Fans customized the Wicked movie poster to more closely match the original Broadway poster.
Original Broadway Poster:
Movie poster:
Some fans, disappointed by the poster, altered it to be closer to the original, moving Grande’s hand and lowering the brim of Erivo’s hat to cover her eyes. The edits prompted Erivo to respond. “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen
“None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” Erivo continued. “The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes.”
So, this seems like a completely reasonable reaction to fans making fan content.
Look, I’m all about listening to a woman of color explain how something that might seem innocuous to a white man like me might actually be harmful. I’m willing to accept that there are things I don’t fully understand and I’m willing to take a different perspective if pressed.
But I can’t wrap my head around this one. Elphaba is a fictional character. The movie poster is almost the same as the Broadway playbill. Theatre nerds with photoshop adjusted it as a homage, and understandably so. Hiding beneath the the rim of your hat with a smirk on your face has a much different feel than staring deadpan at the camera. Wicked fans are just expressing their excitement about this movie…
This argument that “covering my eyes erases me and silences my nonverbal communication” just doesn’t check out. It’s clear why people made that specific adjustment, and to suggest that it was a deliberate attack against the actress is just grasping at straws. This isn’t a story about the woman Cynthia Erivo, this is a story about the character Elphaba Thropp, The Wicked Witch of the West. She isn’t the first to play Elphaba, and she won’t be the last. If she’s mad that people see the character she plays and not her, she needs to reconsider her philosophy towards acting, because that kinda the whole point…
She should take notes from Coolio regarding his beef with Weird Al:
“F*** no, man, I let that go so long ago,” Coolio responded. "Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong. Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this s***.
"Real men and real people should be able to admit when they’re wrong and I was wrong, bro. Come on, who the f*** am I, bro? He did parodies of Michael Jackson, he did parodies of all kinds of people and I took offense to it because I was being cocky and s*** and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that s*** and went with it.
“I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny as s***. It’s one of those things where I made a wrong call and nobody stopped me. That’s one thing I’m still upset about—my management at the time. Somebody should’ve stopped me from making that statement because it was dumb. And I think it hurt me a little bit. It made me seem stupid.”
What an utterly ridiculous and inconsequential thing to get upset about. Someone should tell her to re-read what she just wrote and think about how stupid it sounds.
What is she trying to communicate anyway? She has the plainest, most boring face of all time, just staring at the camera with the eyes of a dead fish. There is no communication going on.
I think she’s trying to communicate her skincare routine.
She’s just remembered she has some video tapes to return.
I. Want. To. Fit. In.
Maybe it’s a PR thing.
Can’t tell who it is on the edited version.
Everything is about brand and name recognition these days
because, without words we communicate with our eyes
IDK, the original and the edit both communicate way more mystique and mischievousness than the one with her eyes visible
You know, like how the wicked witch would
I was on the fence about giving any time to viewing Wicked but I think it’s gonna be a hard pass now.
Yup, fuck that movie with a rake. I ain’t seeing it either!
Same. Was going to see it in the cinema opening week. Now I’ll wait for the reviews and streaming release. I’ve already seen the broadway show (excellent show btw).
Without words we communicate with our eyes
True, but this actress ain’t doing that. She’s completely dissociated in the pic, her expression so blank and emotionless, screaming that she’s dead inside. While a dissociated character could make a good villain, it’s not hard to see that the character in the poster for the musical isn’t a dissociated villian who is unaware of her cruelty but someone who is fully conscious of and revels in it. It’s only natural that people who are fans of the original work notice just how out of character this is and try to fix it.
Don’t like it? Stop making stupid remakes of ancient stuff and make something original for once! Maybe try putting some emotion into it!
But you know, that’d require Hollywood actually put in effort and they’ve probably forgotten how to do that by now. Seriously, is anyone watching the new shit that they fart out over there these days? Most everyone I know either rewatches old shit or watches anime. Hey, maybe we’ll see the rise of Bollywood over the next couple decades, who knows?
If that’s the most offensive thing they have seen they live a charmed life.
I could easily make it worse by simply copying and posting a cup onto the poster.
Yes, the Internet has broken me…
Stolen from reddit
The ego and vanity is astounding. And the movie poster sucks because she’s looking straight at the camera.
And I’m 90% sure that originally they wanted to make it matches the original styling but she fought to keep her face fully visible. So that’s why she’s so irked that there’s a fan who made that edit and proved the people who suggested that in the first place right.
That’s quite the oversimplification of a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes.
She makes no mention of the hand covering up the other actresses face either.
I keep staring at the original, trying to figure out what she’s trying to communicate. I’ve seen the Broadway musical. I know the story. The vacant expression just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t convey any emotion I associate with the character.
In matters of taste, the customer is always right.
Nobody but the audience gets to decide what the audience wants. Not writers, not actors, not directors, not graphic designers. If you can give the audience something they didn’t know that they wanted until they got it, so much the better for you. But if the audience just plain wants something else, then there’s no amount of cajoling or negotiation that will make them feel otherwise.
That said, I have no idea what the collective response is to either of these posters, and this does feel a bit like a tempest in a teapot.
You haven’t worked a service gig comrade. When someone asks for they’re bacon sandwich to be raw you’ll understand.
Yea lady, that’s totally just as bad as people asking if your ***** is green.
Huh. This is why you need a PR team.
Yeah maybe not calling out your fans on making things that build excitement for your upcoming project is the best course of action as an actor. It’s like Daisy Ridley calling out Star Wars fans for having the wrong body shape in cosplay or something else equally stupid. They’re fans. They’re having fun. You don’t get to tell your fans how they’re supposed to enjoy your work.
I prefer the original poster. The new poster still looks like Wicked to me, and I would be disappointed if it recreated the original exactly. The fan edit is fun, I like it, but I understand artists from current year who made the modern poster would want to make a statement different than artists from when the original came out.
Everyone is making art, why do we have to be mad about that?
If it was her decision that her full face should be on display, the backlash should be evidence enough that someone else gets paid to make those decisions, not her.
The original looks boring. She has absolutely no emotions on her face. There’s no mystique, no ‘wickedness’. Even the composition looks like something a high schooler in Photoshop class would make.
The edit isn’t perfect either. But at least it pays homage to the original in more than just image. It adds that mystique back, and makes her look more menacing.
What it truly boils down to is ego. Although the edit is better, and so many people agree on it, it doesn’t show her full face. And she can’t let that go.
Guaranteed this whole thing came up before that it didn’t match the style. She showed her cards and now makes it sound like she was the one who pushed against matching the original. Now that the fans see it and dislike it (probably like they warned that fans would), she’s mad about it. It really sounds like she pushed for this design so it wouldn’t hide her face and now she’s furious that fans reacted in the exact way that was predicted.
The edit looks ridiculous, how is it better?
I’m not mixing this up right?
The first picture with the red lipstick is the fan made photo?
where you can’t see half her face?
that is fucking weird.
The original looks so much better.
what are you talking about there’s no emotions on her face?
in the fan edit they took away half her face!
this is crazy that people like the fan edit, It’s like if you cut an origami crane in half, drew a smiley face on it with a Sharpie and you were like “yeah that’s better.”
The original’s smile communicates much more stuff than the eyes on the face that looks like it’s completely bored.
Trying to “communicate with her eyes” is exactly what makes the poster bad.
i disagree, but your interpretation of her eyes is your own and completely beside the point, in any case.
It’s not besides the point. It’s in fact the whole point. That’s why there is a fan edit and a response and a backlash to the backlash.
All of this is the point here. You can’t handwave away the other side cause you don’t agree or want to handle that argument.
Her eyes look bored and like she’s trying to look serious. Like she’s worried you realized you can smell her last fart.
“All of this is the point here.”
no, unless you are responding to somebody else, you are barking up a tree in a completely separate field.
“You can’t handwave away the other side cause you don’t agree or want to handle that argument.”
I’ve swatted every insult and argument here so far without breaking a sweat because they have no standing or, like your comments, are completely irrelevant to my comments, what you might want to try reading before responding to.
what you think of her expression is completely immaterial and irrelevant to any of my comments.
maybe you think you’re responding to somebody else?
you can think anything you like about her expression. whatever you like; it sounds like you like farts, so you’re thinking about farts.
That’s fine, and is completely irrelevant with respect to invalidating her own feelings of erasure.
that is what I have been addressing, and what most of you have completely whiffed on or shamefully been attacking her for.
I don’t care how people see the poster, I care that people are not respecting her feelings at being erased from her own artwork.
it doesn’t matter what you think of the artwork in the slightest.
it matters that you’re disrespecting someone for expressing themselves, bullying someone because they are being sincere.
you’re dehumanizing them because what they say makes you uncomfortable.
Her own artwork…. Movies are collaborations. She it a tiny but important part of the artwork not the entirety. Shit she’s like the sixth person playing the role. She created not much.
“She it a tiny but important part of the artwork…”
yes. and look how furious and contemptuous it has still made you that she has an opinion about her own work.
you claim she’s so unimportant, so why is it that she deserves so much contempt and abuse from a dozen strangers in one post simply for expressing her opinion, without demanding change or attacking anyone.
Wow. Ok.
You know you can make something and it still be bad right?
what do you need help with understanding here?
you need an example of someone that made “bad” art, you mean?
what does her expression tell you about her character?
ooh good question.
she has a very deliberate stare and a relaxed face, so it looks like she’s hearing something she doesn’t like that concerns her and she’s deciding what to do about it.
I also see something vulnerable in there, since the muscles around her eyes aren’t very tense, but still a very earnest look.
hoping for understanding, with a little resignation to do what must be done.
she’s nailing it with respect to her role, now that you bring it up.
you described almost every “resting face”.
I thought the resting face was supposed to be aggressive or bitchy?
she doesn’t really have those qualities in this expression.
That was never the point. I’m not commenting on if it’s better or not. Her reaction to something a fan made is what we’re all talking about.
The original composition with her eyes covered is just better and way more interesting.
Right? Plus it’s an homage to the musical and instantly recognisable.
