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.
The whole Broadway show can be done in a 2 hour-ish performance live, there is no justification to stretch this to two movies other than corporate greed milking every IP to the limit
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.
I’m starting to suspect that this is why I don’t watch as many films as I’d like to. They’ve all become such a time commitment. Show me what you can do with an hour and a half!
Oh lord. This did not need to be a two parter. Man, I miss movies being well contained 90 minute stories.
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.
The whole Broadway show can be done in a 2 hour-ish performance live, there is no justification to stretch this to two movies other than corporate greed milking every IP to the limit
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.
There are still plenty of those. My word the histrionics from some corners around this film are absurd.
I’m starting to suspect that this is why I don’t watch as many films as I’d like to. They’ve all become such a time commitment. Show me what you can do with an hour and a half!