For Good’ Obsessed With Clock Ticks?

Each Depraved and its new sequel, For Good, are plagued by “Oz-isms”—the occasional phrase tweak right here and there to make the Land of Oz really feel simply askance of our personal actuality, like “obsessulated,” “rejoicify,” or “braverism,” and so forth. However there’s one which For Good goes again to time and again, to the purpose of weirdness: everybody tells one another that they’ll do one thing in “a clock tick.”

For Good already has a peculiar relationship with time, on condition that the film itself (and even the artistic crew all through its press tour) is hazy about simply how a lot time has actually handed between the occasions of the movies—Madame Morrible notes within the opening that it’s been “12 tide turns” since Elphaba stole the Grimmerie, however we’re by no means given a sign of simply what body of time a tide flip is—or how the passage of time within the movie itself is supposed to be interwoven with the occasions of Wizard of Oz within the background (as with the musical, it’s finest to only not take into consideration that in any respect).

However it’s a “clock tick” that comes up time and again in For Good. Characters are often telling one another to attend a clock tick, or they’ll be again in a clock tick, or they solely have a clock tick. It’s notably odd, on condition that Oz additionally has “only a sec” as a flip of phrase—Glinda says precisely that when she has to pop her bubble to listen to the Munchkins speaking to her in Depraved‘s opening, so a clock tick should be the equal of a minute or two, however it’s not essentially the development that’s the difficulty; it’s that it’s used a number of occasions in For Good, together with in adapting the one time it’s used within the stage present throughout Elphaba and Glinda’s catfight.

The remainder of Depraved‘s Oz-isms turn out to be background noise, which is partly why they’re so efficient—they don’t stand out as notably jarring to our ears, in the way in which the repeated use of “clock tick” does. However there’s additionally one more reason… as a result of neither the musical nor its film adaptation actually makes use of a reasonably main aspect from Gregory Maguire’s original novel, the Clock of the Time Dragon.

In Maguire’s model of Depraved (which is wildly completely different from the occasions of the musical in some ways), the clock is an important piece of Ozian tradition, taking over a religious significance. A touring mechanical puppet theater, the clock is a big tower-like object that travels throughout the varied areas of Oz, placing on exhibits that folks start to consider are literally able to prophetic visions. Elphaba has a very necessary connection to the present, as within the guide she is definitely born within the clock; certainly one of its exhibits makes an attempt to disclose the character of her true parentage to her, and a number of other characters’ sick demises in Depraved and its sequel novels are predicted by the Time Dragon, which even ultimately turns into a spot of safekeeping for the Grimmerie.

However the clock is rarely actually introduced up within the musical or the film variations as a lot. The musical is a minimum of a bit extra concerned with it, because the manufacturing is staged with the Time Dragon hanging over the stage, with its clock face forming a key background piece all through, however it’s set dressing as a nod to its significance within the authentic guide, fairly than a major plot level. The films, in the meantime, are much more distanced: Glinda mentions the clock in Depraved‘s opening when she describes the time Elphaba’s melting occurred, and Shiz College has an elaborate clock that encompasses a dragon motif in its design as a nod, however that’s about it.

The truth that the Clock of the Time Dragon is so unimportant to both Depraved the musical or Depraved the film variations truthfully makes the repeated utilization of “clock tick” in For Good all of the stranger—intentional nod or in any other case.

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