Red tulip fields, emerald-green hair salons, and yellow brick roads may color the screens of movie theaters across the globe this holiday season, but something darker lurks in the shadows of Oz in “Wicked.”

The movie musical, which was released theatrically over Thanksgiving weekend, is an adaptation of Stephen Schwartz’s 2003 stage musical of the same name — itself an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” a revisionist exploration of the original book and film “The Wizard of Oz.” 

“Wicked” the movie — which was announced in 2012 and fought an uphill battle to its eventual premiere — can certainly be said to have been a long time coming. But its position now, in the wake of a tumultuous election year, lends a certain weight to the musical’s interrogations of complacency, subjugation, and the loneliness and relief of revolutionary defiance.

Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as academic rivals turned best friends Elphaba and Glinda, the movie boasts heavy hitters from both stage and screen. Michelle Yeoh is Madame Morrible, Elphaba’s sorcery mentor; Peter Dinklage voices Dr. Dillamond, one of the talking animals facing persecution in Oz; and Jeff Goldblum stars as the Wonderful Wizard himself. Jonathan Bailey, a veteran of the West End most recently seen playing heartthrobs on “Bridgerton” and “Fellow Travelers,” plays Fiyero, the carefree prince at the center of a love triangle.

“Wicked" is the second movie musical adaptation by director John M. Chu, who brought “In the Heights” to the big screen in 2021. Chu burst into mainstream consciousness with “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, a critical and commercial success. He was lauded then for his extravagant set pieces and luxurious visuals, a sensibility he employs heavily in “Wicked.”

From the whimsically thatched roofs of Munchkinland to the hallowed halls and vine-draped walls of Shiz University to the spires of the Emerald City, one thing that particularly shines in “Wicked” is its sets. Rather than acting against a green screen, the film’s production designer, Nathan Crowley, dreamed up life-sized fantastical sets for the actors to sing, dance, and fly in. Students sail into the university on real boats and sit on Art Nouveau automaton trains. These moments of realism ground what could have been a wildly outlandish romp into something more personal and real.

“Wicked" is the first part of a duo of films that will together tell the story of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch. The runtime of the two films together more than doubles the length of the stage musical, with the first one clocking in at two hours and 40 minutes. Audiences, already inundated with films pushing the three-hour mark, may grumble: Why the expansion? There are no new songs added to the first film, which adapts the first act of the stage musical, ending in the show-stopping “Defying Gravity.” The runtime is padded out by new scenes, adding characters to the plotline of the political struggle of Oz’s animal population and using flashbacks to give us a taste of Elphaba’s childhood troubles. Some of these moments are drawn from Maguire’s novel but were cut in the stage production for a more streamlined effect. In several cases, the film inserts scenes into the middle of songs, most notably in the climactic number, which flows in and out of song and scene for the last 20-odd minutes of the movie.

But, for the most part, “Wicked” clips by at a vigorous pace. The comedic chops of Grande are balanced with the fierce spirit of Erivo, and the film essentially functions as a two-hander as the two friends disagree on how best to respond to the forces of corruption plaguing the most marginalized members of their world. Which method—that of incremental systemic change or revolutionary praxis—is really for the better? We’ll have to wait another year to find out. “Wicked Part Two” will be released in theaters in 2025.