Hacker Cinema
Wicked
2024 · Film · 162 min
Part of Wicked Collection
Directed by Jon M. Chu
In the land of Oz, ostracized and misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba is forced to share a room with the popular aristocrat Glinda at Shiz University, and the two's unlikely friendship is tested as they begin to fulfill their respective destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
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20 comments on Hacker News
> (including the musical episode)
Oh... you had to go and bring up the musical episode. :-)
Let me preface with: I actually like some more modern, top-tier musicals. I saw Wicked on Broadway with the original cast and was blown away by how good it was. Greatest Showman has 3 killer songs and I have 3 or 4 songs from Rent on my playlist, even though I've never seen the play. As for the broader musical genre, I don't mind the best of Lloyd Webber and I respect the craft of Gershwin and Sondheim but don't enjoy it enough to listen to - and average-quality musicals just aren't my thing.
That said, the SNW musical episode featured shockingly good songs in the musical genre and several of the cast are extraordinary singers. While I appreciated the way SNW committed to going all-in on an edgy concept, and it was clearly a labor of love which consumed many unpaid hours... to me, it just isn't Trek. Even a very good Trek musical can only exist in an uncanny valley for me. I know people who loved it. I get that they were watching it and feeling "OMG, I love that Trek is 'boldly going...' with such creative experiments!" and "OMFG, they can really SING!", "the songs are actually GOOD!" but those are all meta-thoughts, and if most of my thoughts during first-watch are meta-thoughts, something's wrong. Another sign of trouble: I can't actually recall any of the major plot points of the episode.
I grew up in the 70s and fell in love watching TOS re-runs after school and dutifully watched all the ST movies during first-run, liking the even numbered ones more. Then as an adult, I loved TNG's entire run. As we said about OG Star Wars earlier in this thread, Trek represents a strong core premise to me (Roddenberry's concept pitch to NBC for TOS was "Wagon Train to the Stars"). And I'm fine when they play with the premise a little. I didn't mind when TOS did 'humorous' episodes, Mudd's Planet is still a classic and even Trouble with Tribbles didn't bother me. But when an IP with such a strong core identity strays too far from the fundamental nature of "what it is", I start to lose connection with it.
As I said about Andor, it's not that I reject branching out creatively. It's more that beyond a certain point, it's gone so far it starts becoming a different thing. To me, that's a sign it should have been born as it's own thing from the start. That lets the new thing define itself, find its unique core and be great on it's own terms. But when the root IP is one with decades of legacy core identity, anything that should be a new thing inherits creative baggage the size of a planet. This is bad because the new thing will inevitably start creatively rubbing up against the constraints of the root IP.
A simple litmus test for any high-concept in this context is to ask "Would it work if it was launched as it's own series in this existing universe?" I can imagine a Mudd's Planet spin-off series focused on Harry's adventures working great. It would benefit creatively from being set in the Star Trek universe and could even strengthen the Trek-verse in occasional cross-over episodes. Now ask the same question about a musical sci-fi series. How much would it creatively gain versus what it loses from being limited to the Trek-verse? The benefit would mainly be brand recognition drawing Trek fans to early episodes but, by definition, it's so different it'll inevitably have to stand or fall on its own. How would a musical cross-over with a different Trek series even work? As someone whose never seen Lower Decks, I found the SNW / LD cross-over episode not only weak but disorienting. The problem wasn't animation, it was tonal divergence between two things that work apart but not together (a sign that Lower Decks probably didn't gain as much from being in the Trek-verse as it lost). That's why I'd rather see a new musical sci-fi series have the freedom of creating it's own universe that best serves its unique creative needs.
As a huge film buff, I sadly agree. And theaters in my area aren’t doing a good job keeping their projection technology current. When we went to see “Wicked”, my wife leaned over and whispered that it would probably look better on our 77” OLED, and she was absolutely right. The theater image was dark and lacked vibrant color.
I think the visual differences broadly break into technical aspects (film grain, contrast) and aesthetic (composition, lighting, density, motion). A lot of modern viewers don't like film grain so any director not named Christopher Nolan, will get studio push back.
Personally, I'd prefer more grain texture in cinematic images but it's the era we live in, so I don't hate on BR 2049 for being an artifact of its era. It's nowhere near as bad as the visual sterile wipe that Wicked is. I do agree the compositional energy is a stylistic choice by Denis for this film. While Dune strikes a similar note visually, Sicario does get pretty kinetic at moments - so it's not his only note.
My main point was 2049 couldn't be the innovative, style-setting, visual sledghammer to that BR was - simply because there can only be one first and 2049 still had to be related to BR. Also, it's worth noting that the back story has much of Earth's population moving off-world in the 30 years since the original - as constant ads in BR were urging. So the urban overcrowding was reduced by 2049. In fact, it's one reason replicants are openly doing work-a-day jobs on Earth. Most of the humans have left.
Ultimately, I have so much reverence for the original as a visual tectonic impact still influencing films decades later, I went into 2049 with low expectations - which Villenueve managed to exceed. 2049 is nowhere near as great as the original, but I don't think there was any way it could have been - and very few films ever are. So it was enough that it didn't insult the original or stain its legacy. And to me, by simply being good, 2049 manages to be a success on its own terms.
- and thanks for the call back to Escape From New York, a film I saw on opening night at the Pantages in Hollywood.
A recent example is the Wicked movie musical. It’s not a film and its sequel. It’s two parts of the stage musical produced as a film and cut in half, released a year apart.
The alternative is the 1980s version of Dune, which tried to fit a massive novel into a single mass-market film runtime. It was fantastic, but people who hadn’t read the novel were left very short on story. The newer movies I’ve heard are much better in this regard, and it’s understandable because the runtime of the combined films is longer. The Dune 2000 (AKA SciFi Presents Frank Herbert’s Dune) miniseries was even better in some ways than the original film, largely for the same reasons.
Ender’s Game deserved to be at least two parts, because even the main character got no real character development. You barely learn Val exists, there’s really no Peter, and you barely meet Bean or Petra. There’s no Alai, Achilles, Fly, or Crazy Tom. There’s no zero-G battles at Battle School. The computer game is never even mentioned but is integral to the book. I don’t think it’s even mentioned in the film that Ender is a third child and why that’s important. It could have been a much better film in two or three parts.
Cinema used to be a really good shared experience. I don't go to cinema anymore because we have a newborn at home, but we used to pre-order tickets in advanced for movies we really wanted to see (like Wicked last year, Fantastic 4 this year) and the theater was almost empty at opening night for both of those.
Contrast a few years ago when avengers endgame came out, and Spiderman far from home came out shortly after that, and No Way Home a few years after that... They were lively events. People dressed up, the theater handed out free swag and merch, and it was just a really cool shared experience, almost akin to a live concert.
I don't know exactly what's changed in that time, considering No Way Home came out after Covid and it was still a spectacle of an event, but I don't think cinema will get its magic back.
A few years ago I did go to a "Stranger Things" experience and I think that might be the future of shared experiences/narratives. It was essentially a week-long pop-up event, you'd get tickets, and it was basically a "walking simulator" that took you through a narrative within the Stranger Things universe. This wasn't just a bunch of people looking at a screen, it was live actors, holographics, sound design, lights, a lot of crazy stuff for a pop-up venue.
As a fan of the franchise it was really well done. A friend of mine want to a similar "Experience" for the Bridgeton universe, which I care nothing about, but she really enjoyed it as well.
So I think if Netflix were to reimagine cinema, it would probably be in that direction.
It's pro-creator as well. Creators are artificially restricted from drawing upon the commons to create new things due to copyright.
In the 1800s, musicians would freely write new lyrics to existing tunes, which is why folk music has various songs that share the same music. (There is the satire loophole, but that's creatively limiting.)
In the 1980s, musicians would record short slices of chords from records (or breakbeats) onto sampling devices and make new music from them, giving rise to an incredible number of musical genres.
Copyright came for all of them and created a new status quo where exercising that sort of creativity is legally cumbersome.
And now the paperclip maximizers are trying to chip away at fundamental music theory, with lawsuits over chord progressions (of which there are very finite possibilities) and other attempts to grab slices of other pies. (See: the recent suits against Dua Lipa, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran.)
We wouldn't have Wicked, one of the most beloved twenty-first century musicals and now a high-grossing film, if Oz were still legally encumbered.
I would say that has more to do with the decline in musicals involving small numbers of people doing choreography, and the current movie system de-prioritizing dance as an important skill. The highest grossing musical movie happened in 2024 with Wicked, and the second half of that movie is probably going to do the same thing next year.
I constantly wonder why no one's talking about the fact that almost every movie with cgi visual effects looks awful these days? I was on a plane recently. One person in front of me had Wicked on, another the live-action Snow White, another some recent Marvel movie. Each slid completely into the uncanny valley in their own way. It was really eye opening.
The era you're talking about the balance was spot on. I'd say there was a golden age of effects from Star Wars through to Terminator 2. You're already suspending your disbelief and letting the filmmaker take you on a ride. Who cares if it's hyper-realistic? (or, in the case of contemporary movies, trying to be hyper-realistic and failing to the point that it makes it even more obvious.)
True! But I think that movies adapted for TV must be made for the average "good quality" screen, not the state of the art that almost nobody owns. At least they should look decent enough in a good quality (but not top-notch) setup.
Also, the YouTube video I'm thinking of singles out Wicked as seen in movie theaters. The image "as intended" looks washed out and without contrast.
There's a pretty good video on YouTube (more than one, actually) that explains how careless use of HDR in modern cinema is destroying the look and feel of cinema we used to like.
Everything is flattened, contrast is eliminated, lights that should be "burned white" for a cinematic feel are brought back to "reasonable" brightness with HDR, really deep blacks are turned into flat greys, etc. The end result is the flat and washed out look of movies like Wicked. It's often correlated to CGI-heavy movies, but in reality it's starting to affect every movie.
Most top movies last year [1] were shot outside of the US. Excluding animation movies, of course. I understand that the idea is “medium/long term” to move production to Hollywood area, but the short term impact can be massive.
[1] “Deadpool and Wolverine”, “Wicked” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in London, “Dune part 2” in Budapest and Italy, “Godzilla x Kong” in Australia. Only “Twisters” was filmed in the US.
Same here, it was one that captured the vibe of the Virgin America perfectly and the only one I actually recall watching. It was directed by Jon M Chu, who subsequently directed Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights, Wicked, and more.
This is an more interesting economic question than it might seem. The customers are asking for it, but the real question is "who is the customer?"
The sound designers and mixers' customers are not the audience, it's the producers that hired them. They're also not creating just one mix, but up to one audio stream per every device and playback environment. The people that actually does that work is not always going to be the same as the ones doing the theatrical mix(es) or on the same timeline, and may be using a lot of automation to do it, or not doing it all.
That indirection and the way that incentives get twisted can lead to really good or really bad content, but the quality of it isn't really indicative of how successful it's going to be financially.
Good example of this is Wicked. Somehow, a musical in which you can barely hear the music, is clearing $700 million in the global box office and is going to be an awards darling. I have some suspicions about how the theatrical mix turned out so bad that has a lot to do with the economics of film production, but the gist is that whether something the audience thinks is "good" has nothing to do with what the producers paying the sound folks ask for.
A not insignificant part of human history is retelling the same stories. Stories like the Odyssey and the Iliad were oral traditions refined, refined, and refined, until taken down by a master. Every time Dracula and derivatives get made, something new gets added, changed, improved.
The problem with Disney's remakes is that they are trying to be the original story, reshot, but LESS Disney. The Little Mermaid is a prime example of something that should have been brighter, more colorful, more energetic, more beautiful, and IMPROVED, but instead they chose a least common denominator impersonation.
The concept of going back and retelling a prequel can work. It worked for Rogue One (despite production challenges), it worked for Wicked. What isn't working for the Disney Live Action movies is letting the machine output reduced facsimiles, instead of giving the projects to experimental storytellers, or master storytellers to do their thing.
Id love to see a remake of Bambi that amplified the music/animation connection, using modern technology to sync the movement of elements in the frame to parts of the musical composition, much like a visualizer. Breathing, fluttering, raindrops falling on the beats, quivering with the strings. Imagine a modern Little April Showers by Atticus Ross that looks like Spiderm-Man into the Spiderverse or Puss in Boots 3 or Wild Robot or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Bambi should be a music video like Fantasia. Instead Disney will try and tell a story about a Deer, and forget the rest of what made Bambi so revolutionary.
And yet, Disney still does make things like Soul, which really was innovative in its animation style by how restrained it was. It's simple complexity of its dream world was its strength. Animation can be done well without the hyper speed over indulgences I cited above as good examples.
>these descriptions seem perfectly fine in that they're accurate and meaningful
The description of Wicked doesn't mention either The Wizard of Oz or the Broadway musical. So yes, the descriptions don't contain obscene mistakes like calling Wicked a courtroom drama. If that is enough for you to call these "accurate" while ignoring the vagueness or the 1 in 10 failure rate on the Anora description, fine by me. But you must have some weird definition of the word "meaningful" to apply that to descriptions like the one of Wicked. That simply isn't a helpful way to describe that movie.
In every post about LLMs there is someone to blindly say something like this.
When in reality if you ask ChatGPT for 10 good movies from this year you will get this.
Anora - Directed by Sean Baker, a compelling drama about the life of a sex worker in Coney Island.
Challengers - A provocative tennis drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya.
Dune: Part Two - Denis Villeneuve's continuation of the epic science fiction saga.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - An action-packed prequel exploring the origins of Furiosa, directed by George Miller.
Inside Out 2 - Pixar's sequel that dives deeper into the complexities of human emotions.
Wicked - A musical fantasy adaptation directed by Jon M. Chu . The Zone of Interest - A thought-provoking film about Auschwitz, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
The Idea of You - A steamy romance starring Anne Hathaway.
Hit Man - A comedy thriller starring Glen Powell.
The Outrun - A powerful drama about a recovering alcoholic, starring Saoirse Ronan.
Let me know if you'd like more details about any of these!
Which is a great list.
If the serialized one is in the public domain and a book isn't, then your work might be seen as derivative of the book anyway.
For instance the recent Wicked movie (and book, and play, etc) can't use ruby red slippers, because that was a detail only in the relativley more recent movie, so even though the original wizard of oz book has been in the public domain a while, some details are siloed off. I think the Holmes stories had disputes like this for a while too, where if you mentioned certain side characters it might infringe a more recent adaptation or etc.
Being good is evidently boring...
I added a few examples in another comment. Even Rambo sacrificed his own safety and freedom to help rescue POWs.
Modern day heroes are all a bunch of whining self-centered children. Just go watch any super hero movie today for a good example of that.
It's almost a badge of honor to be morally ambiguous. Compare a list of protaganists, how many are anti-heros? Do we even have any real good guys in movies and tv these days? Even Superman has been turned into a murderer for this generation.
A few examples from popular TV:
Walking Dead: everyone is a murderer. Murder is justified consistently.
Billions: It's hard to know who to root for, they are all rotten. The righteous people are the "bad guys"
Scrubs: All the characters are morally bankrupt (compared to 30 years before it's time)
Ironman: A selfish rich asshole.
Batman: (ok, he was always an anti-hero from day 1)
Deadpool: Do I need to explain this one?
Wicked: A play about how the evil witch is misunderstood.
The Shield, The Wire, modern Star Trek vs old Star Trek, the list is too long...
There has always been corruptions, lack of morals. That's not my issue, it's that today, there simply isn't even close to a minority of actual real main protagonists that are selfless.
I think people find good people trying to do what is right just boring these days.
/rant
The site looks super spammy.
To improve your conversion rate you should have more information on your site. use a different payment provider (paypal is the choice of spammers. non-spammers too but mostly spammers) try shopify. add some analytics from mixpanel to see where people are dropping off. You should also increase the price of your product, i mean you are offering to fix my screwed up plasma tv, i've never seen that i would pay $30 for something like that. If you feel bad about charging that then throw in a wicked movie for people to watch after they fix there tv.
The musical "Wicked" puts some of this sort of thinking well, and definitely the book on which it was based.
From the song 'Wonderful' - "There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities, so they act as if they don't exist".
But that thinking starts so early on. Most movies I watch with my 4yr old son now, he'll ask "Is he a baddie", "Is he a goodie".