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Warning: This submit comprises spoilers for Wicked.
In order to defy gravity, you are first going to wish to discover ways to learn the Grimmerie.
By the time Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) arrive within the Emerald City for Elphaba’s assembly with the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) within the Wicked film, now in theaters, we have seen each of the younger Shiz college students strive their hand at sorcery. While Glinda cannot but appear to handle a lot, it is clear that Elphaba has a pure expertise— albeit one which she will be able to’t notably management. But as soon as she will get her palms on the spellbook often called the Grimmerie, it permits her to focus her magic in such a means that she’s shortly revealed to have extra powers than anybody else in Oz.
Although the primary installment of director Jon M. Chu’s two-part Wicked movie adaptation ends on the level of intermission within the hit Broadway musical—i.e., instantly after Elphaba sings “Defying Gravity”—we already know that Elphaba’s skill to learn the Grimmerie has marked her as a harmful opponent in entrance of the Wizard and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). In reality, Elphaba’s refusal to make use of the guide to assist additional their aim of corralling the animals of Oz and focusing on them as scapegoats for all the kingdom’s issues is what results in the Wizard and Madame Morrible’s “depraved” smear marketing campaign towards her.
While the Grimmerie can also be featured within the stage present, its lore is expounded on within the film to include some specifics concerning the spellbook detailed in Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. That guide loosely impressed the 2003 musical and was itself a revisionist origin story for the supposed villain of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 basic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 movie adaptation.
The origin of the Grimmerie
In the film model of Wicked, as Elphaba and Glinda tour the Emerald City throughout the music “One Short Day,” they cease to observe a efficiency of the musical “Wizomania” simply as they do within the stage present. However, this time round, the “Wizomania” portion of the music is expanded to incorporate cameos by none apart from Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, the Tony-winning authentic stars of Wicked on Broadway.
As a part of the present inside the present that’s “Wizomania,” the pair relays the historical past of how the Wizard got here to rule Oz and explains the backstory of the Grimmerie. Basically, the guide of enchantments is an historic tome with mysterious origins that’s unreadable to virtually everybody in Oz. At some time limit, a prophecy was put forth predicting that, at Oz’s darkest hour, an immensely highly effective particular person with the flexibility to learn from the Grimmerie would emerge to save lots of the dominion’s individuals. The residents of Oz imagine this savior to be the Wizard, however as is revealed shortly thereafter, the Wizard has lied about his {qualifications} and solely Elphaba is able to deciphering the guide’s unusual language.
In Maguire’s novel, there’s a reference to the Grimmerie having been dropped at Oz by a robust sorcerer from Earth someday within the distant previous. The cause Elphaba is ready to learn it’s that—spoiler alert for Wicked: Part Two—the Wizard (who can also be from Earth) is her actual father and her half-Ozian, half-Earthling heritage has gifted (or cursed) her with distinctive magical abilities. Despite the truth that the Wizard is from Earth, he’s a charlatan with no precise magic and may due to this fact do nothing with the guide on his personal.
How the Grimmerie works
The first time we see Elphaba carry out magic utilizing the Grimmerie in each the Broadway musical and film, she does so with out understanding the results of her actions. Urged by the Wizard and Madame Morrible to grant the Wizard’s monkey captain of the guard, Chistery, the facility of levitation, Elphaba reads a spell that causes Chistery—together with the remainder of the palace’s monkeys—to endure a painful wing-sprouting transformation towards their will. While the now-flying monkeys are technically capable of levitate by the top of this course of, it is clearly not what Elphaba meant to occur and makes her notice that she’s been tricked into performing an irreversible enchantment.
Elphaba makes use of the identical spell once more earlier than the top of the film to create a flying broomstick for herself, which makes it look like she could also be getting a greater grasp on how the Grimmerie works. But, as those that have seen the musical know, the guide’s fickle nature with regard to intention vs. consequence comes again to hang-out Elphaba plenty of different occasions earlier than the story’s emotional finish.
