What that broom do?
Photo: Universal Pictures
Wicked: Part One ends on a high note, literally and figuratively. In its final moments, Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, belts her face off while soaring through the air on her newly levitating magic broomstick, singing “Defying Gravity” and declaring her own power for the first time in her life. It’s amazing. But it can also be hard to focus on everything we’re supposed to focus on when the dynamics of her broom make absolutely no sense. We’re not asking for realism here — it’s a flying broomstick — but we would like it to follow some form of logic. And the movie, directed by Jon M. Chu, deprives us of any broom-based understanding of how the magic of Oz works.
Before “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba accidentally uses a levitation spell that she reads in the movie’s magic spell book, the Grimmerie, to make monkeys grow wings. Then, during “Defying Gravity,” she attempts to make herself grow wings but instead accidentally enchants a broom to fly. It would make more sense if the broom also grew wings, but that isn’t possible because the actual goal is for the movie to explain how she gets the Wicked Witch’s broom. Then Elphaba jumps out a window and loses it. While she falls through the air, the broom comes flying to her as if she controls it, though she absolutely does not control the flying monkeys. So the spell makes the broom come to her hand when she wants it, which is not the case for anything she previously used the spell on? Make that make sense.
Perhaps more egregious, once Elphaba gets on the broom, she’s suddenly levitating. That’s right — she’s not using the broom to fly; she herself is flying. We know this because at certain points she holds out the broom at a right angle to her body and stays completely suspended. If just the broom were flying, one would presume she’d be underneath it, but she isn’t. She is flying of her own accord while looking down at people beneath her. How? How is she doing that?
Whenever Elphaba casts a spell, absolutely anything can happen, which renders the stakes for Wicked: Part Two confusing at best because we don’t know what the consequences of any of her actions will be. Wicked: Part One is so, so long. (Two hours and 40 minutes, to be specific.) The least it could do is explain the basic mechanics of the most powerful magic in all of Oz. Make the broom fly, or make the monkeys grow wings, or make Elphaba levitate. But all that with one spell? While defying gravity, the movie starts defying its own logic, and that’s ba-a-ad.
