Wicked director's favourite Wizard of Oz Easter eggs revealed
There are plenty of visual nods to the 1939 classic in the new movie musical – how many did you spot?
It's no secret that Wicked is indelibly linked to The Wizard of Oz, and so there's no surprise that director Jon M Chu wanted to include a couple of visual references to the iconic 1939 film in his new acclaimed musical adaptation.
The film – like the stage show before it – serves as an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West, providing a revisionist take on the classic villain who so terrorised Dorothy in Victor Fleming's classic.
But as well as including all sorts of familiar characters, the film also includes some more subtle nods to the previous film – and so we asked Chu to pick out his favourites during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.
"We have a lot, a lot of breadcrumbs in the tradition of Wicked the show," he explained. "Stephen Schwartz did a lot of little musical references... so we wanted to continue that.
"Of course, Wizard of Oz has such a place in our hearts of how we see story, how we see the world."
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He added: "Some of the things... I love the sort of red slippers that she clicks three times in Popular. I love the crystal slippers that we have in the movie. The design of it is like a tornado, as, if you know the story, that comes into play later.
"And even just the little, like, costume references to what some of these characters will become in even movie two, we have little details that reference those things, even how they walk in for the first time, whether it's Fiyero leaning against the two poles, in a way of a reference that, if you know, you know. So there's things like that throughout.
Chu went on to explain that some of the references go back even further than the 1939 film, with certain things in the movie taken from the life of L Frank Baum – the author behind the iconic novel on which the original film was based.
"Before he wrote Wizard of Oz, he bred show chickens, these sort of fancy chickens," he explained. "So we used fancy chickens playing the piano, this kind of weird Ozian piano in the Ozdesk Ballroom.
"So we wanted to reference as much as that, and even the [WW] Denslow drawings in the original book. We wanted to use animals from those books, and the design sort of look from those drawings. And so we infuse some of that throughout."
Wicked: Part One is now showing in UK cinemas.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
