Life in the Windy City: An Evening of Evil
OK, so I saw Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith at 3:00 p.m. today, which hardly qualifies as evening, but I did also see Wicked, the musical about the witches of Oz, based on the book of the same name by Gregory Maguire, at 8:00 tonight, and “Evening of Evil” has a more alliterative ring than “Day of Evil.” Seeing both examinations of evil in the same day was pretty trippy. I’ll start with Sith.
It was a movie I fully expected to dislike, and as far as the writing and acting are concerned, my fears were well-founded. “Clunky” and “wooden” don’t even begin to describe the lines the actors tried to deliver or the way in which they tried to deliver them. Only Ian McDiarmid and Ewan McGregor gave anything resembling a competent performance. McDiarmid simply oozes serpentine evil as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who finally, with the help of Anakin Skywalker, achieves almost absolute power as the Emperor. McGregor not only provides the stalwart good heart of the movie, he seamlessly matches his performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi to that of Sir Alec Guinness, who originated the role. McGregor’s voice, expressions, and body language all perfectly evoke the Obi-Wan Guinness immortalized.
Amateurish dialogue couldn’t keep these two from calculating finely nuanced performances. The rest of the cast, however, especially Hayden Christensen, just couldn’t breathe believable life into lines like this exchange between Anakin and Padme:
Anakin: You're so beautiful.
Padme: It's only because I'm so in love.
Anakin: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Or this petulant line delivered by Anakin:
But I’m on the Council now! They should make me a master! This is an outrage!
Or something equally silly. At least now we can see that Luke’s whining was hereditary.
The first three movies, the classic three, were filled with cheesy dialogue, but nothing this rancid. Listening to this movie was, at times, painful.
And boring. I sat through the first 20 minutes thinking “The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network was more exciting than this.” And I’m not exaggerating. Hands down, the stuff on Cartoon Network was better. And it wasn’t even digitally animated. The lightsaber battles were cool, but they could have benefited from some judicious cutting (no pun intended). They just ran on too long.
But still . . . for all of these flaws, I still found myself drawn into this tragic tale. Although the acting was wooden, I still got dragged into Anakin’s internal struggle. I still felt discomfort, even pain, watching as his good intentions destroyed everything he was trying to save. Anakin was manipulated by everyone around him, even the Jedi Council. No wonder he latched on to the one person who seemed to provide the guidance he so desperately needed. Too bad that person was an egomaniacal, psychopathic Sith lord who knew just how to prey on Anakin’s messianic complex.
Sith happens, I guess. Evil springs from good. In the end, painting with broad brush-strokes in mythological primary colors is the only thing that saved Lucas. That, and state-of-the-art CGI.
There were no computer-generated images gracing the stage of the Oriental Theater that night, but the general thematic questions were the same for the Wicked Witch of the West as they were for Anakin Skywalker: Where does evil come from? What makes someone evil? Is evil really just a matter of perspective? The themes were the same, but there was singing, and music, and a happy ending.
The ending first: having read the book at the urging of my significant other, who had read it herself about five years ago, I was extremely disappointed in the Broadway Happy Ending. I should have expected it, but the happy ending completely undermined Maguire’s central theme of the book: good and evil, like success and failure, is largely a matter of perspective and spin. There is no happy ending in Wicked, the book, which helps the book pack a much more satisfying philosophical punch.
That being said, however, the point of a Broadway musical is rarely sophistic inquiry. The point of a Broadway musical is to have fun, and Wicked, the musical, delivers on all counts. Green-skinned Elphaba (EL-fa-ba, as in L.F.B., or L. Frank Baum) is a social outcast at her boarding school, Shiz. Through accident, she ends up sharing a room with Galinda, who will later become Glinda the Good Witch of the North, even as Elphaba, the animal rights activist, is later saddled with the moniker Wicked Witch of the West.
The dour Elphaba and the annoyingly perky Galinda eventually (OK, within 20 minutes of the opening curtain, if that) become the best of friends, and it is only after a confrontation with the Wizard of Oz over the treatment of talking animals in Oz that Elphaba discovers her true powers, breaks ties with her friends, and leaves to start her crusade against the Wizard.
There is a love triangle, of course, a really impressive puppet dragon mounted on the proscenium (the significance of which is only clear if you have read the book), and a fantastic levitation trick at the end of Act I during Elphaba’s signature “Defying Gravity” number. Hydraulics, while not nearly as sexy as CGI, can still produce impressive special effects. Especially when the actress they hoist 40 feet into the air is backlit, caped in a massive black cloak (to hide the hydraulics), wreathed in stage smoke, and belting out lines like:
I’m through accepting limits because someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change, but til I try I’ll never know . . .
So if you care to find me, look to the western sky
As someone told me lately: everyone deserves a chance to fly
And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free
To those who’d ground me, take a message back from me
Tell them how I am defying gravity
I’m flying high defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz, no Wizard that there is or was
Is ever going to bring me down.
It’s not Shakespeare, and it is unabashedly sentimental (what Broadway number isn’t?) but it is rather catchy, and quotable. Which is more than I can say for the dialogue in Sith.
For an evening of evil, today wasn’t half bad.
It was a movie I fully expected to dislike, and as far as the writing and acting are concerned, my fears were well-founded. “Clunky” and “wooden” don’t even begin to describe the lines the actors tried to deliver or the way in which they tried to deliver them. Only Ian McDiarmid and Ewan McGregor gave anything resembling a competent performance. McDiarmid simply oozes serpentine evil as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who finally, with the help of Anakin Skywalker, achieves almost absolute power as the Emperor. McGregor not only provides the stalwart good heart of the movie, he seamlessly matches his performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi to that of Sir Alec Guinness, who originated the role. McGregor’s voice, expressions, and body language all perfectly evoke the Obi-Wan Guinness immortalized.
Amateurish dialogue couldn’t keep these two from calculating finely nuanced performances. The rest of the cast, however, especially Hayden Christensen, just couldn’t breathe believable life into lines like this exchange between Anakin and Padme:
Anakin: You're so beautiful.
Padme: It's only because I'm so in love.
Anakin: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Or this petulant line delivered by Anakin:
But I’m on the Council now! They should make me a master! This is an outrage!
Or something equally silly. At least now we can see that Luke’s whining was hereditary.
The first three movies, the classic three, were filled with cheesy dialogue, but nothing this rancid. Listening to this movie was, at times, painful.
And boring. I sat through the first 20 minutes thinking “The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network was more exciting than this.” And I’m not exaggerating. Hands down, the stuff on Cartoon Network was better. And it wasn’t even digitally animated. The lightsaber battles were cool, but they could have benefited from some judicious cutting (no pun intended). They just ran on too long.
But still . . . for all of these flaws, I still found myself drawn into this tragic tale. Although the acting was wooden, I still got dragged into Anakin’s internal struggle. I still felt discomfort, even pain, watching as his good intentions destroyed everything he was trying to save. Anakin was manipulated by everyone around him, even the Jedi Council. No wonder he latched on to the one person who seemed to provide the guidance he so desperately needed. Too bad that person was an egomaniacal, psychopathic Sith lord who knew just how to prey on Anakin’s messianic complex.
Sith happens, I guess. Evil springs from good. In the end, painting with broad brush-strokes in mythological primary colors is the only thing that saved Lucas. That, and state-of-the-art CGI.
There were no computer-generated images gracing the stage of the Oriental Theater that night, but the general thematic questions were the same for the Wicked Witch of the West as they were for Anakin Skywalker: Where does evil come from? What makes someone evil? Is evil really just a matter of perspective? The themes were the same, but there was singing, and music, and a happy ending.
The ending first: having read the book at the urging of my significant other, who had read it herself about five years ago, I was extremely disappointed in the Broadway Happy Ending. I should have expected it, but the happy ending completely undermined Maguire’s central theme of the book: good and evil, like success and failure, is largely a matter of perspective and spin. There is no happy ending in Wicked, the book, which helps the book pack a much more satisfying philosophical punch.
That being said, however, the point of a Broadway musical is rarely sophistic inquiry. The point of a Broadway musical is to have fun, and Wicked, the musical, delivers on all counts. Green-skinned Elphaba (EL-fa-ba, as in L.F.B., or L. Frank Baum) is a social outcast at her boarding school, Shiz. Through accident, she ends up sharing a room with Galinda, who will later become Glinda the Good Witch of the North, even as Elphaba, the animal rights activist, is later saddled with the moniker Wicked Witch of the West.
The dour Elphaba and the annoyingly perky Galinda eventually (OK, within 20 minutes of the opening curtain, if that) become the best of friends, and it is only after a confrontation with the Wizard of Oz over the treatment of talking animals in Oz that Elphaba discovers her true powers, breaks ties with her friends, and leaves to start her crusade against the Wizard.
There is a love triangle, of course, a really impressive puppet dragon mounted on the proscenium (the significance of which is only clear if you have read the book), and a fantastic levitation trick at the end of Act I during Elphaba’s signature “Defying Gravity” number. Hydraulics, while not nearly as sexy as CGI, can still produce impressive special effects. Especially when the actress they hoist 40 feet into the air is backlit, caped in a massive black cloak (to hide the hydraulics), wreathed in stage smoke, and belting out lines like:
I’m through accepting limits because someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change, but til I try I’ll never know . . .
So if you care to find me, look to the western sky
As someone told me lately: everyone deserves a chance to fly
And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free
To those who’d ground me, take a message back from me
Tell them how I am defying gravity
I’m flying high defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz, no Wizard that there is or was
Is ever going to bring me down.
It’s not Shakespeare, and it is unabashedly sentimental (what Broadway number isn’t?) but it is rather catchy, and quotable. Which is more than I can say for the dialogue in Sith.
For an evening of evil, today wasn’t half bad.
posted by Christopher at
1:11 AM
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