In the beginning of “Wicked: For Good,” as Glinda (Ariana Grande) takes the mic to sing “I Couldn’t Be Happier,” there’s reverb, almost as if, at least for a brief moment, she’s talking to herself.
If the propaganda signs denouncing her friend Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) weren’t enough, director Jon M. Chu’s use of sound, the somewhat stilted movement, Grande’s performance, and the subversive lyrics let us know the classic teenage movie fun of “Wicked” is dead.
“If movie one was setting up the fairytale,” said Chu on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “Movie two is where it’s all shattered on the floor. This is our adult selves looking at our childhood stories.”
And Chu does mean “our” (the audience’s) stories, acknowledging most of us are rarely in the position of Elphaba, who, at the end of “Wicked,” made a life-altering and courageous decision not to give into the Wizard’s reality.
“We live in our bubble. We take care of our children, our families, make sure they have food and a place to sleep. And yet there are things happening all around, all sorts of injustices, and at what point do we, rather than just post something on X or Instagram, at what point do we pop our own bubble and actually reach out and engage in that?,” Chu said.
And just in case it wasn’t clear, Chu is thinking of himself here, adding, “That’s a question that I ask myself all the time as a storyteller, making movies for studios and living a great life, at what point with the internet and society and the time we’re in telling me, ‘You are on the front lines.’”
Chu very much wants us to see ourselves in Glinda in “Wicked: For Good,” and putting us in her bubble required laying out some narrative, filmmaking, and musical architecture. When the decision, early on, was made to split the Broadway musical into two movies, one of the things Chu focused on was beefing up his and our understanding of Glinda’s bubble.
“I needed to know more about Glinda, ‘Why is she singing “Popular”? What is that?,” said Chu, explaining why he added a flashback to her childhood to the second movie. “I wanted to see young Glinda, I wanted to know where the original wounds were, so that we can root for that girl to come out again.”
Thematically, but more importantly in terms of the filmmaking, circles were key to how Chu would get at this aspect of the story, and well beyond the humorously on-the-nose bubble-mobile Glinda glides around in. While on the podcast, Chu talked about how perfect circles seldom exist in nature, nor the first “Wicked” film.
“If everything structurally in the past wasn’t perfect circles, even Shiz as it was being created is odd-shaped — it has circular moments, but also sharp moments,” said Chu. “But what the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has created is gears and perfect circular ideas and even [Glinda’s] bubble.”
Circles were used in the world-building of Oz to create a fairytale that Chu could cinematically break. The ultimate expression of this is Glinda’s fabulous penthouse apartment, which is comprised of circles within circles.
“I love this image of Elphaba walking into that apartment and just being in the bubble,” said Chu of Erivo’s character, who he refers to as the crooked “z” in the Wizard’s circular “Oz.” “She’s such a jagged edge in the circular nature of this place.”
It was the perfect setting for Glinda to come to some realization about her circumstances and shift gears. A bubble-popping moment Chu knew he wanted expressed in musical terms, leading Stephen Schwartz to write a new song, “The Girl in the Bubble,” for the film.
And production designer Nathan Crowley’s art deco-inspired set was very much built for that song to be performed. “It was designed for the number itself, and the circular nature really helped us, so by the end she could break that and she could find her new way,” said Chu.
But it is far more than the literal circular doorways and staircases; the set was designed for the circularity of the camera movement Chu and the cinematographer Alice Brooks choreographed, as Grande plays the scene as if she is getting lost in the swirling movement through her rounded palatial suite.
“We built this suite in a way that’s almost like a ‘Muppets’ set. We had to have trap doors and walls that can go away, and it had to have lifts for where our Steadicam operator could go, and where the cranes could go,” said Chu. “I don’t want to leave Glinda’s face as she’s trying to figure out what is this maze that she’s trapped in, and that resulted in, ‘Oh, she needs to look at herself in the mirror — and with mirrors and distortions as we turn into it, we just can keep going through until you don’t even know what’s in or out.”
Schwartz’s lyrics are about seeing what lies beneath the beautiful, shining surface of Glinda’s life. What stops the swirling circle and brings the scene to its bubble-popping conclusion? A cold, hard look at herself in the mirror.
“Wicked: For Good” is now in theaters.
To hear Jon M. Chu’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.