Chapter One ‘Irrational’

What does that broom do?
Photo: Universal Pictures

The Bad: Part One It ends on a high note, literally and figuratively. Elphaba, played in her final moments Cynthia ErivoHe belted his face and said as he floated in the air on his newly levitating magic broom.defy gravity” and for the first time in his life he declares his own power. This is great. But it can also be hard to focus on everything we need to focus on when the dynamics of your broom don’t make any sense. We’re not looking for realism here – it’s a flying broom – but we want it to follow some kind of logic. And the film, directed by Jon M. Chu, robs us of any broom-based understanding of how Oz’s magic works.

Before “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba accidentally uses a levitation spell she read in the film’s spellbook, the Grimmerie, to make the monkeys grow wings. Later, during “Defying Gravity,” he tries to: self He grows wings but accidentally enchants a broomstick to fly instead. It would make more sense if it was a vacuum cleaner. She also had wings, but that wasn’t possible because the point of the movie was to tell how she got the Wicked Witch’s broom. Then Elphaba jumps out the window and loses it. As he falls through the air, the broom comes flying towards him as if it were controlling him, even though he has absolutely no control over the flying monkeys. So the spell makes the broom come to his hand whenever he wants, which doesn’t apply to anything he’s used the spell on before? Rationalize this.

Perhaps even worse, when Elphaba gets on the broomstick, it suddenly flies into the air. This is true; He doesn’t use the broom to fly; he flies himself. We know this because at certain points he holds the broom at right angles to his body and hangs completely. One would think that if the broom was flying, it would be under it, but it is not. It flies of its own volition while looking at the people below it. How? How does he do this?

Whenever Elphaba casts a spell, absolutely anything can happen, which The Bad: Part Two It’s confusing at best because we don’t know what the consequences of their actions will be. The Bad: Part One very very long. (Two hours and 40 minutes, to be more specific.) It could at least explain the basic mechanics of the most powerful magic in Oz. Fly the broom, make the monkeys grow wings, or make Elphaba levitate. But all this with one spell? As the film defies gravity, it also begins to defy its own logic, which ba-a-advertisement.