After reading the wikipedia summary of Wicked the musical, it seems like the movie followed the plot pretty much exactly - which is where all of its problems come from, IMO. The singing was great. Ariana Grande absolutely killed it. Great performances by Elpheba and the hot dude. Set design and costuming, great. But the story is absolute trash. The glowing reviews from critics don’t seem to take this into account…

I see how they wanted to stay faithful to the original - they’d have gotten major blowback from fans. But so much of the plot is completely uninspired, thin, or even nonsensical. The 1st and 2nd acts were pretty solid, but no spoilers, the plotline with the animals, basically the entire 3rd and 4th acts, all of the stuff with Jeff Glodblum and all of Elpheba’s interractions with him and the lady from EEAAO were rushed and wafer-thin plotwise. I feel like they try to cover that fact up by bombarding the viewer with visuals, racing to major plot points, and leaning on the strength of the performances - sort of gish galloping their way past the plot holes. It felt like the macro pacing was pretty much bang-on with major events happening at a satisfying cadence, but pacing between each plot point - getting from a to b within an act - was often rushed without adequate character development to support their actions/interractions with other characters.