Oh lord. This did not need to be a two parter. Man, I miss movies being well contained 90 minute stories.
Unless its a planned trilogy with 3 strong stories that could semi-standalone (short of context being lost without the other installments) then any movie that needs more than 2 hours should just be a mini series. You wanna tell a 4 hour long story about the Wizard of Oz? Fine, stick it on Netflix and anyone who wants to binge watch it can to make it “feel like a movie” and those who don’t will have 4 - hour long episodes.
They wouldn’t make 4 episodes, they’d make 8 and half of them would be filler episodes.
Just saw part one. As I had suspected, they would’ve been hard pressed to get both acts into one film.
A Broadway show can get away with a lot more compression. There are no establishing shots on a stage. And Wicked, as a musical, moves. The movie didn’t overstay its welcome, it didn’t waste much time. But it still easily filled its runtime.
Making the two acts into two films was a good call. Though I suspect the second film won’t be as good as the first, since I’ve always preferred act 1 of the Broadway show.
It’s really clear to me that the cast and crew weren’t lying when they said they love the musical and wanted to do right by it.
Just you wait…
- 2024: Wicked (Part 1)
- 2025: Wicked Part 2 (Part 1)
- 2026: Wicked Part 2 (Part 2)
Someone’s been to the Attack on Titan School of Numbering.
Starting to look like a prog album:
2028: Wicked, are you there? I’m destroying Dorothy volume iii Through the eyes of Oz
I’m still bitter about Spider-Man. Had no idea it was a part one until it ended. Maybe we just create whole movies with the 2+ hours we are using.
I was so psyched for that movie, but when I found out it was a part one, I lost interest and still haven’t seen it
It completely killed any narrative cohesion or pay-off by just ending. I remember thinking “it’s been a really long time… how are they going to wrap this up?”
Turns out the answer is “don’t wrap it up”. It truly makes me not recommend it - though I had other issues with it aside from just that absurd decision. Rewatch the first again, instead.
I agree the split in half angle was horribly handled but the movie wasn’t totally ruined. ::: spoiler Narratively across the spider-verse was gwens story. It started with her and ended with her and miles was the backdrop for much of what happened spoiler ::: . I’ve seen the movie 3 times and I still love it. I don’t think the take away is movies should be shorter because it had so much amazing visuals and story telling and really ramped up the expectations for the next one. The take away is don’t lie to your audience pretending it’s a single movie. Also don’t lie and say the next one is coming out in 8 months, it’s been 2 years lol. They were never gonna make that deadline.
Which Spiderman was a part 1 of 2?
The second spider-verse movie, I think. No mention of it being a trilogy but the story clearly ended setting up a third movie.
Those movies were already too long, IMO. The shortest of the two is 114 minutes. My son really liked them, but we had to break up each movie into more than one session.
2 hours is reasonable for a movie. It’s when it goes to three that it needs to be a really good movie.
Oh I don’t mind it as much; but, for an animated movie that’s somewhat geared towards a wider age demographic range, it felt a bit too long for younger viewers.
Same, caught it on a plane and was pissed I had to keep sitting there not knowing the actual ending
Just make it long with an intermission.
Lots of old musical films did that. Like Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, and Hello Dolly.
They don’t want to pay for the special effects for the sequel if the first movie bombs
Damn, I planned on watching this too. No point now.
Just saw it. I recommend you go see it. Especially if you liked the Broadway show. They did a good job, and having seen it I’m glad they’re doing the acts as separate movies, it lets them take time with establishing shots and emotional beats. It’s a good time, saw it with a group and we all loved it.
Never seen the play. Didn’t even know it was based on it.
Oh. Then I have no idea if you’d like it. I loved it, but I love the musical. I haven’t yet heard opinions from people who didn’t already know the show.
Wow I didn’t know they cut it in half. After the whole poster thing I wasn’t super enthused to see the film, after all I thought the play did amazing job, now I’m even less enthused.
I just saw it. If you liked the Broadway show, definitely see the movie. Wait to see it streaming if you don’t want to see it in theaters, but they definitely did right by the musical, and having seen it I’m glad they made it into two films.
Edit: I’m not sure why recommending it based on having seen it earned a downvote…am I not adding to the conversation?
I saw the trailer yesterday at the theaters. Looks like hot garbage
I dunno i went to wicked.com and it looked pretty nice :]
Good. Hope this thing flops.
Hope this thing flops.
Why?
I like Wicked. I would’ve preferred a single-movie version, but there is a lot of plot kind of rushed or skipped over in the musical. If they go back to the source material of the book they can flesh some of that out nicely and give more context to the story.
It might be good! It might be terrible. I don’t know yet.
But why hope for it to flop?
Edit, days later having seen the film: It was great, and I have essentially no complaints. Glad they split it into two, it would’ve been far too rushed as a single movie.
I was surprised when Dune did it, not sure why they hid it.
Dune I can give a pass to because Frank Herbert originally wrote it as a trilogy and combined it into one book. It has pretty clear chunks breaking it up. They absolutely should have been better about advertising what it was, but it’s hard to cover all that content succinctly
Wicked however is based off a 2 hour and 45 minute Broadway show with a 15 minute intermission. There is no good reason that a movie that can have tighter transistons, faster costume changes, and no reused cast should be longer than the Broadway show. Let alone twice as long and spread over multiple films
Strictly speaking, the show is somewhat based on a series of novels. There’s an awful lot of story in those that is simply not present t in the musical, but could possibly have been included in the movie. I don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but there’s certainly a canon source for substantially more content.
Also the novels are kinda bad tbh, the first one is tolerable but they really fall off. Maguire is a bit of a hack.
From what I remember reading, yes there is some added content from the books that is not in the musical stage adaptation. I think it’s more of Elphaba’s childhood (which is quite a bit in the book).
Also remember reading that one of the reasons they decided to split it was because they couldn’t find a reasonable way to move on after “Defying Gravity” (This is the big number before intermission in the musical and really does feel like the end of that chapter) to the next scene in the film, so they decided to split the films too. Not saying it was the best way to go but maybe it means they can add more book related stuff to the second half too. The musical is sorely lacking there too.
It’s annoying when they do it for sure. And personally, I love a long movie. I’d rather watch a three hour epic than two 90 minute movies.
But I don’t have the attention span of a goldfish like many people seem to have these days. So it’s understandable that they feel the need to split, especially if there’s going to be kids watching it.
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