Wicked director Jon M Chu has explained why he deleted a poignant scene between the movie’s lead characters, Elphaba and Glinda.
The musical follows Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp, two friends whose relationship reaches a crossroads as they are treated differently by the people around them.
Adapted from the Broadway stage sensation – itself based on a 1995 novel – the film is a prequel to L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland.
The actors drew some mockery over their teary interviews during promotion for the film, but Wicked nevertheless broke box-office records upon its debut in cinemas.
Following the movie’s digital release, fans were treated to deleted scenes, including one exchange between Elphaba and Glinda, which shows the Good Witch in a rare and vulnerable light.
After Elphaba sends her classmates to sleep with a spell, she joins Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) to escape with a caged lion cub.
“I would’ve helped you if you needed someone,” Glinda says in the scene. “You could’ve picked me.”
Elphaba responds: “I’m sorry, it was a mistake. I won’t leave you behind again.”
Chu said the decision to cut the footage was not made lightly, adding it “was one the hardest scenes to cut” from the movie because “it’s of the relationship and you really get to see Glinda’s side of things”.
“She sort of realises she doesn’t have this power even though she’s always pretended she has the whole time,” he told MTV UK.
“That she’s actually much smarter, and that she actually, genuinely wants to be Elphaba’s friend.”
The reason the scene was cut, Chu explained, was so that it did not take away from the emotion of seeing Elphaba invite Glinda along to the Emerald City.
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“You already know that, if that’s Elphaba’s heart, she’s not going to leave her behind,” he said.
“By holding it back, the audience doesn’t know, and that made the train scene much more exciting and more emotional when she does invite her. And that is ultimately her decision.
“When she looks back at her, she is saying with her eyes, whether we hear it or not, that I will never leave you behind again. So it sort of served a purpose in another way. We kept a little ahead of the audience there.”
The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey was left less than impressed by the film, writing in a three-star review: “Wicked will need to dream bigger and brighter, otherwise it may just fade completely under the spell of a classic.”