Comment: Wicked is a fun movie musical, sure, but it shouldn't win the Best Picture Oscar
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The Oscars nominations are here, and every snooty cinephile and Letterboxd clout chaser has opinions. So here’s mine: Wicked was a very fun move, but it shouldn’t win Best Picture. Before you grab your buckets of water to melt me like a wicked witch, let me caveat that I thoroughly enjoyed my cinema-going experience at Wicked.
Watching the opening scenes did give me that tummy-flip of fun that I haven’t had since I watched the first Harry Potter movies, and I can’t enjoy those now because *gestures at JK Rowling’s entire online presence*. One friend told me they couldn’t wait for Wicked to come out on streaming, because they knew it would be their new comfort movie.
But is a fuzzy feeling enough to make it truly worthy of the Academy Awards’ highest prize? Movie musicals have, historically taken the top gong. West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968), and Chicago (2002) all got Best Picture. There hasn’t been one in over two decades, mind, if you don’t count the La La Land snafu.
![[Demi Moore’s egg-yolk yellow coat in The Substance deserves its own Oscar]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/09/23/11/44/810854_m1723735970.png?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
Now Wicked may well win where its origin story, The Wizard of Oz, did not — it lost to Gone With the Wind in 1939. Wicked’s film’s clever and intricate costumes, it’s frankly death-defying choreography, and the stellar performances of Cynthia Erivo (nominated for Best Actress) and Ariana Grande (in the running for Best Supporting Actress) are all worthy contenders in their own right. Nine nominations would have been enough. But as a coherent whole it is, narratively and spiritually, a flop.
![[Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo look scarily thin – and it makes me uncomfortable]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/11/10/6/15/SEI229027500.jpg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
-William-Bracewell-(Lensky)-in-Onegin-2025-ROH--Ph-Andrej-Uspenski.jpeg?trim=206,0,0,0&quality=75&auto=webp&width=1000)
