It's fantastic. Also, that scene also has a great line where Nanny is holding her and she's just kind of sitting there at. Right after she's born, and Nanny says to her, wine, you fiend. It's your first job. Which I just. That line specifically I just thought was very funny.
• 23:03
  Speaker B: Another, like, random lore thing that I liked is that Elphaba is named after a unique communist saint.
• 23:10
  Speaker A: Yes. Actually, Fabula, I think, is her name. And that's why he. Right. And that's it.
• 23:15
  Speaker B: It was Alphaba, like, with an A, I thought, or something.
• 23:18
  Speaker A: Oh, you're right. Maybe like A, E, L. I think
• 23:20
  Speaker B: it was maybe like a masculine version of it or something.
• 23:23
  Speaker A: But, like, the nickname of that saint, I think, was Fabula, which is why he calls her Fabula.
• 23:28
  Speaker B: And, like, that's the kind of lore I want to know.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. But speaking of the. That the. The theology of Oz, that was one of the things I was not expecting in this book that I thought was really cool. And that it doesn't really show up at all in the musical or the movie other than in very passing. You hear some stuff mentioned a little bit, but it doesn't get explored at all. You mentioned earlier the paganism of Oz, and it explains that Nanny is a believer in said paganism, which is that the idea that Ozma, the Ozma of Oz, is the daughter of Lurline, who was the fairy goddess of Oz, who is basically the pagan.
• 24:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like, who created Oz. Yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker A: And their creation, which I don't think I have it Written here. Part of their creation myth is that Lureline peed all over Oz and that created a river. Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker B: Which is very pagan.
• 24:20
  Speaker A: It's very fun. And so. And they're. Part of their belief is that all of the Osma's since then have been like reincarnations of. Yeah, Osma as opposed to just they're like. Like the Ozma is the title for the ruler, but part of the pagan belief system is that similar to something like some sort of like Eastern, like emperor like lines where they believe they're all essentially like reincarnated. Maybe not reincarnation is the right word, but have the spirit of some like. They're like God rulers essentially.
• 24:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, like a pharaoh or something like that.
• 24:52
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And so the idea is that all of the Osma's have been kind of these reincarnations of Osma. And Frex, who is a unionist preacher, thinks all of this is nonsense. Also learn about Tiktokism, which I mentioned, and who Freck thinks hardly qualifies as a religion, but that is the religion specifically based on the dragon clock. And also just I think probably generally around like mechanical stuff. Like there's maybe like. Because it is this almost magical technology.
• 25:21
  Speaker B: Right. And Oz, within the context of this book, Oz is undergoing like an industrial
• 25:27
  Speaker A: revolution of sorts, which is another thing. And I think. I don't know if I had this note anywhere else, but I wrote it in my book notes while I was reading. We find out that Dillamond invented microscopes. At least that's the implication I got, is that he basically invents microscopes over the course of this book in order to do the study that he's doing and stuff like that. So yeah, we are kind of at the industrial revolution of Oz right now, which is also very interesting. And it comes across a little bit in the movie, a little bit like a tiny bit like we see some of the technology stuff and with the wizard at the end is like building the roads and stuff like that. But yeah, another thing we see later in the book is Bok admiring a bunch of inspirational posters at some shop or something like that. And they represent the different religions. One of them is the pagan religion, which again is the people who worship Lurline. There's the authoritarians who are people who kind of worship the wizard specifically, which is now. He's now his own thing. And then unionists, they worship the unnamed God, which is what they refer to as their God. And in my opinion they're like the Christian stands ins here, I think it's
• 26:33
  Speaker B: pretty clear that that's meant to be a Christian stand in pretty obviously what it is.
• 26:37
  Speaker A: And part of their myth and part of Lureline, the creation myth, is that the animals. Because a whole big part of this is trying to figure out why. And I didn't realize that in the book it was going to be capital A animals versus lowercase animals. But there are animals who can speak, who have the spirit of consciousness, and there are animals who can't. And they're trying to figure out like, like what the difference is, what's going on there. And so they're doing research into like, the creation myths of like, what. What did they. People used to believe about why that difference occurs? And in the Lurline faith, it's because in their creation myth, as we mentioned, Lurline urinated a river and all of the animals who dared to cross it became capital A animals who could speak, and all of the ones who didn't stayed as regular, like, lower animals or whatever. The Unionist version of that myth that they then took and updated is that when the world was flooded by the unnamed God, he cried a bunch of tears for some reason, I can't remember what exactly about, but flooded the world. And the animals who, like, consumed enough of his tears or drank his tears,
• 27:40
  Speaker B: they become an animal.
• 27:43
  Speaker A: And so all of that stuff I thought was really like, again, just showing the ways that religions form and change and morph and how they're inspired by each other. It's not super complex. Like it's. It's a very, like, surface level.
• 27:56
  Speaker B: It's not ground of all of that stuff, but it's the kind of world building that I really appreciate.
• 28:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And again, it's not incredibly deep or like, you know, because there's like, you compare it to like some of the religions and stuff within something like Game of Thrones, there's, I think, a little bit more thought has gone into that. And it's not a direct. As direct of like a. This is their version of Christianity. This is their version of the. You know what I mean? This is a little bit more didactic in a way that feels like a little simpler and a little less genius. I don't know, it's a little more obvious, I guess, but it's still really compelling and I think works for the universe that this story is setting up. We also find out that, for instance, that Nessa Rose is anti sorcery. It's an element of her character that doesn't really translate to the Musical at all?
• 28:44
  Speaker B: No, she's really religious.
• 28:45
  Speaker A: Super religious in the book as her father's favorite daughter.
• 28:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker A: She has followed in his footsteps as being very, very religious and she's a very traditional unionist. But there's this really compelling part in the book where Glinda explains that she's been doing a bunch of research into sorcery and that like, there's these local and practical roots, the sorcery that like, sorcery isn't really about like fancy spells and stuff. It was like used by kind of alluding to the idea of like indigenous
• 29:12
  Speaker B: cultures using like the practical aspects.
• 29:16
  Speaker A: Practical aspects of like herbology and stuff like that for like medicine and traditional culture.
• 29:23
  Speaker B: Like if we were to compare it to the real world, like these kind of practical, like, folk medicines and things that then later get maligned as witchcraft.
• 29:32
  Speaker A: Yes. And there were aspects of it in part of those beliefs, like they were thought of as magical and stuff. But again. And so the story kind of plays around with all of that in ways that I thought was really interesting. And then we also find out specifically that Elphaba is like, well, I'm an atheist. Yeah. But an anti spiritualist. But I also thought was kind of interesting in a world where sorcery objectively exists. But she does say, like, she understands that, but she views it more almost like as a science kind of is like the impression I got is that it's like a type of science or a type of. It's like another like, physical force in the world that you can like study and learn and that it's not. And. And she doesn't think it like derives from the unnamed God or Lureline or something.
• 30:15
  Speaker B: Well, and I do. I think that's interesting too though, because I think if something akin to sorcery existed in our world, that would also probably be how a lot of people viewed it.
• 30:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean. Yeah, it probably. Because it would depend. Yeah, I mean, that's probably how I would be. Because that's what it would be. Ostensibly, if it got manifested in a way that you could study and interact with the way it seems to in this universe, then it does kind of just become a different branch of like science or something. You know what I mean?
• 30:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it seems like they can because Glinda is majoring in sorcery extensively.
• 30:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. But anyway, so I really like all the religion stuff. I think it's all very interesting and makes for a much more enriching, like, kind of background.
• 31:02
  Speaker B: It's very compelling and it makes Sense makes for a world that feels old.
• 31:08
  Speaker A: Yes, it feels old. It feels lived in, and it feels like it obviously has direct allegorical ties to our universe and our world in a way that makes it. You know, you can pull some. And again, it's a little didactic, but you can pull some moral messaging out of it and kind of really see the point that the author's trying to make, at least so far. Again, maybe that'll get really muddled and weird and meandering and pointless. In the second half of the book, we shall see.
• 31:36
  Speaker B: Another character that is in the book that does not make it into the movie at all is Turtle Heart.
• 31:44
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
• 31:45
  Speaker B: I thought Turtle Heart was a really fascinating character.
• 31:49
  Speaker A: I agree.
• 31:50
  Speaker B: I loved the like, just in general, I loved the inclusion of the different people inhabiting Oz, which is something we don't really see in the movie.
• 32:01
  Speaker A: There's people talked about being from different areas and obviously they all seem vaguely
• 32:05
  Speaker B: the same, vaguely just human. Whereas Turtle Heart is a quadling. And Quadlings, at least in this first half of the book, seem to be a metaphor for indigenous people.
• 32:18
  Speaker A: They very explicitly seem to be. Yeah. I would be amazed if that's not the intention.
• 32:23
  Speaker B: I mean, I do kind of want to see what we're doing with the winkies.
• 32:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know what that.
• 32:29
  Speaker B: Because we haven't actually interacted with them yet.
• 32:31
  Speaker A: Not other than Fiyero, briefly.
• 32:34
  Speaker B: And I do think that maybe then it might be a little problematic that the Quadlings are described as having reddish purple skin. But I also think the different colors of the different people in Oz in the book are, like, in line with what it is in the original books. Because the different parts of Oz are, like, color coded. Yeah, in the Oz books.
• 32:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, yeah, I agree. But it is very clear because, like, in the book, it is explicitly explained that the Quadlings in their area, called the Axel, or Oval. Oval, is their, like, area, I think.
• 33:08
  Speaker B: I thought that was the town.
• 33:10
  Speaker A: Oh, maybe that's the town.
• 33:11
  Speaker B: There's a map.
• 33:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, maybe that's just the town. I don't know what the Quadling country is called. The Marshes.
• 33:16
  Speaker B: It might be called Quadling Country.
• 33:18
  Speaker A: Might be. But they. They tried to stop the Oz just called Quadling Country. There you go. But they tried to stop the other Ozians from building on their land because their ecosystem is super delicate. They have this marshland that they live in that is all. It's like a wetland where the amount of water and stuff and all of the. It's a very delicate ecosystem.
• 33:40
  Speaker B: Throw it off balance, and you're fucked.
• 33:42
  Speaker A: And so Turtle heart, actually we're introduced to him because he comes up and meets Melna and them because he's on his way, or was on his way to the Emerald City to petition the wizard on behalf of the Quadlings, which I thought was really compelling. And they specifically say that later that the wizard drained the wetlands or whatever to mine rubies from them. Basically rounded up the Quadlings, put them onto reservations and starved them again. It is very explicitly an allegory for the indigenous people in the US There's a quote in the book where I think it's. Elphaba says it's a systemic or systematic marginalizing of populations. Glinda. That's what the Wizard's all about.
• 34:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:22
  Speaker A: And like I said, I couldn't decide. I was like, I can't decide how I feel about the political messaging in this. If it's too literal and too didactic or if it's fine. I think largely I landed on the side of like, it's fine, it's fine.
• 34:32
  Speaker B: I think it's fine.
• 34:33
  Speaker A: It is a little. At times you're like, okay, I think
• 34:37
  Speaker B: you have a note somewhere in here about this being for like people in their 20s.
• 34:42
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 34:43
  Speaker B: About the book being for people. And I think. I think you're right on the nose about that. And I also think that some like the way that Elphaba, for instance, talks about, like the political implications of things that are going on in Oz. It is a little bit on the nose, but I think she also talks about it in the way that, like college. Yeah. A 20 something college student talks about politics.
• 35:13
  Speaker A: This is way more of a college book than I thought it was. And we have notes about that later. It is way more about the experience of being a early 20s, mid 20 year old than I expected. And it's actually really fascinating. And we'll talk more about it later. But it is absolutely part of what makes the writing style so unique. Or not the writing style unique? Cause the writing style is not unique at all. But we'll get into it later. But yeah, I think the target demographic and the target audiences of this book lends it to be something very kind of unique that I think also maybe is part of what turns off a lot of readers. Yeah, maybe it has very mixed reviews in a way that I think is. We'll talk about it. But I agree. I also thought it was really fun that Elphaba's first word is horrors. She gets radicalized as a baby because she listens To Turtle Heart. Explain. Talk about the subjugation of his people.
• 36:08
  Speaker B: They ask him at one point, when she's like a toddler. Yes.
• 36:12
  Speaker A: She hasn't spoken yet.
• 36:13
  Speaker B: They ask if they're like, well, why did you leave Ovals? And he just says, horrors, which. Oof, relatable. And she just starts repeating the word horrors.
• 36:23
  Speaker A: And it's like. But it's a great little character moment because she has been exposed to the struggle of oppressed people from the moment she could literally speak. And in fact, her first word was in reference to that. So there was no chance she was going to be anything other than a revolutionary, which I thought was fun. I also thought there was an interesting little moment where we find out that Turtle Heart seems to think that Elphaba can, like, foresee the arrival of the Wizard.
• 36:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because he's a glassblower.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: He's a glassblower.
• 36:58
  Speaker B: And when he first arrives, he makes. He blows some glass and he makes, like, a scrying mirror, essentially, that he can see things with.
• 37:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. And he says horrors, murmured Elphaba. Turtle Heart tumbled to his knees. She sees him coming, he said thickly. And this is before Elphaba is a little kid. The wizard is not here yet. She sees him to come. He is to come from the air is arriving a balloon from the sky the color of a bubble of blood. A huge crimson globe, a ruby globe. He falls from the sky. The Regent is fallen. The House of Ozma is fallen. The clock was right a minute to judge by. He fell over almost into Elphatha's small lap. And so, yeah, like she can. She seems to be able to have some sort of foresight and sees the coming horrors of the wizard, which I thought was interesting. Oh, and a little another thing about Turtle or turtle Heart that I forgot is that later we find out that he was sacrificed by the people of the town in order to supposedly attempt to end a drought.
• 38:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:00
  Speaker A: Because there's a big drought going on. And before. Right before Nessaros was born, the people in the town sacrifice Turtle Heart. And I think you could potentially infer that. So they say that the reason in the book that Nessa Rose doesn't have arms, which spoilers. We'll get to that later. But the reason she is disabled in the book is because there's a. What is it in the book? Cause in the movie, they say it's the. She's chewing milkweed.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: She's chewing, like, milk of the poppy or something like that.
• 38:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that ends up causing her to be premature and that's why her legs don't work. But there's a reason in the book that I can't recall. But I think you could almost argue because they kill him. They kill Turtle Heart right before Nessa Rose is born. And it is strongly inferred that Nessa Rose is probably Turtle Heart's child.
• 38:50
  Speaker B: Probably because they've been having an affair for.
• 38:52
  Speaker A: They've been having an affair for years and years and years. The book explicitly says that Melena doesn't know whether it's Phyrexes or Turtle Hearts. But you could strongly infer that it's probably Turtle Hearts based on just the amount of sex her and Turtle Heart were having versus her and frequently Rex. But. And so I think you could read potentially that maybe her disability was like the result of like some curse or something from the town killing Turtle Heart or something. I don't know. You could play. There may be something there. I swear there was something in the book and now I can't remember. I can't remember now that I thought they said in the book what the explanation for why. I just can't remember what it was.
• 39:32
  Speaker B: Anyways, continuing on, just characters. Galinda. I found her really interesting in the book.
• 39:42
  Speaker A: I agree.
• 39:42
  Speaker B: I thought she was a little more fleshed out than she is in the movie.
• 39:48
  Speaker A: It's like a similar character in the movie. It's just that you don't know that she's that character in the movie.
• 39:54
  Speaker B: Right. We actually spend quite a bit of time in her perspective in the book. So I think you could infer that she probably does have this kind of rich inner life in the movie.
• 40:07
  Speaker A: I think if you've read the book, you can see this in the characterization in the movie.
• 40:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: But if you haven't read the book, you would never gather this about her necessarily from what you see in the movie, I think is the way I would put it. Yeah.
• 40:20
  Speaker B: But she's very intelligent. She's striving to reach beyond her station one way or another. I think it's really interesting that she clearly has this interest in architecture.
• 40:33
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 40:33
  Speaker B: Like as we meet her, as she's on her way to shiz, and she's really excited to get to the city and like, see the really cool architecture.
• 40:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 40:45
  Speaker B: I also think, like, another thing that's interesting is that explicitly in the book, she is upper class, but she's clearly on like the low end of the upper class, which the movie flattens into just, she's a rich girl.
• 41:00
  Speaker A: She's a rich girl. Yeah. No, and that because I wanted to read this brief section from the book that touches on some characterization that I. And this is like some of the heavy lifting, the characterization they do for Glindy here. When she arrives at Shiz and she's looking at all the other students arriving, looking about her, she could tell that some of these dollies came from families much better off than hers. The pearls and diamonds on them. Galinda was glad she had chosen a simple silver collar with meta knight struts. There was something vulgar about traveling in jewels. And then this next part is the part that I really like, too. As she realized this truth, she codified it into a saying. At the earliest perfect opportunity, she would bring it out as proof of her having opinions and of having traveled.
• 41:39
  Speaker B: Traveled.
• 41:40
  Speaker A: The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing. She murmured, trying it out. While the true traveler knows that the novel, not the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory. Good. Very good. And that little moment of her, like, yeah, you learn so much about her in that just like, one paragraph or whatever. Again, to what you said, that she's not as wealthy as some of these other girls here. Her family has less money than they. Them.
• 42:05
  Speaker B: But she, like, knows that. And she understands how to try and, like, position herself to make up for that.
• 42:13
  Speaker A: Yes. But also knows, like, just that idea of, like, wanting to be seen as somebody who has opinions. Like, she's like, I come up with sayings because that's a thing smart people do. That's a thing.
• 42:24
  Speaker B: Another thing that feels very college.
• 42:26
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Absolutely. And I do think the movie captures a little bit of that or tries to capture a little bit of that. When she first meets Bach in the movie, she says, like, I don't remember the exact exchange, but it's something about, like, him being a stranger and. And. Or whatever. And he. She says, like, you know what? I believe Bach strangers are just people I've never met or something like that. And so she says this like, it's like her trying to, like.
• 42:52
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 42:52
  Speaker A: Philosophize.
• 42:53
  Speaker B: It's a thing that sounds a little bit smarter than what it is.
• 42:57
  Speaker A: Yes. It's kind of tautologist in a way that is just like. But it attempts to sound more philosophical. Philosophical and interesting that it is. And so I do think the movie captures that element of her personality. But like I said, I don't know if you would necessarily know underneath what was motivating that from having just watched the movie. But I also really, like, there's a line that describes her in the Book, I think is from her perspective. Glinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not. The whole point of conversation was flow. She just talks to talk because she knows that that's how conversations are supposed to work. And I also thought it was really fun that when Glinda and Elphaba have like their actual. Their first actual conversation, they actually have like a really deep conversation about the nature of evil and what unionists thought about evil in like the early days and stuff like that. So they actually have like a meaningful conversation. And then later we find out that Glynda stays at Shiz over the summer, which is another element imply or another thing implying that she's either not wanted back home or too poor to travel back home for the summer. Again, just little details like that. She also. When they get to the Emerald City, because she is such an architecture fan, the book makes an explicit point of calling out that she hates the architecture in the Emerald City.
• 44:10
  Speaker B: It's too modern.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: It's too modern. It's not fancy enough for her. Or maybe not fancy enough. But yeah, it's too modern. But yeah, she has a lot. She has opinions, she has stuff going on. And again, it's not that it's not there in the movie, it's just not. You kind of have to guess.
• 44:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think you would have to infer what's going on in Glinda's head for the movie. And I think if you hadn't read the book, you probably would not infer those same things.
• 44:37
  Speaker A: I agree. Another little thing, like a world building lore thing in the book that I really like is the discussion of Royalists. Because the Osma was deposed by the wizard. There is a group of people who are Royalists who want to bring back the Ozma and get rid of the wizard. But for now at least, that group of people is pretty quiet and rare. They're not a super prominent.
• 45:02
  Speaker B: We haven't met anybody, I don't think.
• 45:04
  Speaker A: Well, her dad. We find out that he is. He get. When he sends the shoes. I believe it's that time he sends the shoes. We get a letter that FR is taking a. He's a hunger strike in order.
• 45:17
  Speaker B: Oh, that's right.
• 45:18
  Speaker A: In order for the return of the Osmo. So he. He is. I think that is like the first hint of like a new resurging royalist movement maybe. Is that he.
• 45:30
  Speaker B: I think if it's in that scene or maybe a later scene where I think Madame Morrible has a line that I really liked that was something like the fact that the Ozma died under house arrest was just a coincidence.
• 45:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he was deposed. The Osma was deposed, and then the wizard, like, locked him in house arrest and then just like, took over. And it wasn't even the Osma. It was the Osma reaction. To be fair, they specifically say it was essentially Denethor, like, you know, a pretender to the throne. But, yeah, he ended up dying, and that's when the wizard took power. And so, like, that was kind of how the wizard was able to swing it is that it wasn't like the true Ozma. It was like an Osma regent, because
• 46:11
  Speaker B: the actual Ozma is a baby here, which fits with the lore of the marvelous land of Oz, which I was really happy I read recently.
• 46:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. A specific line that is in the book that I really liked and that this book actually has a lot of kind of relevant political language and discussions in it, which is so.
• 46:36
  Speaker B: I think the context of this.
• 46:38
  Speaker A: I don't even know if I wrote
• 46:39
  Speaker B: it down, was that Glinda asked Elphaba about, like, her childhood.
• 46:43
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 46:44
  Speaker B: And she's talking about how they spent all of this time basically as missionaries in Quadling country, which is why she knows exactly what went on there.
• 46:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:55
  Speaker B: And she's. So she's telling Glenda about, like, what the wizard did.
• 47:01
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 47:01
  Speaker B: To the Quadling Country.
• 47:03
  Speaker A: Yes, you're right.
• 47:03
  Speaker B: And Glenda's like, stop talking about politics. I asked about your childhood.
• 47:08
  Speaker A: Yes. And. And that's. And Elphaba responds to her. Well, that's it. That's all part of it. You can't divorce your particulars from politics. And it is the thing that ever. I mean, you. Is a constant discussion point and argument probably going back forever is the idea of, like, look, everything's political. Like her upbringing, her childhood. The way her childhood was shaped was entirely shaped by politics. It makes no sense to talk about her life absent politics, because it completely influenced the direction and trajectory of her entire life because the wizard came in and killed all the, you know, like, she had. Her life is. You know, it makes no sense to talk about her life without politics because politics is such a huge part of who she is and it's shaped who she became. And yeah, I like that she gets to be that voice for Glinda and is kind of the person who she kind of radical. I mean, not kind of. That is the story.
• 48:08
  Speaker B: Is that.
• 48:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. She's the person who helps radicalize Glinda ultimately. Another thing that I thought was really interesting is that Shiz operates like Oxford in the book. At least I assume that's the idea. And I don't know enough about how that all works. But there are different colleges within Shiz similar to Oxford where like Oxford is the overall university, but then there's like Trinity College and blah blah. There's all the different colleges within Oxford. Shiz is similar where there's like Craig Hall. Craig hall, however you pronounce it, which is where Glinda and Elphaba study.
• 48:36
  Speaker B: That's the girls school.
• 48:37
  Speaker A: It's the all girls school. And that was the other thing is that the better colleges at CHIs are still male only. Which is I thought was none of that comes up in the book or in the movie. Yeah, there's still sex segregation in the. In the world of the book. And Glinda mentions that she's the first girl from her area to be accepted to Shiz because again, even though she is a little bit wealthier and stuff like that, she still apparently comes from a less prestigious area, part of Gilliken than. Than other people. A change that I like in the book, or it's not a change in the book, but a change that the movie makes that I think I prefer in the book is that in the mov, Elphaba shows up. She is like escorting Nessa Rose, who is starting as a student. And then her dad like asks her to like help make sure she gets settled in. And then the whole thing goes down
• 49:25
  Speaker B: where she does magic and she ends up getting accepted as a student and
• 49:29
  Speaker A: Morrible like drags her in. In the book, Elphaba is just a student at shit. She just comes as a student and in fact.
• 49:35
  Speaker B: And goes there first.
• 49:36
  Speaker A: And goes there first because she's older than Nessa Rose, which makes sense and which is the same in the book and the movie where she's the older sister of Nessarose. And I liked that the movie's version of it's fine too. It creates a. More. It also helps establish like the dynamic between her and her father more that like he kind of assumed like he didn't let her go to school or something like that. So it adds a little bit of character dynamic to them. But I do like the idea that it's like, yeah, no, she's just a student there. And then Nessaro shows up later as the next year when it's her turn to age into the program or whatever.
• 50:12
  Speaker B: I thought it was really interesting that the characters, both the ones that we know from the movie and from The Musical and also some other characters. They're like a crew. They're like college friends.
• 50:26
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 50:27
  Speaker B: And I was not expecting everyone to legitimately be friends. But like Glinda and Elphaba and Bach and later on Fiyero and then the. There's another guy named Avery Tibbet and something else. These other two guys. And then sometimes Glinda's friends.
• 50:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:49
  Speaker B: Shen. Shen and Fanny. Fanny sometimes also hang out with them. But I thought it was really fun and it reminded me of college in a way that made me feel like a little bittersweet.
• 51:02
  Speaker A: I completely agree. I was not expecting it. That's what I mentioned. That's what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned that this was much more of a college book than I was expecting. Is that it very much is trading on the emotions and the experiences of being in college and. And the. The experience of finding new friends and all of that sort of stuff.
• 51:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. Then. And they like have this particular like tea room that they all hang out at and they drink tea together and
• 51:25
  Speaker A: they even have their own name. Well, I don't know if they. The book refers to them as the something circle.
• 51:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. The. The title of the chapter is like the Charmed Circle.
• 51:33
  Speaker A: The Charmed Circle. Yeah. But there was this great little passage that. To read that is about their friend group that I thought was really interesting. The boys still weren't allowed access to Craig hall, nor the girls to the boys schools. But the city center area of Shiz became an extension of the parlors and lecture halls in which they were allowed to mingle. On a midweek afternoon or on a weekend morning they would meet by the canal with a bottle of wine or in a cafe or student watering hole. Or they would walk about and discuss the fine points of Shiz architecture. Or they would laugh about the excesses of their church teachers. Bach and Avarick, Elphaba and Nessarose. And with Nanny Glinda and sometimes Fanny and Shin, Shin and Mila and sometimes Crop and Tibbet. And Crop brought Fierro along and introduced him, which frosted Tibbett for a week or so. Until the evening that Fiero said in his shy, formal way, of course, I've been married for some time. We marry young in the Vincus. The others were agog at the notion and felt juvenile, to be sure. Elphaba and Average needled each other mercilessly. Nessa Rose tried everyone's patience with her religious rank rantings crops. And Tibbett's stream of saucy remarks got Them dumped in the canal more than once. But Bach was relieved to find that his crush on Glinda was lifting somewhat. She sat on the edge of the picnic basket with the look of self reliance, and she diverted conversation away from herself. He had loved the girl who had loved the glamour in herself, and that girl seemed to have disappeared. But he was happy to have Glinda as a friend. Well, in a nutshell, he had loved Glinda and this was now Glinda. Or he had loved Glinda and this was now Glinda, someone he could no longer quite figure out. Case closed. It was a charmed, sweet circle. But again, just that dynamic of like the. All of those weird, different friends that you have in college and kind of the way you interact. And. Yeah, I was not expecting this book to kind of delve into that in the way it did. And then it very much. Clearly, the second half is about the kind of different paths you guys take after college, which I thought was also very compelling. Again, not having read the second half yet, but knowing where, roughly where it goes from the musical. Yeah, I agree. I thought that was all great. And the scene in the book of them sneaking out, or in the movie of them sneaking out to go to the Ozdust Ballroom does capture a little bit of that college when they're sailing on the boat and they're all. There's a little bit of that. But that energy is prolific throughout the first half of the book and is, again, very compelling for somebody who went to college and has had that experience. And it was, yeah, kind of bittersweet and nostalgic in a way that I really enjoyed. Speaking of the Oz Dust Ballroom, this is a kind of minor complaint in the movie. I've always thought it was very silly that Morrible shows up to the Oz Dust Ballroom to give. Give Glinda the wand.
• 54:03
  Speaker B: It's very silly. It's really silly.
• 54:05
  Speaker A: And she says she has a line like, elphaba said, I had to do it tonight. So you got dressed up and walked. You knew they were there.
• 54:14
  Speaker B: And also they very explicitly are like, they're not supposed to be there.
• 54:17
  Speaker A: They're not supposed to be there. But she doesn't care. And it's all a little like, okay, sure. You just had to have that happen right before the hat scene so that we could create the tension.
• 54:27
  Speaker B: Glinda feels bad.
• 54:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's just. It's a little clunky in a way that I was like, whatever. And the book doesn't do that at all. That whole scene's not in there. So it's just. Anyways, this is a little thing. I've always thought that particular scene was a little strange.
• 54:38
  Speaker B: The scene with the lion cub I thought was like way more horrific in the book.
• 54:44
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 54:45
  Speaker B: They like. They specifically, they ask about its mother and the professor's very kind of evasive about it. And it's like. Well, let's just say the mother met with an untimely demise or something like that. And then literally is like gonna. Gonna attempt to give this baby lion like a lobotomy.
• 55:05
  Speaker A: Essentially a lobotomy. Or like electric shock therapy.
• 55:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. In front of this class. And it was also interesting to me how, you know, as opposed to the movie, everyone is horrified by this.
• 55:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 55:17
  Speaker B: Not just Elphaba. And she isn't even the one who rescues the class cub.
• 55:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. I had the exact same note and
• 55:22
  Speaker B: I'm really interested to see where that goes.
• 55:25
  Speaker A: If anywhere I had the exact same note is that I actually like that more students are kind of outraged in the book and there seems to be a broader sentiment of like what the is this? And I do understand why they have Elphaba be the person who saves. I totally get it in the musical, like that makes sense. But I did think it was interesting. Yeah. In the movie or in the book it's just two random other girls run up and grab the cub and run off and like. And there's not anything where the class falls asleep. They literally just grab the. Coming and running away. And we. We never find out what happened after that. But it. I thought that was interesting. And I am interested to see how that plays out later because it does. There is an element of that that makes it a little tougher to. To see how. And I'm not saying impossible, but I'd be interested to see how Alphabet becomes the. The villain in the second half when it seemingly. There's a pretty large swell of support within the student body and people. People for her side, her argument. I'm interested. Whereas in the movie it makes more sense that she's like the only person who cares about this. Seemingly everybody else is like well this is ah. Whatever. It's just kind of they're like disinterested and like. Because they benefit from the privilege and it doesn't affect. Doesn't affect them. It's a kind of that classic thing. And so it makes more sense then for them like to be. For her to be turned into this villain in all of their eyes because they never really like agreed with her anyways or like cared about what she cared about. About. Whereas in the book everybody seems to agree. Not everybody. A lot of people.
• 56:51
  Speaker B: They all kind of seem to be
• 56:52
  Speaker A: on the same page and especially within their charm circle friend group. They're all like kind of like working together to help do this. Some of them are more interested in it than others. Is the. The idea like Crop and Tibet are helping but they're not like super in. Into the like social justice aspect of it necessarily. It's more like something to do for them or whatever. But I did. Yeah. I'm very interested to see where that all goes in the set second half.
• 57:15
  Speaker B: That's actually my next note is about. So Dr. Dillamond in the book is doing like you mentioned this research to try to figure out what the difference is between capital A animals and lowercase A animals. And basically the whole group kind of becomes embroiled and like helping him in his mission.
• 57:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Elphaba slowly recruits everybody else to kind of help.
• 57:39
  Speaker B: Like she's specifically has been employed as like his student assistant for the summer. And Bach is also. He also has a summer job like working in one of the libraries. And it's a library that neither Alphaba nor Dillamond are allowed in.
• 57:56
  Speaker A: The men's only school. Yeah.
• 57:58
  Speaker B: So he like sneaks research material to them and I. I don't know, I thought the whole thing was like really interesting and compelling.
• 58:05
  Speaker A: No, I agree completely. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I also thought that the cause we also then find out that ultimately like. And I guess we might get to it later, but the revelation that Dillamond is coming to is that there is no difference. That there's. Or at least there's no physical difference and we don't. I'm sure that'll get explored more in the second half probably because we don't really know Elphaba is going to continue his research. But we kind of. That's where the book kind of stopped or where we stopped in the book book. But it seems the implication is that there is no difference other than maybe like upbringing or something like that. There's something going on early in their life that maybe causes that change. But physically there's not really a difference. And I think we're going for a thing of like there's racism thing of like there's no difference between the races scientifically really. Like there are differences culturally and stuff, but there's not a difference. Like races aren't real in the same way that we traditionally thought they were.
• 59:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:04
  Speaker A: One of the things during that research that I thought Was interesting is that Bach finds a drawing in a book or something of a kumbic witch, which is this thing they mentioned several times, which is this old pagan.
• 59:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:15
  Speaker A: Witch or something like that. Or type of pagan witch, I think is the implic. I don't know exactly what a kumbc witch is. And they don't really go into explicit detail.
• 59:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. They don't really explain exactly. But it is something. It's something that's more aligned with, like, old pagan.
• 59:28
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 59:28
  Speaker B: Belief system.
• 59:29
  Speaker A: And he sees this drawing of one who is nursing some weird creature thing. I don't know what it's supposed to be necessarily, but it's like this strange. Like, instead, it kind of looks like a sea anemone, I think, or something like that. But in this drawing, she is wearing silver shoes and clicking her heels together. And I was like, holy shit. We got like an MCU lore drop, like the shoes in this ancient scroll, like the Kubrick witch. And now we just got the other day. We're still not sure if the implication is those are the same silver slippers that Nessa Rose gets later and thus Dorothy gets eventually. Or if they're just supposed to be the same kind of thing, like.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like the same type of enchanted shoe.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker A: Yes. Or. Or what's going on there. We. We're not sure yet. Because when we find out later where Nessa Rose got the shoes from, it's like, maybe. We don't know. But we'll talk about that more later. But, yeah, I. I thought that was really interesting that he sees the drawing of this ancient drawing with her wearing the shoes. I was like, oh, wow. Yeah. It goes way back. It's not in the movie. We'll talk about it later. Dr. Dillon is killed in the book. Yes, he is murdered. And maybe he is in the second half of the musical. I can't rem. Is he.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker B: I don't remember. I don't remember.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker A: No. He shows back up later.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker B: He shows back up. I don't.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker A: He's like a prisoner.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker B: I don't think it's implied that he's killed.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker A: He gets murdered in the book. And the reason he gets murdered is that he was right on the precipice of a discovery recovery. And we find out eventually that Madame Morbal is involved in all of this.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker B: But they try to pass it off as an accident.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker A: They try to pass it off as an accident. And right before he was murdered, Amma Clutch, who is. We've not even mentioned Amma Clutch yet.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker B: She's Glinda's Chaperone.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker A: Glinda's chaperone. And they're all called Ammas.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker B: Yes. Which was that we were trying to figure out if. That threw me for a loop because we meet her first and I thought Amma was just her name. And then when Glinda shows up at Shiz, all of the other girls also
• 1:01:21
  Speaker A: have amas with different last names. Yeah.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker B: And I was like, oh, it's a title, sure.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker A: But I'm a Clutch. See something going down on a Dr. Dillon's, like, office or whatever and goes down there to, like, see what's going
• 1:01:35
  Speaker B: on and check on him.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker A: Never comes back. They discover her the next day. She's in the hospital and she has lost her mind. She's, like, gone crazy. And there's this thing where Glinda had used that as a lie earlier in the book in order to explain why she was. She couldn't be in a dorm with other students. She had lied to Madam Private room. Yes. She had lied to Madame Moral and said that I'mma Clutch couldn't oversee a bunch of girls because she, like, loses her mind sometimes.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker A: And she's, like, kind of. She's not all there, basically.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker B: But this was a fictitious thing that
• 1:02:07
  Speaker A: Glenda in order to try to get a private room. And it's. It's why she ends up getting stuck in a room without Elphaba. And I thought it was interesting that. Or fun that Madam Morrible then uses Glinda's lie against her. When Alma Clutch loses her mind, seemingly probably from some spell that Madam Warble cast on her, but she goes, oh, well, she must have fully lost it. Like you said, like, that's what's going on here. And it's. It is. I liked that a lot. So then eventually they go to visit Amma Clutch, who is passing away. She's been in the hospital for months or I don't know how long at this point. And she is dying. Dying. And they go in and Glinda is able to briefly, like, cast a spell on her to, like.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker B: To, like, bring her back. She brings her out of it a little bit.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker A: But there was this great moment right before she cast a spell that I really enjoyed, where they're going in to talk to her, and it's just Elphaba and Glinda. And Glinda is like, oh, this is all my fault. Oh, she's like. She's, like, beating herself up because she's, like, blaming herself for what happened to Amic Clutch. And she goes, this is all my Fault.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker B: At this point she thinks that she somehow manifested this condition. Oh, do you think that I thought that.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker A: I didn't think that. I just thought she was just kind of being like.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker B: Because she made it up.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker B: And so she thinks she somehow. Because she is studying sorcery, she thinks she somehow like made this happen by like inventing it.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker A: Okay, that was not how I read this. But fair enough. But anyways, she's like, it's all my fault. And Elphaba responds to her. Oh, see, stop it is. I'm not arguing that. See, this is. That I didn't read it that way. I read it as Glinda is saying this is all my fault. Like her being able to use this lie against me is all my fault. And like that we can't do anything about it is because of my liar. Anyways, I, I didn't interpret it as her thinking literally that she. But maybe I. I don't.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker B: I think there was a line about that. Okay, like specifically about that.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker A: Elphaba says to her, oh stop it is. I'm not arguing that. I just mean. Cut yourself out of the conversation. This is her. Your interview with the unnamed God. And I love that she just berates her for like, hey, this is. She's dying. You don't spend this time, you know, beating yourself up and like being all self pitying about this. It's. She's the one dying. Get over yourself. I thought that was great. But they are, they do briefly are managed to talk to her and she basically tells them that GR Gramatic, who is Madam Morable, Clockwork Servant TikTok Return to Oz is the one who killed Dr. Dilliman. We also have this thing that happens in the book that is not in the movie and I thought could have helped maybe a little bit where we actually get a scene where Mana Morrible recruits Elphaba, Glinda and Nessarose as like generals for the wizard. This is where she creates the witch. I was trying to remember what the name of what Nick Fury calls the Avengers. It's not project. He's got some initiative. The Avengers Initiative. This is the Witch Initiative for the wizard where she's recruiting these three witches in order to be like, yeah, emissaries for the wizard and to help keep peace in the different regions or whatever. And she says she's going to put a different one in each of the four regions except for Vincus because they plan to just kill everybody in Vincus or something.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is crazy. She's literally like, I'm not worried about Vincus, because we're gonna, like. We're gonna kill everybody there or whatever. Yeah. Like. Okay.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I was like, this seems like a terrible choice to try to recruit Elphaba, and specifically Elphaba into this.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker B: Elphaba seems like, not. I don't know. This scene really threw me.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker A: Well, because there's the added layer of. She says, you have till next semester to decide.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker A: And there's this. It's kind of unclear in the book, but the implication is that she casts some sort of spell on them.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker A: That essentially keeps them from discussing it with each other. That she says if you try to discuss it with each other, you'll have a headache and you'll forget or whatever.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker A: But it's also kind of muddles it. Their own memory of it, like, with themselves. Like later. Glinda is thinking about it and she can remember the conversation, but she can't quite remember the exact content of what was said. And she interprets it. It's. It more as like a prophecy or like an acknowledgment of her own potential. And it becomes this weird, muddled thing where I think we're supposed to imply is that Morrible did some kind of like some sort of charm or something where she was able to have this conversation with them. But it, like, is. Muddle. Is muddy enough in their own heads that they can't, like. Like, properly reason through it or something like that.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. I do think that is what's supposed to have happened.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker B: But it also. And maybe we'll learn more about this in the second half of the book. I felt like it seemed like it affected Elphaba less than it did Glinda.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. And maybe there's. I think. Cause I think it's probably supposed to be kind of just broadly allegorical for. Which was similar to what we get in the movie where Elphaba is more informal, influenced by the promise of power, of being important, of being influential.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker B: Glinda is.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker A: Did I say Alphabet? Sorry. Glinda is more in.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker B: Yeah. She's more easily sweet.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker A: Easily swayed by, like, the. The promise of power, the promise of influence, the promise of import. Whereas Elphaba, because of her upbringing, I think, is less likely to be swayed by that. And I think it's. We're supposed to kind of like, yes, she cast a spell, but it's supposed to kind of broadly be an. Like an allegory for just like. Like, again, the different paths people go on in life after college. The. The powers that be are are kind of promising these things to them. And the promises that they're offering aren't super clear. And like, what. What even your job would be is not super clear. And you're not. But it's like, how. What decision do you make? What path do you take? Like, Elphaba is not as swayed by these promises from this rich, powerful part the of. Of systemic power which Madam Morrible ultimately ends up being. Whereas Glinda is more easily kind of influenced by this because she has those aspirations for power and influence and all that sort of stuff. And then Nessa Rose, we'll see where that all goes eventually. But hers, I think, is probably more so. She's just very. She's easily swayed by authority because she's very religious and just like. So she's. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. Anyways, I thought it was interesting. It's a little confusing. I kind of withholding judgment on it until the second half of the book to see what happens with it.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, it is interesting. It does feel like a bad choice to try to recruit Elphaba specifically.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker A: That was my thought. Yes.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker B: Like first. First act, musical Elphaba. Sure, sure.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker B: But book Elphaba is already radicalized against the wizards. So like, why is she trying.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker A: Why does she think? And it doesn't seem. And it seems like Marble's aware.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker A: Because she constantly questions them about like, their allegiance agencies and stuff.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker A: Like when at one point they get the, The. The. The gift with the shoes and there's a letter about the. The royalist thing that her dad's doing. And so Morrible, like, questions them about their royalists. Are they secretly Royalists or whatever. And Elphaba's like, no, I don't give a. About that. And Nessa Rose is like, no, the one. The unnamed God is the one true authority, you know, so, like, there is that element of it. Yeah. I don't know. I. Like I said, I. I thought it was interesting.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker B: I like it coming back around to something from the movie. Controversial opinion question mark.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker B: I feel like. I don't know if this is a controversial opinion necessarily. I feel like it might be possibly among like, OG musical fans. I think the Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth cameo is a little too much.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker A: See, I like, agree.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker B: It's fun.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker B: But
• 1:10:12
  Speaker A: my notice is that it's a bit long.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it goes on.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker A: It's a bit long. And I. I remember the first time we watched it in theaters. I had the same reaction. I legitimately hate Having Idina Menzel do the Defying Gravity run in her musical number, like 20 minutes before the Defying Gravity number in the. It just like that, like, my eyes, like, rolled out of my head in that moment. I actually like their cameo in the way they do it. It should have just been half the length it was. And that she should not have sung part of Defying Gravity. It's like, what are we doing?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker B: I understand the impulse.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker B: I understand. I totally get the impulse. They should have ignored that impulse.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker A: Yes. Again, the idea is there. I like that, like, because this is like the same thing they did in like. And it's probably why they did this. It's the Thor Ragnarok cameos where they have everybody pretending to be the characters. And that was like Matt Damon and I can't remember who else, but it's, you know, all these, like, big name actors doing, like this staged production of meta thing of the movie you're watching. And so, like, it is interesting. Like, I. I don't like. I don't dislike the cameo. Like I said, I just. Yeah, that. Your point exactly. It's too long. And don't have her sing Defying Gravity right before Defying Gravity. It's dumb.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker B: We kind of already talked about all of the weird creation stories in the book. And the Ozma line, I did want to call out a couple of specific things, one of which is that in the book, the current Ozma is called Ozma Tippetarius, which I took as a nod to that being the Ozma who gets transformed into the boy Titan Tip, who gets reinstated during the events of the marvelous Land of Oz.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker B: Again, so happy I read those books.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker B: Because I caught so many more things than I think I would have otherwise.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker A: I think even having just talked about it helped me a little bit.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker B: The other thing that I did appreciate in the movie was the implication, which I don't think comes from the musical, because the movie, I'm pretty sure, added the whole thing with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. That's all addition. But within that little play, they talk about how it was foretold that someone would arise who could read the Grimory, which we find out later. Elphaba can. So I did appreciate the implication that actually Elphaba is supposed to be the savior of. And the wizard just got there first and, like, pretended them all. Yeah. Pretended to be the savior.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker B: But they do. They do go to see the wizard in the book. Elphaba and Glinda do. And it's A little bit different from what happens in the movie. But a line specifically that I really liked. When they're talking to him, Glinda says, scale down, Alfie. You're making him mad. To which Elphaba responds, so what? I'm mad? And I was like, hell, yeah.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, I thought that was great. I also made a note of that line, and I do think the movie is trying to capture a little bit of that. Cause right before they go into the room to talk to the wizard.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker A: In the movie. There's a line in the movie where Elphaba says, like, don't be afraid or something. As they're, like, walking in, she, like, squeezes her hand and says, don't be afraid. And Elphaba says, I'm not afraid. It's the wizard that should be afraid of me or something.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker B: I think that's a little later on. I think that's, like. Right. Like in the midst of defying gravity.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker A: Oh, is it?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker B: Or like, right before it.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. But point being that. That. That moment kind of captures that.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Energy from that. Yeah, similar energy.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker A: But I did. I did really like that whole scene, her exchange where she just, like, reads him to filth and is like, okay, you asshole, do something. And he's like, no.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker A: It is interesting that he. He just lets them leave in the book. And they just leave. They just go like, all right.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker B: They also don't see the, like, the man behind the curtain. Yeah, in the book.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. They just talk to the.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker B: The glowing skeleton.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker A: Skeleton. Which we'll talk about. My final note here for better in the book is that in the movie, I've never. And in the musical, for that matter, I. I've always felt like them immediately showing Elphaba the Grimory and her immediately reading it and casting some random spell and that being. And it making the monkeys fly just never made a ton of sense to me. Like, it. It felt like we were missing steps there. So I don't know, like, something about the way that I'll play here out just feels, like, oddly rushed or like.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker A: Skipping a beat or something. I don't know. I.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker B: And I. I do. I agree with you. I think the thing we're supposed to infer is that she does have this, like, natural, like, talent for it. Or, like. I mean, in the movie, they explicitly imply that she's, like, the only one prophecy foretold that she can read the this.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker A: And, like, I assumed. The idea is that she's Kind of like ends up almost like possessed by. Not possessed, but like the power of the book. The magic of the power of the book. That allure, like, kind of draws her to just read it and do this spell, even though, like, she doesn't know what it does. And you know what I mean, it's just like.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker B: Well, and I also think that maybe we're supposed to infer that there's, like, this is like the thing that she's been missing to help her control her powers. Because throughout the movie and the musical, one of the elements, which is not a thing, not a thing in the book is that she does have.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker A: Well, maybe we'll talk about that.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker B: Maybe. But she does have these magical powers that she can't control and they bubble over when she's feeling particularly emotional. But then when she reads the spell from the Grimory, she's able to kind of actually harness that power. Yeah, but I do think that you could also read the kind of like. Now, obviously, the speed with which this progresses is born out of necessity. You know, you're telling a three hour stage show. But also I think you could read it as the wizard and Morrible maybe getting a little too big for their britches, and instead of like easing Elphaba into their viewpoint, they push her into the deep end. End, which does not go well for them.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that's fair. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Because the point of that was that I actually kind of like in the book, that he just lets them leave and then they leave and then she decides, like.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker B: Well, because at that point he has no reason to be threatened.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, he has.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker B: No. They're just a couple of kids.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, And I liked that, like I said, I liked that in the book because I've always thought that scene in the movie, in the musical was just a little like, okay, she's just reading the spell, she doesn't know what it does they want and they, they want spies. Why do they want. They want to create these flying. It's just, it's just like a little like, I don't know, easy. This is like a little like. Yeah, we're just like making everything kind of happen here at the end to, like launch off to our second half of the thing in a way that just felt, I don't know, again, clunky and easy in a way that just never quite made sense to me. So I liked how the book handles it. But that being said, we'll get into it here in the next section and I can't Complain because it leads to the end of the first act of the musical and the end of this movie, which are fantastic. And we're gonna talk about at length in what we thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker B: Happy endings only happen in the movies. The book does have a kind of, I would say a mild nonlinear structure,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker A: at least so far. Yeah.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker B: Where we start, we open. Open with a prologue and we see Elphaba watching Dorothy and company as they're like on the road to see the wizard. And then we jump back to the beginning of her story, similar to how we do in the movie. But I. I like the movie's take better. I think that starting with right after she melts, quote unquote, is a really good place to begin. It evokes a memorable scene from the 1939 film. And it's also a good pretext for diving into her life story.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker A: Classic. That's how you start a biopic. Biopic. Start on their death flashback. Where did they come from? That's, you know, it's Citizen Kane. That's literally Citizen Kane. It's Rosebud. So I'm just gonna put this note here. Cause it's maybe the most obvious note, which is just the music. Like obviously all of the music. I like it a lot. It's my kind of musical music. It is big soaring melodies and choruses and big dramatic moments and. And it's basic bitch musical music. And it's my thing.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker B: And the first act of this show in particular, the second act, goes a little downhill for me, music wise.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker A: There's songs I like, there's songs I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker B: like, but particularly the first act of this musical, it's just non stop banger after banger after banger.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker A: Every single number is great. Like literally every single one of them is fantastic. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's just, it's like I said, we're going to go into each one or not each one, but we'll hit some other highlights as we go. But I was just going it to put. Put it at the front. The book doesn't have any music in it. Eh, not explicitly. In the same way, the book doesn't really have any music in it. And so, yeah, the music in the movie and for that matter, I think the movie music is pretty good, A pretty good version of the music. They didn't do anything too. It's just basically the musical's arrangements.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker B: And I think it really heightened that they did not go crazy trying to update things or change things or what have you.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker A: They took some liberties at times with certain things, especially like Defying Gravity has some. Some specific moments that they add for, like heightened dramatism, for heightened drama. But largely the music sounds like it does if you're going to watch the musical.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker B: So I appreciate that the movie added more talking animals.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker B: Because Dillamond is really the only one that we interact with in a meaningful way in the book, at least so far.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker B: And in the stage, he's really like the only one in the stage show, which is probably a practical costuming choice, to be fair, as much as anything. But. But I liked that the movie was like, okay, we have the technology, we can do more talking animals.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker A: Which brought me to one specific joke in the movie that made me chuckle where it's when Dillamond is meeting like in that late night group with all the other talking animals and one of them says, I was talking to a dear friend of mine and somebody goes, a dear friend. It's a dumb joke that made me laugh. I appreciate the movie and the musical, I guess to some extent. But really the movie for sure, I think maybe does this more than. I don't know, I would have to remember the specifics of the musical. I think the movie leans into this more than my memory from the musical of kind of the disability advocacy that the movie does with Nessa specifically, but specifically in relation to this movie does things about making it clear that she doesn't need help in the way it's. They don't. The movie doesn't let people be patronizing or paternalistic to her in a way that very often characters in wheelchairs are treated in, in media. And so I appreciate that and like
• 1:21:38
  Speaker B: the specific call out of like, people like grabbing her chair and moving her around and like, don't fucking do that. Don't do that.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I appreciated the movie doing that because I, like I said, I don't remember if the musical really does any of that. And then the book obviously doesn't at all, which we'll talk about because they don't have the same disability in the book as she does in the movie.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker B: So I love the first interaction between Galinda and Elphaba in the movie, like where she comes in and Galinda, like, is like, well, when I am a sorcerer.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker B: I would be so happy to help you with your problem.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. And we'll talk. I have another note about that in a second I want to talk about.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker B: But yeah, there's a little moment in the Movie after Elphaba does her accidental magic where the. There's like this big kind of like stone relief or mural or something of the wizard and it falls away to reveal that it has covered up a mural of animal professors. And I thought that was a great little foreshadowing moment.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker A: Perfect little moment to kind of set up what's going on without really.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker B: It's kind of Baby's first foreshadowing. But it's good.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker A: But it's good. And it doesn't spend a bunch of time. We don't get it is Baby's first foreshadow foreshadowing. But what it doesn't do is it fights the urgent to cut to somebody going, what's that? Is that an animal? Why is there an animal mural under the. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't put a hat on a hat. It shows it and then it just moves on.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker B: I do love an enemies to friends arc, which the movie leans into. That was far less prevalent in the book than I thought it would be.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, because they become friends, like, pretty quickly.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, that.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker A: Not.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker B: Not like super close friends right away, but that they're, like, generally fine with each other right off the bat.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker A: They don't have nearly as much. They don't become friends. They become friends probably around the same speed as they do in the book and in the movie. But their relationship is not as contentious in the book as it is in the movie. To start with, they're not enemies to friends. It's more like ignore each other to friends. In the book.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker B: I thought the animals should be seen and not heard moment is more dramatic and ominous in the movie.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker A: I would agree with that. I like the way they utilized that line in the movie because that is in the book. But I really like the poetry scene in the book for several different reasons. So where that line occurs in the book is that Madame Morrible has a poetry reading night where she goes and she, like, reads a bunch.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, she hosts a salon, basically, where
• 1:24:07
  Speaker A: she reads this new style of poetry, which I can't remember what they're called now, but she has this poetry reading and. And she immediately, first thing, reads a poem about how animals should be seen and not heard. Like, that is the final line of the poem. Dillamund is there for this. He is offended and storms out.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker B: Rightfully so.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker A: Rightfully so. And I love that she has this great line. It's not a great line, but it's a great line in the book where she says, one expects poetry if it is Poetry to offend it is the right of art. And you immediately realize who Madame Morrible is. And there's this incredible exchange in the book right after that. Then that goes on from there, where Elphaba, like calls this out because there's like all these people there. And Elphaba calls out like, what? What the hell is that? What? What was that poem? Madame Morrible, if you please, said Elphaba, we never had an opportunity to discuss the quells that you recited in the parlor last week. This is later, but discuss, said Madame Morrible with a generous, though shooing wave of bangled hands. Well, Dr. Dilliman seemed to think that they were in questionable taste given the bans on animal mobility. Dr. Dilliman, alas, said Madam Morrible is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a goat. And I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great goat. Sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Dr. Dilliman doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please? I don't believe I can, madam. Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of animal rights, we may forgive Dr. Dillamond for being without. So that phrase that he objected to animals should be seen and not heard. That was ironic, continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madam Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the rooms would have enjoyed seeing the other crumple in a sudden attack of the spleen. One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose, said Madame Morrible. How do you choose? Said Elphaba. How impertinent, said Madam Morrible. Well, I don't. But I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn if anyone thought that statement was true, then isn't it in conflict with the boring, bossy bit that precedes it? It's just argument and conclusion, and I don't see the irony. You don't see much, Ms. Elphaba. And so I really liked that exchange because it does kind of capture a very ever present, frustrating proclivity type of person. Especially for people you generally on the road, right? And people in favor of authoritarianism and fascism and shit like that. Which is to claim that you just don't get It. You don't get the irony of it. It's a joke. It was just a joke. Don't you get that? It was just a joke. And she's like, well what's the fucking joke then? Like, what's the irony? Like, what are you talking about? It's ironic. And he's like, well, Dillamond is too and like that same thing. It's like, well, you know, Dilliman couldn't understand it because he's too close to it. He's got too much personal attachment. But me, an enlightened person who doesn't have these kind of personal hang ups with it is able to appreciate the. And it's just. Oh God. It's so. I was like, holy shit. Yeah, nothing ever changes. Like I said, this is written in the 90s and that has been going on long before the 90s. It's just, it's so funny that that type of person has been a villain in stories forever and it just will never change, apparently.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker B: Generally, I think, I think it'll probably be a good call to combine Fierro and Avarick.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker B: Assuming this is what the musical movie did. Yes, I'm assuming that's what happened. That does seem like I did see in the movie's credits that there's a character named Avarick but I didn't recognize him. And so I think that's just like an Easter egg for people who read the book.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker A: And speaking of Fiyero, I think Jonathan Bailey is fantastic.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, he's great.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker A: And so I really enjoy his character. I would put that as better than the. I like the book's shy, naive Fierro who's a married little.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker B: We don't really know him yet.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker A: Not yet. He's been very briefly in the book and hasn't really done much. So I'm interested to see where he goes, what he becomes. I assume it's going to be about him kind of growing into his. Or like he starts out as kind of a naive, sheltered little prince and then it's probably going to be about him becoming radicalized in the same way that Glinda does. Or something like that would be my thought. Maybe. I don't know. I am interested to see. But that being said, I like the ball. The bold like self assured, cocksured Fiyero of the musical and the movie. And I also think depending on how this whole thing goes, having more, especially in the book, having more because I have no idea where their relationship stuff goes in the book, having more of Fiero and Elphaba earlier in the film. Because again, they barely interact in the first half of the book. I think makes sense. Sense if the book story goes a similar place.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker B: Given where we know their relationship goes in the musical, it makes sense for them to have more interaction in the first half.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker A: But if the book doesn't do that, then who knows?
• 1:29:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, you mentioned the music earlier and I want to specifically call out how much I adore the choreography for both what is this feeling? And Dancing through Life. Because whoever came up with the rotating library set piece concept deserves an award.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. The dancing through life sequence is so fun. And I know people complain about the lighting in that scene. I actually like it. I actually think it works.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker B: I, I think people complaining about the lighting in that scene are wrong.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker A: I like, I get what people are complaining about, but it's because you get the, the blown out windows. People complain about how like it's so bright coming through. I think it completely works in that scene. It also creates this feeling of like they're these sheltered like college kids talking about life in this library in a university. And the world outside is so bright. You can't. Like there's so much beyond the, the walls of this library and the walls of the school that they don't really even understand yet. And I think having that, all of that light shining through and blasting through the windows just creates this light like kind of idyllic idea of like what the world is like out there. And again, that dancing through life thing and like kind of moving through life in this overly carefree kind of way. I think having that, the way they light that scene, there's probably things I would change and I could probably, you could probably show me a similar version lit slightly differently and color graded slightly differently that I would, would like slightly more. But I think the movie works.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker B: Overall.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker A: I like the silhouette look that you get when the light coming through the window a lot of the times. And as to your point, the bookcases, the rotating bookcase set piece thing is just very cool, very well done. I like the way they shoot it. There's that really cool shot where the camera does this flip as a guy like jumps over the kid. A lot of really cool stuff in there. I've seen people complain about this musical movie as not being a very good musical movie. Like, like the way it's shot and the choreography. I've seen people and the music. I've seen people and I completely disagree with that. I've seen people say like it's not actually and I don't like I said there's things. There's some things I don't even. The color grading. People complain about the color grading in this movie. I think it broadly works in the movie. Like, people talk about, like, well, it's not like it's so gray and flat compared to like kind of what you would maybe expect it to be. But it's. It's not really like, it's very colorful at times in ways that work. It's going for a pastel color palette. Like, it's definitely going for a more muted. It's not going for Technicolor. It is like a pasteli themed, like, color palette. But it's very colorful in a way. I don't know. I don't. I don't watch the movie and go, oh, this movie's gray and ugly. Yeah, no, you know what I mean?
• 1:31:53
  Speaker B: No, I don't either. And I definitely understand maybe why people would want Technicolor because I also like Technicolor. Like, it looks cool and we just can't do it anymore. But I also think that maybe a problem that we have with the modern movie musical is that I think people are very want to compare them to the golden age of the movie musical. And I think maybe we should stop doing that and just kind of let it be its own thing.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the form has changed. It would also. Yeah. Just making a musical look that musical that looked like. And now, I don't know. We have not. I've heard people say, like the counterpoint I've heard people say to that is go watch Steven Spielberg's west side Story from like two years ago. Everything I've ever heard about that movie, everybody says, like, that is like the best musical that has come out in the last 20 years or something like that. And then it kind of puts all of these other music. I. I don't know, I haven't seen it. But that it does does. It kind of lives up to the classic musicals from the 50s, the 60s, whatever. I don't know. Like I said, I haven't seen it, but I have heard people at least say that. But anyways, yeah, I would agree with you. I think overall, I think this is a very effective and succeeds as a musical largely. Again, there are some moments here and there of stuff. Really. The main one, and we'll get to that scene a little bit, is the scene with Fiyero and Elphaba in the woods. I don't love the way that looks. Looks like the way that's lit and shot. But anyways, other than that. Yeah.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker B: I don't know if this is really a better in the movie because it's more like a. It's not really comparing it to the book. As much as I love the stage show, I think I never really got the Oz dust ball scene between like Elphaba and Glenda until I was able to see the close up emotions in the movie. Cause I think like watching it from way back in the nosebleeds, it's just a little. It's a little hard to parse the underlying emotions of what is going on in that scene.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker A: We had that exact conversation after watching the musical. I think we had that conversation at some point about how seeing that scene in the film with the close ups really allows you to recontextualize that scene when you can actually see the emotions that the characters are performing when it is tough when you're watching the musical from far away. Yeah. I. A thing I will say that in the musical and the movie I just have here randomly that I've never really understood is Elphaba's motivation in that moment for like where she walks in front of everybody, takes the hat off and then starts just like dancing. Like I didn't never really understood her motivation in that moment. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, like I don't know.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker B: I think we're just supposed to get that she's like, like she's showing them all how much she doesn't care, which
• 1:34:55
  Speaker A: is what Glinda says.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. But I do agree that it's kind of a strange.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker A: It feels like a stretch.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker B: Like it's hard to. I think it's easy for me to relate to the idea of like, oh, you fuckers are gonna laugh at me. Me, I'm gonna be ridiculous. But it's hard for me to relate to the specific action of like setting the hat down and then doing a weird dance.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker A: Yes. That is the part to me that I'm just like, why does she set the hat down? Yeah, it's just like. It's like. I don't know. It's. It's whatever. It doesn't. I've always kind of found that moment a little awkward and confusing. That being said, the scene in the movie is the, the moment after that that it leads to of Glinda coming up and, and, and sharing in that mom and supporting her in that moment is so beautifully shot and specifically acted in this scene that it has literally gotten me to tear up every time I've seen it. Even this third time. This is the third time I've seen the movie. Now, even this time, I teared up a little bit. Not as much. But the first time we saw this in theaters, that whole scene, I was crying the whole time. And it just got me really well because I just think it is brilliantly acted, brilliantly edited, and the shot choice of the moments, of who they show when and how they reveal the. It's just beautiful. And I think it's so well done that it's probably like the best scene in the movie. I think, arguably in a lot of ways. There's other stuff that's really great, but I think it may be one of the most well crafted moments of the movie that I think perfectly. And I think to your point, it's elevated by the fact that it's a moment that if you've seen the musical, you've never really gotten to see in this context, you've only ever gotten to see it unless you had front row seats.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker B: Even front row seats.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker A: Even front row seats. But if you've watched a musical and a normal production, you've never really been able to see the emotion on each character's face during the scene and what they're going through in the way that it does in the movie. And it just adds so much to it that, yeah, it's great.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker B: Immediately following that scene, then when they're back in their bedroom, Elphaba's palpable confusion about how to have a friend is so adorable. I think Cynthia Erivo does some really good subtle acting in the start to that scene.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, yeah. I. I also really love in that scene where after they're. They're telling secrets to each other and Elphaba, like, doesn't have a secret to tell her or whatever. And Glinda sulks and she runs, she walks over, stomps over her bed and flops on the bed. And then Elphaba starts walking over and we. And as she's walking over, you see Glinda, like, look back and then immediately stick her head. She's like, looks back to see if Elphaba is watching her and then immediately sticks her head back down. Is a great little comedy. Comedy beat. I don't know if that's in the musical or not. I don't remember.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker B: I don't remember.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker A: But it's a great comedy beat. If it's not in the musical. Kudos on whoever came up with it.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker B: I also really like Glinda immediately reassuring Elphaba that it's not her fault that Nessa Rose is in a wheelchair and that their mother died because that ends up being her secret. Is that like, oh, it's my fault that all these things happened. And I think it's, and Glinda is immediately like, like, no, it's not.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker B: And I think it's such a nice character moment for her to show that she actually is kind at heart. Like once you get past that facade.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker B: Elphaba is nicknamed Alfie. Alfie in the book, although it seems to be like a childhood nickname. But I like the choice of having Galinda give it to you.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker A: It makes sense. Yeah, it works.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker B: Dr. Dillamond, we mentioned that he is murdered in the book.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker B: I do think that seeing him get like dragged off by the secret police is more impactful.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker B: Then like, because the he just dies. Yeah, he like dies off screen in the book. Off page. Yeah, off page.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker A: However you want to. I, I have mixed feelings on this. I, I, I, I like the dream, the drama in the book of him being on the, the edge of this discovery and then him being murdered and this like, and it being this kind of surprise. Ms. I don't know, I just, it reminded me of a lot of like other books I've read as a kid that it just, I really enjoyed the kind of like it's not a murder mystery, but it like, it feels kind of murder mystery in a way that I thought was fun and interesting. And then like Morrible lying about it and all that sort of stuff and like them figuring out like doing some like reconnaissance and talking to Alma Clutch about what she saw, like all of that is interesting and kind of fun little like mystery stuff. That being said, I agree with you that the moment in the movie of seeing him drug off by the secret police is probably a more effective visual for like communicating the point and I
• 1:40:10
  Speaker B: think probably more salient in this day and age.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. A death off screen. While again you could argue, well, he's dead, that's more dramatic, more impactful. Visually, seeing him be drug out by secret police in front of everybody for the crime of being an animal is. Yes, that is, yeah, it's much more thematically resonant than, yeah, just dying.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker B: My opinion on this could change in the second half of the book. I'll have to see what happens. But I felt like movie Madame Morrible seems to be much better at manipulating people.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker B: We talked about her attempt to manipulate the girls in the book, which felt to me kind of ham fisted. And I questioned, like we said, the decision to Include Elphaba in that specifically. Yeah, but she, she seems to be a lot better at it in the movie.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker A: Yes, I. That was on a similar note. I had in the book. I was like, interested to see where this went or if. If I was crazy and if it was colored by the fact that I knew that Madame Morrible was evil because of the musical, like.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker B: Right. But no, I think the book very clearly is painting her as a villain the whole time.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker A: She's so clearly involved in Dillon's murder and is so clearly evil from almost moment one that you meet her in the book. And I assumed I was like. I assume the book knows this is obvious and that this isn't going to be like a reveal, you know, Like, I assume.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker B: I assume that the book knows it's being obvious because she's. She's painted as a villain in the same way that like the Harry Potter books paint people as villains, where it's like very clear through, like the way that the characters describe her and talk about her, that she's like her features and all that.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker A: But then on top of that, just the things she does. Does, like she quit the way she questions them about stuff.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker B: She's again, it's very clearly a villain.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker A: Yes, it's very similar to like how Snape is coded in like, the early Harry Potter books where you're like, okay, like this. And again, now there's. That's obviously complication to that. But like, the way he is presented as a character is similar to how she is presented in the sense of like. Well, it's obviously this person is not on the up and up. And I think again, to that point, though, I think it is. I think the book is like, it's not supposed to be a reveal that like, surprised. I hope not, because it is very, very obvious.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker B: Because if that becomes a surprise, that's gonna maybe change some of my thoughts about.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker A: Well, surely not, because at this point they know she was like, she's literally working with the wizard and that like, Grametic was involved in killing.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker A: And then she later lies and says like, oh, no, Grommetic just found him. But yeah, it's obvious that she was involved.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker B: Galinda does change her name to glinda because of Dr. Dillamond in the book. Although I think I like the context better in the movie, mostly because it's just kind of mentioned in the book and the. The movie gives her like a whole, like a kind of more of a selfish pretext for doing it, which I feel like works with her Arc.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker A: So that's. I was gonna say, because I actually preferred it in the book, that in. In. It's the same thing in both is that she changes it from Galinda to Glinda in honor of Dr. Dilliman. Yeah, it's the same thing in both. In the book, though, she's genuinely changing it because she feels awful about. And she genuinely is honoring Dr. Dillon and she's genuinely heartbroken about him being murdered and all this sort of stuff. In the movie, it is very clearly she is just doing it to virtue signal. Like that is what she is. She is doing it in order to look good in front of everybody and to pull some of the spotlight onto herself because Elphaba has. Has all this spotlight right now for being summoned to see the wizard and is also currently kind of seemingly maybe stealing Fiyero from her. And so she's feeling very insecure. And so she has this moment where she can like, ah, I can steal the spotlight back for myself. So she does this entirely for her own image and for selfish reasons, whereas in the book that is not the case.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker A: That being said. And so I actually like that in the book because she is this more interesting character and she does have more like, she is a good person person. I assume what we're doing in the. The reason they made that change in the movie is because we have not finished her arc yet.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker A: Like, for the way that the. Her character arc is paced in the films, you have to have her still be more selfish and more self absorbed now because she has to make the decision not to go with Elphaba at the end and to side with Morrible and the wizard, at least ostensibly side with them at least a little bit. You know what I mean? And so it makes sense for her to not have fully like, bought into the movement and all of that sort of thing at this point in the movie. So I get it. It all works.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. It really does boil down to the difference in Galinda's character in the book versus the movie. I was actually fine with not seeing the Philosophy Club depicted.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker A: We do. It's just called the Oz Does Ballroom. At least I'm pretty sure that is.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker B: I think it is supposed to be the standout for the Philosophy Club.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker A: I mean, Glinda in the movie says it's scandalous, but as when we go there, it appears to just be a very generic night club that, like, everybody's dressed in like, fancy clothes. Yeah, it's like a upscale kind of like a.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker B: It seems like a speaker type of
• 1:45:27
  Speaker A: a thing but like a fancy one again everybody's wearing like suit, like like fancy dress. Not like, you know, not like club attire necessarily. Yeah, but yeah, so in the book the Philosophy Club for people who haven't Reddit is a. Essentially it's. It's basically like a kink sex queer club. Like that is like what it is. There are literally they say like they go and initially they go in and they're like dancing there and Alphabet doesn't go and neither does Glinda. But a bunch of the Bach and a bunch of the other students.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, like basically everybody else, everybody else
• 1:45:59
  Speaker A: goes to it one night. It's that it's also kind of a stand in for like going to a strip club with all of your friends in college and stuff like that. But I think more specifically it's is supposed to be kind of like a kink slash queer club because it like gay club because there's a line of specifically when they're all dancing about how there are several tiktoks of incomplete or experimental gender and like it's all just people, different people, animals and stuff all dancing and like partying together in a way that is I think again supposed to be clearly representative of going to like a gay club or something like that where everybody can go and hang out and be friends and be free and be who they are and stuff like that. That the weird part of it is there is then a public sex show
• 1:46:39
  Speaker B: that they go where they like pull people out of where they pull people
• 1:46:42
  Speaker A: out of the crowd to have sex in front of everybody. And it includes having sex with animals which again within the universe of this story is fine because they're, they have consciousness. They're basically people people. They're just animals that are. You know what I mean?
• 1:46:57
  Speaker B: So.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker A: But it does I under completely understand why the movie and the musicals are. Were like we're not dealing with any of that. That is way too like messy and like difficult to try to like make work. I understand what the book is going for here. This is just that again because this is about college. This is about experimentation and about doing weird stuff with your friends that you all are like, I don't know. Like that was just what you know. And so there are that element of like yeah, we went to a weird sex club and. And that guy had sex with a tiger. Like what? You know, that is what. But it is it like it's. I get what the book is going for. Totally makes sense to not be in the musical or the movie.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker A: And, and, and so. But I also don't have the issue with it in the book that I think a lot of. I've seen a lot of complaints on, like, reviews and stuff about this book of people being like, what was all that bullshit with the Philosophy Club? And it's like, well, I. I get what that is. Like, I get why it's there. And I think it's kind of interesting thing, like, because I saw like, reviews talking about, like, it's like you get this weird, random chapter where they go to the Philosophy Club and we never even really find out what it is. But it's like a sex. And like, people just. It's that kind of classic thing where it's just people not engaging with what the story's trying to do. They just see a weird thing in it that is outlandish because, again, there. And it is. It is shocking. Like, what is described in that chapter is at times morally shocking if you. If you're approaching it from, you know, a norm, like a our universe perspective. There's kind of explicit descriptions of how one might have sex with a tiger that is like, Jesus Christ. Like, what are we doing? And. But within the context of the story, like I said, I understand what that part is supposed to be. And so, like, I get it, and I don't. I don't think it detracts from the story overall and kind of adds a little bit of weird. Again, I like the weirdness of the book that I think a lot of people maybe just don't like the weirdness of the book. Maybe. I don't know.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker B: Speaking of weird things, as interesting and weird as the book's depiction of the wizard being a glowing skeleton is, and I don't dislike it, but I liked that the movie's depiction aligns with the 1939 film.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, I had a similar note that in the book he is describing. Described as like a skeleton, like a stormy skeleton. I don't even know. The one detail I really liked in the book is that it specifically seems to be, like, actively raining in the room where. Where this. Where his little puppet thing is. And Elphaba kind of has to keep retreating a little bit because the rain and water is like, blowing out towards them. And obviously she doesn't want to get wet, so she keeps, like, backing up. Which I thought was kind of interesting and compelling. But I agree. I like. And I really like, really like the, the look of the animatronic thing. It's.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker B: It's cgi, but it looks cool.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker A: The. The big Puppet. Whatever you want to call it. That. That the wizard operates in the film. I think looks really cool. And it's like a big fun room in a way. Yeah. It's fine that I could go either way on.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker A: Depending on what the skeleton looked like.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker B: I guess I. Again, I might feel differently in the second half of the book. Because in the book we have not actually met the man behind the curtain yet. But I really appreciate the musical's depiction of the wizard as a huckster.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker B: He is a good old fashioned confidence man. Because that's exactly what he is.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker A: Exactly what he is. I like the little detail in the movie of them riding his balloon up the tower.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker A: Like trying to escape. It's a fun little dramatic escape moment. Leads to kind of a more dramatic parting of the ways. Like I said. I like them just kind of leaving in the book. But I do like the big action sequence at the end of the movie here. I really like Madame Morrible's propaganda speech that they broadcast about Elphaba. That at least yet hasn't nothing like that has appeared in the book. Maybe that. You know, I could imagine something like that happening at some point. But I really like that moment in the film. I also really love the silhouettes shot. It's like was in all the trailers where when they're up in the top of the tower and right before she like spins her cloak around. Right before she like jumps out the window. And it's like that slow mo. And then the slow push up the broom handle. Really cool shot.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker B: That's her superhero.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker A: That's her superhero shot. I like it. It's really great.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker B: I so absolutely love the little detail of Elphaba reaching for little Elphaba as she grasps the broom where she sees her reflection. But it's her as a kid.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker B: And then she reaches out to her and her hand closes around the broomstick. I really love that.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. I thought it was great. I was like the falling moment before the big. Because this is like where the music. They take some of the most liberties with the music and adding some of these kind of dramatic moments to it. Which. That's one of them. Where she's falling. I like it. It does build up. It creates this anticipation for the big moment in a way that works and just to get to it. Defying Gravity is an all timer. It's like the showstopper of all showstoppers. I think the movie generally captures kind of the grandiose energy of the musical pretty damn well. That. I mean, that One chord progression every time it hits like that. Every time it just like you can feel it in my soul. I don't know what it is about that chord progression, but man, it's so, so good. But. And my final note here that I thought was really interesting is there's actually. Which I think again, kind of works when you're making a movie. Like this is we get this kind of weird meta moment that right before. Right before her big run when she's up in the sky, she like flies around and comes back and gives her speech. She does like Never Gonna Bring Me down and like all the lights in Emerald City like explode and like the power goes out and like everything turns off and you get like this big silence right before the moment where she does the Defying Gravity, like run and. And it's super cool. It feels almost too meta. Like it almost feels like the movie is too self aware in that moment. You know what I mean? Like the universe of the movie like becomes quiet for her musical moment. It works. It's just interesting. It's like I didn't even. I've noticed it more this time than I did the previous times we had watched this about how almost non diegetic that moment is in a way that is very meta. But I think kind of works because it's like every. They know why everybody's here. It's for this moment. And so the movie is like, all right, we'll like really gonna like build to this moment in a way that is. Yeah. I don't know. That being said, I. I still think, as much as I like that, I still think the moment in the stage musical is more impressive, massive than all of the CGI in this whole ending. Just.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker A: The simple lift that they do at the end with the.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker B: Hey.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker B: There is really. There's nothing like live theater, man.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, well. And just that particular moment, if you've never seen it, when that moment happens and she flies up to the top of the stage and her cloak becomes the entire stage. It's just. If you've never seen it before, it is one of those jaw dropping live theater moments. And along with all the music that is happening, it's just. It's mind blowing in a way that watching an entirely CGI thing is just never.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker A: Even as cool as it is, which is very cool.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker B: Which is very cool. But it's never going to capture the goosebumps of seeing that done for real in front of you.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker A: In front of you as a magic trick. Like a real. It's Like a real magic trick. Because in the movie your brain goes, this is computers.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is fake.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker A: It's fake. In the, in the theater, you're like, this is happening. She is flying. And yeah, so it's just never gonna quite match that. But it gets about as close as you can, other than the lighting, which we'll talk about later. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every, every way.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker B: One of Glinda's early lines in the movie, are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? Is ostensibly what the book is also exploring.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker A: Yes, that is exactly what it's about. Absolutely. One thing I noticed that I thought was interesting is that when Elphaba is, like, first introduced at Shiz, she is described as having long, foreign looking black hair. And I was like, wait, is Elphaba like, canonically black? Because like, there was obviously when. When Cynthia Erivo was cast, there was people being like, oh, blah, blah, blah about making Glinda or not Glinda alpha but black. And I was like, sounds almost like she's supposed to be. Now, later we do get a further description that her hair is specifically like silky and smooth and like. And so I don't think she's. Because ostensibly it's not supposed to be like kinky, like, Right.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker B: Hair or whatever. Not described as like type three or four hair.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker A: Yes. But that being said, it is described as foreign black hair. Foreign looking black hair in a way where it's like. I think Elphaba is probably supposed to not be white, quote, unquote, in the way that, like, Glinda is white.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker B: Right. And obviously she's green. So there's a whole other layer there. But I also do wonder if. If she's canonically meant to be Jewish.
• 1:56:35
  Speaker A: That could be.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. Partly because of the way that witch stereotypically, but like. Yeah, allegorically.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker A: Allegorically, yeah.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker B: Canonically. Because Judaism doesn't exist in this.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, I get what you're saying.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Allegorically Jewish because of the way that the classic, like, stereotypes of a witch have intersected with. With stereotypes about Jewish people throughout history. And it's a little more complicated than that because those stereotypes come from a lot of different. Yes, it's a whole big.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker A: A whole lot of ethnicities that have. Yeah.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker B: But yes, I do wonder if maybe that was in there as well.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker A: That very well could be. Very well could be. Absolutely. Glinda does end up stuck in a room with Elphaba. It's for different reasons, but they do. It is similar. Ish enough where she doesn't want to be and she ends up stuck in a room with Elphaba.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker B: Bach is down bad for Galinda, although the book does say that his crush eventually cools somewhat. I'm interested to see where that goes with Nessa Rose and how all of that plays out in the musical. What do you mean? The book? Yeah. Well, we know how it plays out in the musical, but I don't know yet how it's gonna play out in the book. Yeah. So I'm interested to see where the book takes that.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I actually like the beginning of their crush more in the book.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker A: I thought it was. Thought it was kind of fun the way, like, he goes to, like, look at them and then, like, falls off a roof. And then, like, Elphaba finds him. And then he's like, hey, I want to meet Glinda. And then she's like, fine, I'll bring her back here. And then they. They have, like, this little meet cute. And then Elphaba, like, riffs their whole meat cube, which was really fun. I thought.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, she does like a peanut gallery while they're talking.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. I also love that when they meet, Glenda's like, well, we can't date because you're a munchkin lander and I'm a gillikenese or whatever. Also, you're a farmer, and I. I have to marry, like, higher status than that. Also, you're short.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker A: Jesus Christ. Oh, God. But I also like that the end of that first encounter, Amma Clutch shows up and drags Glinda away. And the way that played out, I was like. When I read that, I don't know if you got this. I was actually wondering if their implication there was supposed to be that Elphaba had tipped off. I'm a Clutch. Or not I'm a clutch. This. You heard it from somebody else. I can't remember who, but if Elphaba had tipped off whoever that other person
• 1:58:57
  Speaker B: had, like, orchestrated this thing.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker A: And I was like, this might be the most. The greatest wingmanning ever by Elphaba, but Elphaba tipped off that other person to tip off Amma Clutch so that Amma Clutch would show up and drag Glinda away, thus creating right and forbid the
• 1:59:15
  Speaker B: relationship, thus creating the forbidden romance. The allure of the forbidden romance. Man's.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker A: I don't ultimately think that's probably what it was because later, like, just the way it peters out and they don't end up together. It seemed if that was the case, it just seems like, why would have that. Why would he have written that in as being the case of like this kind of implied thing if that relationship didn't end up mattering really all that much? That being said, when I was reading it in that moment, it seemed like maybe that was like Alphabet being like a next level wingman. I was like, that's pretty amazing. We do get in both the movie and the book. And it is. There is an explicit scene of it in the book. Dillman kind of lecturing them about how animals are being persecuted and they're changing the laws and all this sort of stuff. And he's kind of the professor that is, he's their woke professor who is teaching them what's going on in the world. Bach, it's crop and Tippet Tibbett or whatever, I believe who I'm fairly certain are implied to be gay in the book.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker B: A pretty strong language based on the
• 2:00:12
  Speaker A: way Bach describes them. But they like to hang out in the Three Queens library. And I was like, could this be our dancing through life inspiration in the film? We got gay guys hanging out in the library. It's like, it could be, could be, could be where that comes from.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker B: The great drought is briefly mentioned in the movie. In the book, it's actively happening. It had been happened like since the beginning of the book, so very long drought.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker B: We do briefly see the green bottle at the beginning of the book, although Nanny takes it. So Elphaba is not sleeping with it under her pillow. That we know of.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker B: Specifically, Melena says, I remember once there was a tinker with a funny accent that gave me a draft of some heady brew from a green glass bottle. Another moment that I was like, close enough. In the movie, Glinda says to Elphaba, why, Ms. Elphaba, look at you, you're beautiful. Versus in the book, she says, oh, Ms. Elphaba, you terrible mean thing. You're pretty.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That scene is also built in. The book is built around Elphaba trying on one of Glinda's hats.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker A: So I think that. I imagine that's where that idea for that scene in the musical of her getting the hat and stuff from her doesn't play out remotely the same. She just tries it on and it's not like uglier, you know, she's just like, oh, yeah, whatever. But her trying on one of Glinda's hats, I was like, that's gotta be where they got that Idea from I thought Elphaba has this read of Glinda as a character in the book that I thought was really fascinating. And I just wanted to read because it kind of summarizes who she is and does match the version of Glinda that we get in the film. You know, Bok she said, the thing is, I have become fond of Galinda myself. Behind her starry eyed love of herself, there is a mind struggling to work. She does think about things when her mind is really working. She could, if led, think on you even, I suspect somewhat fondly, I suspect. I don't know. But when she slides back into herself, I mean into the girl who spends two hours a day curling that beautiful hair. It's as if. It's as if the thinking Glinda goes into some internal closet and shuts the door or as if she's in hysterical retreat from things that are too big for her. I love her both ways, but I find it odd. I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out. And just. So, yeah, the kind of this. There's two versions of Glinda. There's the Glinda that thinks about things and the Glinda who is worried about fashion and being popular.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker B: Elphaba canonically can sing.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker A: Yes. This cracked me up. She can sing in the book, they go to a pub.
• 2:02:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:02:52
  Speaker A: And they're like.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker B: They find out she can sing and
• 2:02:55
  Speaker A: they're like, sing us a song. Elphaba made up a little song on the spot. A song about longing and otherness. But far away in future days, strangers close their eyes to listen. And I love to imagine that in canonically in the book she is singing an acapella version of Defying Gravity in that moment. Because that is kind of song about longing and otherness and Far Away and future days and all that sort of stuff. There might be a better example in the second act that I'm not thinking of of like a song for that. I don't know, but I thought that was very funny. I was like just imagining her belting Defying Gravity in a pub with like 30 people by herself. But yeah, she can sing. And then also. So that song is specifically about like a land without injustice and all this sort of stuff. And when she finishes, Nessa has a comment about how that they can find a place like that. She was singing about how she was singing about the afterlife or something like that. And I was like, classic religion. The only way we can get a good world is to Fucking die and just arrive there. We can't possibly make that happen. We have to just die and achieve it in that way.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker B: Glenda kind of sort of siding with the wizard at the end.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker B: Or at least try trying to distance herself from some of Elphaba's more radical rhetoric.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. In both the movie and the book, Elphaba is like, hey, you. This is. You got to do. This is dog or whatever.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker B: And Glenda's like, let's think about this.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker A: Let's calm down a little bit. Yeah.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker B: And then the ending in both. The ending of the first two sections of the book and the ending of the movie is pretty different, but the idea is kind of the same. The first act of the story ends with Elphaba and Glinda going to see the wizard and then Alphabet going off to be a revolutionary without Glinda while Glinda stays behind. Yeah.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker A: Very similar. Similar. Broadly. I was actually surprised at how similar.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker A: That was. I was expecting it to be way more different. I was like, yeah, we kind of end up in, like, the same spot, even though how we get there is very different. All right, we got some stuff that we want to talk about in Lost in Adaptation.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker B: Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker A: Yes, yes.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlocked as soon as possible.
• 2:05:04
  Speaker A: So normally Lost Adaptation is stuff like we're confused about in the book versus the movie or whatever. And getting more context. This is kind of just our catch all to discuss stuff that we didn't know where else to put.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. I was kind of putting two different types of things in here. One is that, like, changes that I didn't really know what to do with because I don't know how the second half of the book is going to play out. And also changes that I was like six of one, half a dozen of the other.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker B: One of my first notes was that I think we'll have to put a pin in. No one mourns the witch Wicked. And see if there's anything similar to that scene at the end of the book. Because there is. The whole last section of the book is titled the Murder and Its Afterlife. So I think it's possible we could get some.
• 2:05:51
  Speaker A: Something similar about people celebrating after she dies.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, We've touched on this. But I think it's interesting that Elphaba is radicalized way earlier in the book through her experiences as a missionary, essentially
• 2:06:07
  Speaker A: just through her whole childhood. But yeah.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker B: And she just trusts the wizard before we even get to Shiz. Which is interesting and made me wonder if that's why she seemed more immune to Madame Morrible than Glinda and Nessa
• 2:06:21
  Speaker A: Rose did in the book.
• 2:06:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm really interested to see where all of that goes in the second half of the book. That being said, I think the way the movie handles her character arc works really well. She kind of gets taken in by feeling accepted for the first time by Madam Moore, who, as I said, seems to be a better manipulator in the movie. One similarity between book and movie, Elphaba, is that they both think the wizard will change his mind about animals once presented with new evidence.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I felt that that was my note, is that I thought the wizard and I kind of captured some of Elphaba's naivete about, like, that we get in the book about the wizard, which she is suspicious of him, but also we get an exchange or a line in the book. Book where she thinks, but of course, he must be. He's a man in power. It's his job to consider changes in knowledge. Like, yeah, when they're talking about, like, they're basically like, well, if. If I take him this information about the animals, surely. Surely he'll do the right thing, basically. And so the book does set her up as kind of very naive and idealistic in that way, which I felt ran a little bit contrary to her general air of cynicism about the way world that she has in the book. And like, yeah, she's a lot like, as you said, she's a lot more suspicious of authority and stuff, in a way, while at the same time she kind of has this blind trust that if she goes and presents her evidence.
• 2:07:46
  Speaker B: And I thought that was. But I do think that is kind of a typical thing of being in that, like, college era, early 20s phase of your life where you're like, you're starting to see how the sausage is made.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker B: In the world. But you also still have that kind of naive quality of like, surely people are good.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah, yeah, that's. Yeah. And that's. That's fair. Speaking. You mentioned this earlier about the exchange where Glinda and Elphaba first meet. And I have this note. There's this moment during the wizard and I song in the movie. And I put this here because I just want to talk about it. I didn't know what's. I didn't know how I felt about it, where Elphaba is singing and she sings about how she can go. She's going to go and talk to the wizard and he's going to ask what she wants and she can say she doesn't want to be green anymore.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker A: Or he's. Or not even that. She's not that. She will say that he will offer that.
• 2:08:41
  Speaker B: Offer to degree.
• 2:08:42
  Speaker A: And she'll be. She'll. She'll say, no, no, no, obviously I don't want that, but if you want to do that, sure.
• 2:08:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:08:48
  Speaker A: And I was like, but I don't. I don't think book Elphaba would remotely care about being so. Either de Greenified or whatever. Also, I felt like that moment, even movie runs kind of contrary to the moment where she first meets Elf or Glinda. And Glinda says like, hey, I'm going to study and I'm going to become the best sorcerer so that I can help you with your problem. And when she says problem, Elphaba has like a crestfallen. Like, oh, you see, my skin color is a problem. Implying that Elphaba does not see her skin color as something she would. I do think it's just playing with the complex emotions that people have about their own appearance and stuff like that. I think that's fair. But it does. There is a little bit of a tension there that, like, I.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker B: No, I think that tension. I think that tension makes sense. I think it is. It is perfectly reasonable to have something that you might maybe not like so much about yourself, but you would object to somebody else.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker A: Right.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker B: Having a problem with it.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker B: I think those are two different things.
• 2:09:51
  Speaker A: Okay, so that's fair. So it works within the context of the movie. That being said, I still think it's very clear, literally a change from her character within the book of. I don't think her character in the book would have that moment of like.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker B: I don't either.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker A: Oh, wizard, you want to turn me not green.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker A: Like.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker B: But it also, in the book, it seems like her being green is not as much of an issue.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. Nobody brings it up anymore in the.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker B: Like, it brings up occasionally, but people generally don't seem to really care that much.
• 2:10:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:10:18
  Speaker B: And maybe that's because there are also differently. A lot of other differently colored people in the universe of the book, which is.
• 2:10:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. It's less weird when there's. Yeah. There's people with like, other colors. Yeah.
• 2:10:31
  Speaker B: When they're also red and blue people. It's maybe a little, little less weird for somebody to be green. But I also mentioned this earlier, but I thought it was interesting in the book that Elphaba doesn't seem to show any, like, magical aptitude because it's such a big part of the movie and the musical.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker B: Is that she has these powers that she can't control.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker A: Yes. Which I do like that scene in the movie early on where she, like, throws the rocks at the kids, just.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker A: Setting up. That she can't control the power, but also that she has these powers. She can't really super control them, but she also kind of can control them. But also she stands up the bullies. Like, there's a lot of character work happening there that I Like, I will say because I thought the same thing. I was like, wow. Yeah. She doesn't really. Is not seemingly have any magical powers in the book at the. At this point. There is one scene that I think is supposed to allude to that, though. I don't know if you noticed this. They have that one scene where it's early on, Glinda and Elphaba are hanging out in the tower. I think it's the night they're discussing. It's like the first time they have an actual conversation. And they talk about how it is storming outside. And like. Because she at one point goes and looks at herself in the window, the reflection of herself with the hat on or whatever in the window. And like, it's storming and a leaf blows up. And then the next day they're talking to Amber. A clutch. And I'm a clutch. Mentions that it didn't rain the night before. And they're like, what? Did it only rain on our tower? And I think there might be an implication there that Elphaba did that. Like, it was in, like, passively. Maybe she caused it to storm around the tower. Emo, like through. In the same way as in the book. Through her emotions, her emotional reaction, whatever.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker B: Maybe. Yeah. I don't know.
• 2:12:11
  Speaker A: Because that's a. That they're mentioned that that is never touched on again. We never find out if somebody else did that or like, what. What that. You know, it's never. So far it has not been touched on again. So I thought that just might be what that is. Maybe. I don't know.
• 2:12:25
  Speaker B: So I knew going into this book.
• 2:12:27
  Speaker A: I did not.
• 2:12:28
  Speaker B: I knew this. I had read this as like, a fun fact between the like book and the musical before. I knew going into this book that Nessa Rose didn't have arms. That that was part of her disability in the book. But I 100% thought that she. She was also still in a wheelchair in the book. She's Not. She just doesn't have arms.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker A: Doesn't have arms.
• 2:12:51
  Speaker B: And I definitely get why they would change that, particularly for a stage show, because hiding an actor's arms on stage like that, I'm sure could be done.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker A: That was my thought. I was like, well, you could do that. You could just wrap their arms behind their back. And it made a very obvious point.
• 2:13:06
  Speaker B: It feels potentially dangerous.
• 2:13:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was like, I didn't think about that yet. If they trip or anything at any point, they just face plant.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, you just can't catch yourself.
• 2:13:14
  Speaker A: That's very dangerous.
• 2:13:14
  Speaker B: Also, you would have to be, like, very careful about the way that you did that because you could damage your arms.
• 2:13:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could definitely do it. But I think your point about. Yeah, it being dangerous if you trip, you just smash your face on the stage. Yeah, that would be.
• 2:13:29
  Speaker B: And like, if this had started as a movie and not as sure, in a movie. Yeah, you could probably show. I think they probably would have just gone with her not having arms because they would have done. Done some. Some early CGI or something to disappear her arms.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker A: Do you remember, I put this here because I figured we'll talk about. Might as well talk about the sapphic element of this story somewhere. Do you remember if what is this feeling has some of the sapphic undertones in the musical that it does in the movie? Yes, it does. Okay. I don't remember the specifics in the movie, but the way that starts it obviously reads.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker A: Like they're talking about having a crush on each other.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker B: Absolutely. The movie leaning into.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker B: Both the. The implication in the stage show and also the, like, ensuing fandom war.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:14:19
  Speaker B: Of Wicked.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker A: So. Okay, but my point was when you said it's the movie leaning into it, that was. What I'm asking is how much of that kind of text in the movie is. Actually, I. I would have to remember that right before what is this feeling starts or right at the beginning of it, there's this exchange. Or it might even be a line in the song. I can't remember what it is.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker B: Is it. My face is flushing, My head is reeling.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker B: That's from the song.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker A: That's from the. Okay, so do you think in the musical that that is the implication or if that's just. People have since read that. Now, to be fair, it's also in the book.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker A: I think this book has this same. Some staffic undertones in the same way in their relationship.
• 2:15:04
  Speaker B: I think. Yes. I think the book is pro Guelphy.
• 2:15:07
  Speaker A: Yes. It seems like it. Okay. Because, like. Well, and because there's a handful of different moments and stuff. One of them, they. They sleep in the same bed. And there's even a line where it says, like, glenda tells herself it's for protection.
• 2:15:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:15:21
  Speaker A: The reason they're sleeping in bed together. And it's like the. The exact wording of tells her herself it's for protection. Is there. I was like. My eye was like, what does that mean? And I was like, okay, interesting. And so, yeah, I, I. Anyways, I wanted to talk about this here because I have not had it spoiled. And I am assuming, based on the fact that I haven't had it spoiled, that the second movie does not make it canon. It doesn't?
• 2:15:47
  Speaker B: No.
• 2:15:48
  Speaker A: Okay. I was like, you know, do you
• 2:15:50
  Speaker B: think they're gonna do to fanfic for that?
• 2:15:53
  Speaker A: I thought there was a chance that they might say it, we're just gonna do it. And I thought I had heard, like, interviews where, like, Grande and Erivo had alluded to potentially maybe they were just playing it up for marketing or whatever. But. Okay. So they don't make the ship cannon in the sequel.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker B: No.
• 2:16:11
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 2:16:11
  Speaker B: So in regards to your question specifically about what is this feeling? I think, in my opinion. Opinion that the. Particularly the beginning of what is this feeling? Is absolutely supposed to be suggestive.
• 2:16:27
  Speaker A: It's supposed to be suggestive. Yeah.
• 2:16:29
  Speaker B: And I think that the movie is able to lean into that a little more by showing, like, close ups of them and like, you know.
• 2:16:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like, laying in bed staring at each other. Yeah. Yeah. I guess my question is I'd be interested, and I'm sure it's been answered, if, when writing, writing the book slash the music for this, if that was their. I know it's being suggestive intentionally. I am curious if it's supposed to be. I don't know how to describe this. If the suggestiveness of it is just for a wink and a nod as, like, for fun, as a joke, or if it's literally supposed to be like, maybe. You know what I mean, like, about them. I don't.
• 2:17:14
  Speaker B: That's a good question. And I don't know. I know that that that suggestiveness is there and different productions of Wicked play it up or down. And it is. It is definitely a thing that has, since the musical's beginning, consumed the fandom, obviously.
• 2:17:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:17:43
  Speaker B: As for how much of that is, like, sincere within the actual musical?
• 2:17:49
  Speaker A: Like, how much of it is being like, this is our ship. Like, we ship them and that's why we're writing this, even if we're not gonna actually do it, you know what I mean? Versus just like we're using evocative language to help communicate emotion. I could see it either way. And so I was just curious. And I mean, like I said, I'm sure it's has been discussed by them at some point. There's no way they haven't. There's no way they haven't been asked over the years. So I've just never seen them talk about it. So
• 2:18:19
  Speaker B: this was really funny to me as I was reading the book because I was remembering after the first movie came out, some of the, like, jokes online about Glinda sending Dorothy walking to the Emerald City when high speed rail exists in Oz.
• 2:18:34
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 2:18:35
  Speaker B: And it turns out, turns out canonically, per the book, Oz does have a train system.
• 2:18:41
  Speaker A: It has train. I don't know if it's high speed, but it has train.
• 2:18:43
  Speaker B: It has trains. Although notably, it does not have a train running from Shiz to the Emerald City.
• 2:18:48
  Speaker A: They specifically say they have to take like a carriage or something like that
• 2:18:51
  Speaker B: because the train does not run between the two of them.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. On the topic of Ozian infrastructure, in the movie, the wizard is in the middle of building the road, the yellow brick road. Well, he can't decide on the color. And that's what they talk about. And I. I can't entirely recall the timeline of the road in the book, but wasn't the road already built?
• 2:19:08
  Speaker B: I think the. The road is supposed to be something that's like an ongoing project throughout the entirety of the book.
• 2:19:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, it has already been being worked on. Like, it's not like a new thing he's gonna do.
• 2:19:19
  Speaker B: Like, part of Turtle Heart's thing was that they don't want the yellow road in Quadling country because of how fragile
• 2:19:26
  Speaker A: and they'll have to like, dam up the water and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. And that's why I was like. I was trying to be like, but was it the Wizard? And now I can't remember. I would have to go back and double. I can't remember if it was already being built before the wizard showed up.
• 2:19:39
  Speaker B: I think it was.
• 2:19:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I thought. And then the wizard is just expanding it and continuing it. So the idea point being in the movie, him being like, I want to build this road. What color should it be? Is not really. They added that almost more of like an Easter egg for like. Yeah. For only seeing the wizard of Oz.
• 2:19:55
  Speaker B: Apparently he builds the road pretty fast in the movies.
• 2:19:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because by the. Yeah.
• 2:20:01
  Speaker B: I don't think that much time is supposed to pass between the first and second. Like a few years.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker B: But it takes a long time to build roads, guys.
• 2:20:12
  Speaker A: True.
• 2:20:13
  Speaker B: Another thing that I'm not entirely sure what to do with yet is the book's revelation that Elphaba and Nessarose have a younger brother named Shell. Yeah. If. If nothing. If we, like, never meet him and that's not important, then that's like a nothing change.
• 2:20:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. Getting rid of him doesn't mean. Yeah.
• 2:20:32
  Speaker B: If he has some kind of role to play in the second half of the book. I may have different opinions on that. Exactly.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's the same spot.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker B: Similarly, I'm also going to reserve judgment on where Nessa's silver slippers come from.
• 2:20:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker B: Because in the movie, they very explicitly are, like, handed down from her mother.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. We see them at the foot of her mother's bed when she's giving birth to Elphaba. And then later her dad gives them. Gives them to Nessa.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker B: And then in the book, her. Her father does gift her these silver slippers, but he purchased them, says he
• 2:21:08
  Speaker A: purchased them from a tinkerer and that he added the silver glass beads.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:21:13
  Speaker A: So we're. So, yeah. And we were discussing, like, does. Is it in the book the implication that those are the same slippers that he found and bought these slippers from a tinker, and those are the same slippers that Box saw in that painting? Or is it just a.
• 2:21:29
  Speaker B: Or is it, like a foreshadowing thing? I don't know.
• 2:21:31
  Speaker A: We don't know yet.
• 2:21:32
  Speaker B: Because in the Musical, Elphaba is the one who enchants the silver slippers.
• 2:21:36
  Speaker A: Right.
• 2:21:37
  Speaker B: But we don't know yet what's going to happen.
• 2:21:39
  Speaker A: We don't know in the book. Yeah, it could be a thing. Where in the book they're already enchanted and they are the same ancient artifact. And the. And the musical didn't want to explain all that backstory, so just said, well, we'll just have Elphaba enchant them. That could be. We'll see. Yeah. We don't know yet. I'm also interested to see if the Grimory shows up in the second half of the book.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker A: It's not mentioned at all in the first place.
• 2:21:59
  Speaker B: No, we have not encountered it yet.
• 2:22:00
  Speaker A: I haven't heard of the Grimory. I was like, maybe that's what Bok had. Maybe that's what the picture of the Kumric witch is in. Probably not. I Don't know. But, yeah, I was interested. I was like, we'll see, I guess, if the grimory becomes a thing or not.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker B: One thing that I was absolutely fully expecting to encounter in the book, but we haven't. At least not yet. Are the main, or more accurately, slightly bastardized words than the musical, like rejoicify and Disgusticified?
• 2:22:30
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:22:30
  Speaker B: I 100% thought that was gonna be a thing they were pulling from the book. Apparently. It's just not.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. No. Yeah. I would be amazed if it just became a thing in the second half because not a single time has it occurred in the first half of the book. So. Yeah. And I agree. I enjoy those in the movie, though. I thought they're. Or. And they're from the musical, obviously, but I thought that was fun. But, yeah, again, we'll see. But I. Seems like it's just not a thing in the book. A big change that I was unsure of how I felt about because I. But I just wanted to mention is that in the book, Elphaba, basically just when she leave, they leave Oz. Or, sorry, they leave the Emerald City, she tells Glinda, go back to shiz.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker B: I'm not coming.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker A: I'm not coming. But you go back. They won't. They won't. Or she says something like, they'll believe that you weren't involved. Like, whatever. That I kind of forced you here against your will or whatever, so you can just go back to school. She kind of just forces her to do it and then they go their separate ways. In the movie, she asks Glinda to come with her and Glinda says no.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:23:31
  Speaker A: It's a pretty big change, and I'm interested to see how that change feel right now. It doesn't really matter currently, but it does, because really what it is is just. It makes sense because it. Were she to ask her in the book, Glinda would just come with her.
• 2:23:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:23:46
  Speaker A: Because at this point, Glinda is already, like, on her side. Mostly for the most part, seemingly generally on her side. Whereas in the movie they're playing it more nebulous because Glinda has not had
• 2:23:56
  Speaker B: her full arch, she hasn't had her full arc yet, and she's still. She's interested in protecting herself.
• 2:24:05
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:24:06
  Speaker B: Whereas in the book, I think it could be really interesting because I feel like what could play out out is this idea that by essentially abandoning Glinda, that in. In a way, Elphaba then causes her to go further down that road.
• 2:24:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:24:26
  Speaker B: By like, leaving her to that fate. Basically, yeah.
• 2:24:30
  Speaker A: And they're gonna probably play out similarly, I would imagine, where it's that Elphaba or Glinda, while being.
• 2:24:36
  Speaker B: Well, we know who these two characters become.
• 2:24:39
  Speaker A: Yes. So, yeah. So I think it'll work out similarly either way. But it is that specific ch. Interesting. And I'm interested to see how it plays out in the sec. Also, I'll just add, and I've said this before, I actually remember very little of the second half of the musical. And I have not seen the second movie, so I. For whatever reason, I just don't. I think part of it is just because I know all the song. Like, I like the songs in the first half more. So I just remember the plot around it better. I just very much.
• 2:25:03
  Speaker B: Act one of Wicked is. Is, in my opinion, better and more memorable than the second act.
• 2:25:10
  Speaker A: I agree with that. But, like. And so I just. I don't remember all the details of what all goes down in the second half of the musical. So, like, part of me is like, yeah, I'm interested to see how that all plays out and how I feel about that specific choice when we get there. And then the last note I had here is that in the movie we see Frex during the big, final, big musical number while Morrible's giving her speech. We cut back to Nessa Rose is at home with her dad.
• 2:25:33
  Speaker B: We see, like, what some of the other characters are doing.
• 2:25:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. We see, like, Fiyero rides his horse away. We don't know what he's up to. Other characters doing other stuff. But we see. We cut back and see Nessa Rose at home with Frax, their dad. And when he hears the radio broadcast about Elphaba being an enemy as a state or whatever, he seemingly, like, has a heart attack and falls over dead.
• 2:25:54
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 2:25:55
  Speaker A: And I'm interested to see where that goes, if that happens in the. Because that did not happen in the book.
• 2:26:01
  Speaker B: No. At least not yet. I'm assuming something.
• 2:26:04
  Speaker A: Something like that probably happen because that is a big part of what the fallout between Nessa and.
• 2:26:10
  Speaker B: In the book, their dad is not, like, the ruler.
• 2:26:14
  Speaker A: No. He's not a governor or whatever. He's just a guy.
• 2:26:17
  Speaker B: Probably what will happen. So a big thing in the book is that Elphaba is the third throp descending, which means that she's, like, next in line to the. For the throne of Munchkin Land. Kind of.
• 2:26:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:26:33
  Speaker B: So I'm betting what'll happen is that Nessa Rose will get elevated to that position instead, because Elphaba is going to be become like a domestic terrorist, basically. And that's how she becomes then the Wicked Witch of the East.
• 2:26:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:26:51
  Speaker B: All right.
• 2:26:52
  Speaker A: We got a handful of odds and ends before we get to the final verdict.
• 2:27:05
  Speaker B: Mentioned this a couple times, but I am so glad that I recently read both the Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz and even that we recently watched Return to Oz. Because I feel like there are so many little things here and there in the book that I probably wouldn't have caught if I.
• 2:27:23
  Speaker A: There was a mention of the gnome King in the book.
• 2:27:25
  Speaker B: I was like, oh, the gnome king. I was like gnome king mentioned. And we had not settled on Wicked as the next summer series when we covered Return to Oz. So that was just like 10 out of 10 foresight on my part.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker A: Good planning.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker B: Another little detail in the movie that I had not noticed the first two times we watched it was that in the intro we go over the rainbow. Before seeing the rest of Oz, I had never thought which I thought was really fun.
• 2:27:49
  Speaker A: That shot over the fields or when
• 2:27:53
  Speaker B: we come up the side of the cliff, we go over a rainbow and then we see like Munchkin Land.
• 2:27:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. Every time I've seen this movie that that like flat. Not flashback, but the scene from Elphaba's childhood where they're sitting out in grave the garden and she's sitting there talking and Nessarose is a baby and she's like talking to Nessarose. That Nessa, the baby playing Nessarose. The way she says yeah every time gets me so her yeah is so funny. I don't. It's the best performance in the movie. I don't that. Yeah. Yeah. Like the way she says yeah is so funny and cute. I kills me every time.
• 2:28:31
  Speaker B: This is actually slightly before that, but when. When Glinda's in during. No one mourns the Wicked. Having a giant burnable effigy just ready and waiting is crazy work.
• 2:28:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:28:44
  Speaker B: Y' all munchkins are crazy.
• 2:28:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Is. And because I just genuinely couldn't remember. This is the Glinda hair flip thing from the musical.
• 2:28:51
  Speaker B: I think so. Yeah.
• 2:28:52
  Speaker A: I was just curious if that was like a this movie thing or a musical. I just genuinely couldn't remember.
• 2:28:58
  Speaker B: Michelle Yeoh.
• 2:29:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:29:01
  Speaker B: Ken, like just barely talk a song well enough to get by here.
• 2:29:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:29:08
  Speaker B: And Madam Morrible is not like a song. Like it's not a singing heavy role. But she. She can like just barely do it enough to get by here.
• 2:29:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think Michelle yo's like awful in This. I generally quite like her. I think. I think she's fantastic in everything, everywhere, all at once. But I. I don't think she's great in this movie.
• 2:29:30
  Speaker B: She's not great.
• 2:29:31
  Speaker A: I don't think she's miscast. She has moments like when you're watching her play this, she's great as the physicality of this role, but something about. And I think part of it's the singing is that song. She just doesn't. She can't carry that song. And again, not that it really. It's not a huge. But it is one of those where you're like, she's not my favorite. It actually feels similarly about. About Jeff Goldblum. Yeah. I like parts of his performance, and
• 2:29:58
  Speaker B: I think he was. I think he was like, a very obvious choice.
• 2:30:01
  Speaker A: Very obvious choice. Yeah. I like parts. I like elements of his performance, but it also sometimes feels like he's not taking it seriously.
• 2:30:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:30:09
  Speaker A: Which kind of works for the role in a way, but is also. But is also a little annoying. Like, it's just like. It feels like he's just there to like.
• 2:30:17
  Speaker B: The problem is that, like, it kind of works for the role, but then it also is like. Okay, so you're just doing Jeff Goldblum.
• 2:30:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Which again, because he's a huckster, it kind of works, like, in a meta way of like, he's. He's like putting on a weird show and it's like all. All in act or whatever. But you could really feel Jeff Goldblum acting on the screen. And so it's the whole thing.
• 2:30:40
  Speaker B: His Jeff Goldblum.
• 2:30:41
  Speaker A: So the whole thing. I just. I don't know. I was mixed on it.
• 2:30:43
  Speaker B: I. Yeah.
• 2:30:44
  Speaker A: And I feel similarly about Michelle Yeoh, where it's just. I felt like. I don't know how.
• 2:30:49
  Speaker B: Well, other thing about Michelle Yeoh in this role, I don't know how much you remember her in the School for Good and Evil.
• 2:30:58
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 2:30:58
  Speaker B: But this really reminded me of her role in that, which is unfortunate.
• 2:31:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, you're not wrong.
• 2:31:07
  Speaker B: Make Fiyero blue, you cowards. Yeah, I do like that his horse is blue.
• 2:31:13
  Speaker A: Wait, is he blue? I thought I must have misread that. I knew he had had, like, diamonds on his face.
• 2:31:18
  Speaker B: No, he's blue.
• 2:31:19
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 2:31:19
  Speaker B: He's blue. He's a blue man.
• 2:31:22
  Speaker A: Because I remember specifically them saying that he seemed to have, like, this diamond pattern.
• 2:31:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, he has, like, a diamond pattern on his skin, which I wasn't 100% sure if that was supposed to be like, tattoos or just like his skin. But he is. He's 100%. The Winkies are blue in the book and his horse is blue in the movie. As like a nod to that, I assume.
• 2:31:43
  Speaker A: Is it blue?
• 2:31:44
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 2:31:44
  Speaker A: So it's always in a nighttime scene. So it's hard.
• 2:31:46
  Speaker B: There's the one scene where he first walks into the shiz courtyard. You can see that his horse is blue. It's like a blink and you miss it moment.
• 2:31:55
  Speaker A: Because every other scene it's at night and it's just like dark and so.
• 2:31:58
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. You can't tell. Speaking of, though, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo pass for college students far better than Jonathan Bailey does, I'm afraid.
• 2:32:10
  Speaker A: A little bit. I. I think they all look a little old.
• 2:32:12
  Speaker B: They all look a little old. But I. I think that the girls are doing a better job of looking young.
• 2:32:20
  Speaker A: In particular, it helps, I think, the green skin, like, and her wardrobe helps because it's harder to.
• 2:32:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:32:27
  Speaker A: Tell. You know what I mean? Like, she's more obscured, like, Whereas. Yeah.
• 2:32:31
  Speaker B: But yes, generally, like Jonathan Bailey looks like a man in his 30s.
• 2:32:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's a little moment in the book that I thought was funny where Elphaba says that she always imagined a dwarf or acrobats inside of Grammatic operating him, which is literally what was true. If you listen to our Return to Oz episode Tick Tock in that there was literally an acrobat inside of it, like hunched over.
• 2:32:53
  Speaker B: And that could be a reference to the movie.
• 2:32:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, I actually think it probably is a reference to the movie or to Return to Oz. A great little cinematic moment in the movie that I love is right at the beginning of Popular Popular, when she's leading into the song and she starts singing the moment you will be right before Popular. And she's leaning closer to her. We get this staged dolly push where the camera pushes in, pushes in and then gets really close right before. I love that moment. It's such a great little detail.
• 2:33:25
  Speaker B: And not that she wasn't already doing great because as she was prior to this, but Popular is what really sold me on Ariana Grande as Galinda. Think like going into this movie, she was the thing that I was most like. I don't know about.
• 2:33:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Her manic ass energy as Glinda, particularly during Popular is it works really well and that she sells it in that number for sure.
• 2:33:53
  Speaker B: I also love the little ruby slippers cameo during Popular.
• 2:33:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Aribo's version of I'm not that girl in this. I think it's super pretty. I don't love. It also always reminds me of a song that I can never play, and I still don't. Don't know what it is. Every time I hear it, I'm like, that sounds like something else to me. And I don't know what it is, but I do. I will say, as I mentioned earlier, I don't love the lighting in that scene. And it. Because it's just like a CG forest and it's just. It's too dark.
• 2:34:20
  Speaker B: I get what they were going for, but it doesn't look good.
• 2:34:23
  Speaker A: It just, It's. It's like one of those where it's like, you just need a little more, like, go a little less realistic with the lighting and just give us a little more fantasy. Yeah. Give us a little more.
• 2:34:32
  Speaker B: It's a magical fantasy. Sea, land, forest.
• 2:34:36
  Speaker A: Just give us more there. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:34:38
  Speaker B: No, after you mentioned, after we watched this that it reminded you of some other song, I was like, I was Googling and I was trying to figure out if maybe somebody else had pointed out, because sometimes composers have, like, you can hear, like, similarities in parts of their songs from different shows. So I was trying to look and I was like, maybe there's some other thing that he's written that has, like, a similar, like, you know, chord progression or something somewhere. And I couldn't find anything, but I did find a whole Reddit thread of people talking about how I'm not that Girl is their least favorite song in the first act. And I was like, it's not. What? It's not, like, high on my list. It's not one of my favorite favorites. But saying that I'm not that girl is your least favorite is wild. When a Sentimental man exists.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Fair. I was going to say, say I was like, well, I could actually see that. But then you. Yeah, I remembered Sentimental man, and. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't get to the same heights as a lot of the other music in it, but I. I genuinely think it's one of the prettier, like, songs.
• 2:35:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:35:40
  Speaker A: In that first, I. I think it's. I. I don't know. I really love it. I think it's really beautiful. But that being said, it. Yeah. Compared to everything else.
• 2:35:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. Compared to some of the more, like, fun, bombastic numbers. I. I get it. But also, like, literally, my next note here is, I always forget that we have to suffer through a sentimental man before we can get to Defying Gravity.
• 2:36:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. We get to suffer through either Jeff Goldblum or somebody pretending to be Jeff Goldblum mumbling through like that is. It's not. That's another one where it's like, just get somebody who can.
• 2:36:14
  Speaker B: A Sentimental man is one of those numbers that it's, it's a. It's a set change, costume change number where it exists to fill time so that we can do things backstage and put things in place for the next big number, which is Defying Gravity.
• 2:36:33
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:36:33
  Speaker B: And speaking of Defying Gravity, I do love the way that Elphaba's cloak seems to grow towards the end of Defying Gravity in the movie as a nod to the stage show where we have the absurdly long cloak that's used to help hide the lift apparatus that the actress stands on to fly. But I also think it works as a dramatic nod to her growing power and eventual darkness.
• 2:36:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's a great choice because I was always. I remember thinking before going to see the movie, like, how are they going to do this big moment, you know, at the end? And I think they do a pretty good job. I will say overall, I actually quite like the lighting and coloring of this movie broadly. A lot of people, like I said earlier, a lot of people have complained about it. I think it mostly works. I think that particular scene, the shots of her in the sky when the camera's looking up at her, she's just on underlit and not contrasty enough with the background. Like I understand what they're doing with the background. It's like dawn. We have this purpley turmoil filled background. It's like a storm building behind her as well. I get what they're going for, but it ends up being muddier and less dynamic than that moment deserves, in my opinion. I don't know what they could have done there. Maybe a big God ray from the sun. It needed something to just make her stand out more and pop more and to make that moment more dramatic. That's like the one big moment that I think looks kind of bad. Not overall a lot of that looks fine, but just the close ups of her in that moment where it's like this is the moment and it's just. It doesn't look great in my opinion.
• 2:38:13
  Speaker B: My last note here is just me being a theater kid because back in the day I wanted to be cast as Alphabus so bad. Not that I. Not that I was unique for that, because that, that was like the role when I was in high school. Yeah, I wanted to be Alphaba so bad. Although I, I acknowledged that as a, at the time, petite, blonde, Soprano, who was never much of a belter. I had a far better chance of locking down Galinda. I never got the opportunity to be in a production of Wicked. If I had, at the right moment, I probably could have been Galinda.
• 2:38:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:38:53
  Speaker B: But alas.
• 2:38:54
  Speaker A: Do you want to share your fun little family connection to this? Yeah, I. I didn't. I was realized it wasn't in the notes anywhere. I feel like you.
• 2:39:02
  Speaker B: I. I do feel a little weird talking about it because I don't. I don't know him personally.
• 2:39:09
  Speaker A: I still.
• 2:39:09
  Speaker B: At least I don't think I ever met him. If I did, it would have been when I was really little. But Norbert Leo Butts, who originated the role of Fierro on Broadway, is my cousin Emily's uncle on her dad's side. So not on my side.
• 2:39:28
  Speaker A: He's from Saint Louis.
• 2:39:29
  Speaker B: He's from Saint Louis. And also my mom was in shows with him.
• 2:39:35
  Speaker A: Your mom has performed with.
• 2:39:36
  Speaker B: Has performed with Norbert Leo Butts, like, in musicals when she was in high school and college. Village maybe. Which is cool. Yeah, it's fun. That's. That's my. That's my lock on six degrees of separation. I can. I can get to so many people
• 2:39:54
  Speaker A: through, like, 2 degrees from a lot of people, 3 degrees from probably a lot of people. Yeah.
• 2:39:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:39:58
  Speaker A: No, 100%. Well, it was particularly funny because as we're watching the movie, you. We get a cameo during all the cameos at the end when. When Adina Mazel and Kristin Chenoweth show up. We also get Steven Schwarz is the guard who, like, welcomes them into to Meet the Wizard. And then also the guy who's, like, narrating the play. I looked it up, and it says on Wikipedia that he is Fiero in the original Broadway production. And then I was like, wait. But I thought. And then you were like, wait, no, that was. And. And it's so actually. And I don't know if it was a. Why they got this guy and not. So this guy that makes a cameo in the movie doing that is the guy who was the understudy for Fiyero, and he was also in the company or whatever. Yeah.
• 2:40:43
  Speaker B: Usually understudies are in the ensemble.
• 2:40:45
  Speaker A: And he took over for Fiero event. He was the replacement for Fiero, but he was not the original Fiero. And I wondered if there was, like, a scheduling thing where they couldn't get him.
• 2:40:54
  Speaker B: No, I'm not sure why he didn't cameo.
• 2:40:57
  Speaker A: Why he wouldn't get a cameo, but this guy would, you know, What? I mean, the stuff that was interesting.
• 2:41:01
  Speaker B: Maybe he didn't want to do it. I don't know.
• 2:41:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I just like, I thought that was interesting. All right, before we get hit the final verdict, we wanted to remind you, you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, Goodreads, any of those places. We would love to hear what you have to say about Wicked. Pretty short turnaround on the. Well, we, we'll give it a few days.
• 2:41:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'll. We'll put, we'll put out the next prequel a day or two later so that people have more time to respond.
• 2:41:23
  Speaker A: A little bit more time to respond. But yeah, since this episode's a little late, it will be not a super long turnaround before the next prequel. But we would love to hear what you have to say about Wicked the movie, Wicked the musical, Wicked the book, the first half of it, interact. We will talk about that on the next prequel episode. You can also help us by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. Write us a nice little five star review. Write it, give us a five star rating, all that kind of stuff. Super helps out. And you can Support us at Patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit Support us there. Get access to bonus content starting at the $5 a month level. Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 2:41:59
  Speaker B: Damn. Sentence passed, verdict after. That's stupid. For years, all I've ever heard from people who've read the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the west is that it's terrible. An awful book. But in reading the first 180 pages or so, that wasn't my experience. Is it the best book ever? No. But my main complaint is that the writing feels a little YA with some random sex sprinkled in. And I'm wondering if that's because Gregory Maguire was primarily a children's author prior to writing the Wicked books. Now, of course, I may change my mind in the second half, but overall I'm enjoying it. It goes down pretty easy. The movie and the music musical presents a pretty different story, albeit working off of the same narrative skeleton. And there are more similarities than I had anticipated. Those similarities are just similar in the way that apples and oranges are both fruit and not similar. Like two different varieties of apple are the same, but different. There is some stuff that I really like about the book. I love the expanded and more nuanced backstory for Elphaba's child childhood. I loved Galinda's more fleshed out and more nuanced character. I loved that basically all of the movie characters plus a few extra are a college friend group. And I loved that a lot of the lore felt more informed by the weirdness of the original Oz books. But I was pretty surprised by how much of the first half of this book isn't really about Elphaba. Part one is more about her family and parents. Parents. In part two we mainly see her through the eyes of Galinda and then Bok, who also both have their own things going on. I was prepared for the book's world and story to be bigger than the film, but I wasn't prepared for such relative distance from the main character, at least so far. I think I prefer the movie's take on Elphaba as a young girl who gets drawn in and manipulated, but who ultimately can't be swayed from her condition convictions. And honestly, I like the songs the first half of this musical is almost entirely banger after banger. I'm going to give this one to the movie, but to be honest, I don't feel particularly strongly about that. Verdict I'm looking forward to judging these properties against each other as complete pieces.
• 2:44:36
  Speaker A: Well, this is gonna sound pretty similar. I wrote this separately. The only thing I had ever heard about this book was that it wasn't very, very good and that it was weird. So weird and bad. Well, after reading roughly half of it, I'm here to tell you that so far I think it's weird and pretty good. I've really enjoyed the deeper, weirder and more complex world of Oz that this book presents. I like learning about all the bickering religions and the political factions, and I think the book makes the world of Oz feel like a real physical world with history and weight. The political messaging is a bit didactic and no one could ever accuse it of being subtle, but I think it works fairly well. There's a bit of a strange tension between the writing style, which feels more akin to a YA novel like Harry Potter, and some of the subject matter, but it ends up feeling like a relatively natural progression. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and a million other YA fantasy series are for teenagers. This one's for people in their 20s. The movie is far better than I expected it to be upon a first viewing, and it holds up upon a third. I don't love all of the creative choices, but overall I think a total a fun, relatively colorful and well crafted presentation of the musical on the big screen. Erivo and Grande are both fantastic and I'm not sure either role could have been done better. Jonathan Bailey's great Yeoh and Goldblum are a mixed bag, but the thing that the movie gets most right and it's the most important part are the big musical moments. It has the energy and the bombacity that you need from Wicked the movie. I really can't tell you which I prefer more the book has more interesting stuff going on, but the movie is a soaring emotional rollercoaster that has made me cry or nearly crazy cry every time I've watched it. So I think for now I'm going to give it to the movie. Part two could change everything. Katie, what's next?
• 2:46:17
  Speaker B: Up next, we are talking about 2025's wicked colon for good.
• 2:46:23
  Speaker A: Yes, obviously. Yeah. We will be wrapping up our 2026 summer series talking about Wicked for Good. The second half of the musical in the second half of this book. Join us in two weeks time when we're doing that and come back in one week's time or just under one week's time as we see what you all had to say about Wicked until that time. Guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody
• 2:46:46
  Speaker B: else, keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.
• 2:47:00
  Speaker A: Sam.