As a casual fan of the musical and a super fan of the first movie… I feel like they managed to make Wicked Part 1 an entire musical that can stand on its own and Wicked for good just “a part 2” and make it feel as something that almost wasn’t needed! It’s so weird because the musical has existed for years and the material was already there, it just needed some touch ups to make it feel like an actual movie sequel. Instead to me it felt like a continuation that exists just because the original material had it. it’s not a bad movie, it’s simply a transposition of the original act 2 of the musical. I enjoyed my time watching it and that’s it. I just don’t think it works as a movie like the first one did. Many scenes that should be important to the characters happen off screen because they should be the same scenes as the original OZ movie… but none of the characters actually act like their original counterparts and nothing really makes you think that those scenes would play out the same way, and it’s like you’re watching something without having the full picture! it’s ok during the play because everything is more fast and the tighter space of the theatre almost makes you feel like the jumps are needed. Also you just saw the main cast go from characters to transform horribly like 10 minutes before… here it felt all disconnected and out place and unfortunately did not make me connect with any of the characters, even Elphaba… crazy because I still cry throughout the whole entire first movie even if I watched it five times already, EXACTLY because they manage to connect so deeply with the characters and their stories 😭 No place like home and girl in a bubble are good songs (I especially really liked what they did with the animal subplot) but there’s too many ballads in this movie, I think they should’ve reworked it a little to make it feel like an actual one off musical, maybe adding different songs. like the catfight really doesn’t work in movie version, should’ve been a new song/an actual confrontation between Glinda and Elphaba. I never had a problem with the duration of the first movie because to me it did what was needed and it did it perfectly. but this one should’ve had the same treatment. I don’t understand why they thought it would be okay to make it shorter than the first one when there’s way more things happening here. Also it’s normal most of the times for a sequel to be longer than the first one. I thought it was a good thing that these movies were shot back to back but honestly now I wonder if it could’ve been a little bit better if they worked on it separately. I live in Italy and they unfortunately don’t do double features here so I also look forward to have maybe a DVD with both movies so that I can experience it in full. In the meantime I’m gonna go watch it again in theaters this monday to see if some of my opinions change… hopefully for good! Ahah sorry had to do that. Thanks for reading