• From: Red Deer, AB
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
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Topic: (I rant about) Wicked *Spoilers*

Spoilers obviously.

Alright, so, this is probably just going to turn into a flaming rage rant so be forewarned.

I just finished reading Wicked (the novel), like 10 minutes ago. And I need to get some shit off my chest.

Let me set it up first, I have loved LOVED the broadway version for years now, and I was so SO completely ready to just love the shit out of this book. And I did. Until about the last 50 pages.


The universe he managed to create was so incredibly dark and twisted and more than anything it felt real, it felt, in it’s own twisted way, right. I say this in contrast to The Wizard of Oz...which just, oh my gods wtf. And I was getting ramped up for this amazing ending...


I’ll pause here, because you know what fuck it.  The show ending, Elphaba fakes her death and disappears into the hills. Great, that’s a strong character move, it proves she’s smart and resourceful. But of course I had manged to realize just how little the writers of the show cared about the novel...at all... by about 100 pages in when Glinda and Elphie go to Oz for the first time...oh wow, can you have more of a giant fuck you to the characters than that?! In the book Elphie is disturbed and disheartened by the pain and poverty she sees there and Glinda just sort of stares at the architecture (Which is cool, cause that’s her thing)... but in the show...yeah, singing and dancing and omg the best thing ever, this awesome.

And it just spirals out of control from there. I’m pretty sure the writers didn’t even bother to read the rest of the novel, it was just a general yeeeaah fuck it who cares. I literally can’t find a single point of commonality between characters or events after about 100 pages in (never mind the fact that the entire birth of Elphaba is completely different in show too). It’s just, flat out, a completely different story.


So anyways, I was ramped up for an amazing ending and then Macquire does the most retarded thing I could have ever thought up. He kept the fucking death by a glass of water.


W....T.....F.


You’ve spent 500 pages developing this brilliant, strong amazing woman, that I love and am so completely invested in...and then you turn that around and just gut that fish all over the floor?! Of all the retarded things from the Wizard of Oz you could have kept and didn’t, you kept the frickin water!? No strong character choice like she decides to sacrifice herself so Dorothy can go home, or even just a selfish move so she could escape to hills (like she’s been planning for 7 years btw, you’re seriously telling me she wouldn’t have thought up some sort of plan when she found out Dorothy was coming to kill her...oh, hey, kill 2 birds with one stone, awesome!)

It’s just nope she’s dead now...no seriously, that’s it, Dorothy throws a glass of water at her and she dies. What? You maybe wanted a proper payoff for this character I spent 500 pages crafting..hah, fuck that.

I just don’t get it.

Maybe if any of you have read the book you can talk me off this ledge, cause I just don’t know what the happened. Did I miss something? Or is the ending really just THAT retarded?

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-02-15 06:20:14)

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  • From: Gardena, California
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Re: (I rant about) Wicked *Spoilers*

The theme of the book, really, is "life isn't fair."

With that being the point of the book, there's not a much better "life isn't fair" ending than for a strong character to go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Your reaction is precisely the desired one, by the way. Maguire's goal was to turn a cackling caricature vanquished by the movie's young heroine into a three-dimensional individual forever misunderstood and senselessly killed. You're supposed to recoil in horror at the blithe way you could just cheer her death back when you didn't know anything about her, and see the "triumph of the hero" in one context for the human violence it is in another.

The whole point of the book is: you know how this ends. What you don't know is all the stuff that came before that makes the ending tragic. It's a more nihilistic version of what Lucas tried -- and failed -- to do with the prequels.

Books can get away with that kind of ending, but most movies and stage adaptations can't unless they're super indie, hence the change. It's not "retarded" -- it's just not reassuring.

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  • From: Red Deer, AB
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
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Re: (I rant about) Wicked *Spoilers*

I guess, but I'm still completely thrown off by how in this otherwise remarkably realistic and grounded universe (all things being relative) there's just this sudden thing thrown on at the very end that had no real set up (And you can't tell me that Elphie having an aversion to water her entire life somehow equates to "Oh yeah by the way if you even touch it it'll kill you.") and doesn't actually seem to play by any sort of rule book.

I mean the Witch was in a damn rainstorm with an umbrella and he actually expects me to believe that she didn't get splashed, even a bit? That's not the way rain + wind works.

I have to wonder if this were any other story would you really be so forgiving of such a massive hole in the storytelling?

Trust me, no one loves a good nihilistic tragedy like me, and like I said, I desperately want to just love the shit out of this book. But every story telling bone in my body is screaming foul at this ending and I just can't get past it.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-02-16 01:08:45)

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  • Phi
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Re: (I rant about) Wicked *Spoilers*

I read the book first and later saw the musical and also thought the stage version was much more satisfying than the book.

It was a number of years ago that I read the book, but I remember being frustrated more for things not getting wrapped up than for Elphaba's death. I wasn't actually clear that she was dead, considering the last few lines. Fiyero is presumably killed off page but that's never confirmed. What was up with the scarecrow's lack of origin story twist when everyone else got one? Was the fish Madame Morrible? Nor's story isn't finished, though I hear she comes back in the sequels. I felt like I was supposed to see some sort of overarching theme metaphor thing with Yackle and the mirror and the time dragon clock, but it never quite gelled for me beyond equivalents of "life isn't fair", which strikes me as a bit of a cop out.

I also think a lot of the differences are because the book was a parallel to the L. Frank Baum book and the musical was a parallel to the 1939 movie. The musical had more heavy handed themes, bolder greys, clearer relationships, fewer loose ends and awesome music. I prefer things wrapped up with bows on top, and the musical did a really good job of combining and simplifying characters to make it all tie together really neatly.

Last edited by Phi (2012-02-16 02:15:33)

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