As an avid theatre kid, I get a rush of joy every time I see a commercial for a new movie adaptation of a beloved musical. Accompanying this, however, is a certain level of fear because I have been burned in the past. Movie musicals require finesse and careful thinking or you end with the live-action Cats. Every once in a while, a film simply does everything right despite the difficulty of the genre and then you get Wicked. But what exactly does Wicked do that makes it so successful? Here is what I think the recipe to a perfect movie musical is, using this excellent film as a template.
With “musical” being half its name, it is essential that a movie musical needs to have good music. I am a firm believer that the worst thing a director can do is cut or add new music to a movie. Audiences want to hear the music they know and love in a fresh new setting, not listen to half-baked original songs trying to win an Oscar— or worse finding out their favorite song was cut. I think the best example of this is the recent Mean Girls the Musical adaptation which cut so many beloved songs or shortened them to the point where they were barely there. Wicked not only kept all the songs from the first act but also made them longer with more dance breaks and time to soak up everything. Another part of music is casting adequate performers to sing it. Wicked cast vocal icons Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande along with Broadway and West End stars Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater. Mean Girls, on the other hand, cast celebrities who had little to no singing experience to tackle very vocally difficult numbers, which made the soundtrack into a meme (Queen Renee Rapp is excluded from this). A movie cannot even attempt to call itself a musical without having at minimally decent music. Sadly many film soundtracks are only talked about when someone is telling you “Listen to the Broadway recording, the movie is horrible”.
Movie musicals must also live up to the “movie” component of their names, specifically, they must use the medium of film to do what Broadway cannot. This is when choosing what musicals to adapt becomes important because some simply work as a stage musical. Cats was such a failure not only because of the horrid CGI but also because it is a very difficult show to adapt to film and director Tom Hooper did not give it any help. Cats is so enjoyable to watch live because it is meant to be a pure spectacle. The little plot it has is made up for in huge dance numbers and all the tricks and flips you could ask for, which is why it was called the first Mega-Musical. Film should have been used to make this show even bigger with vibrant sets and costumes using the freedom of a camera to make every number larger than life. Instead, it made everything extremely realistic and submerged us too far into reality to believe there were singing cats on our screens. They also made everyone sing live, further impeding their dancing ability. In contrast Wicked excels in this department, turning Oz and Shiz into large and imaginative worlds that were not possible with a stage show. They used film to make the numbers even bigger with multiple location changes in the middle of songs and large-scale choreographed dance numbers. The film added things that cannot be done on Broadway which is why it has captivated audiences and separated itself as a different but equally as good adaptation.
The last step is simple but arguably the most important: respect musical theatre. This comes in many forms, like advertising. Audiences saw Wonka and only realized it had singing once they were sitting in the theatre. There seems to be a fear of selling your movie as a musical recently which isn’t smart from a marketing standpoint. Sell your movie to theatre kids who will enjoy the music—people who will actually enjoy the film upon viewing. This also applies to treating the music like a joke. Too many fourth wall breaks or acknowledgments of the singing and dancing feel like a disrespect to theater as an art. Make us believe the illusion of a musical by completely submerging the audience into an insane world where its music is normal and used to tell a story. I have a deep love for musical theater and have a special place in my heart for films like Wicked which are simply a tribute to Broadway and all the theater kids watching. This movie should set the standard for all musical adaptations to follow it and hopefully has raised the bar in the general movie-going audience for movie musicals. In short; movie musicals are an art. Some are equivalent to works in the Louvre and some are only good enough to hang on your mom’s fridge.
