‘Wicked’ cinematographer on filming emotional ‘For Good’ scene

Wicked cinematographer Alice Brooks knows exactly why the For Good sequence touched people emotionally, and it all comes down to one simple, powerful gesture: touch.

Brooks, speaking on Variety’s Inside the Frame, explained that the iconic hand-holding moment wasn’t just a beautiful shot, but a deliberate emotional anchor planted by director Jon M. Chu from day one.

“Hands were the very first thing Jon talked about when we started discussing ‘Wicked,’” she recalled, adding that Chu didn’t even have the script yet.

“He said, ‘There’s something about touch. Two friends; how they embrace each other, how they hold each other.’ He wanted hands to become a visual theme,” she claimed.

Brooks and Chu, who previously teamed on In the Heights and Jem and the Holograms, spent months experimenting with that language of touch.

They decided the most intimate way to capture it was from behind, a framing they repeated throughout both movies.

“We do it in the first film, and then twice in the second,” Brooks said. “In ‘Wonderful,’ when Elphaba and Glinda are about to get on the broomstick ride. And then again in ‘For Good.’ It completely pulls at the heartstrings.”

For Brooks, those hands represent the emotional evolution of the saga.

Where the first film focused on yearning, longing, and the spark of friendship, the second carried heavier themes: sacrifice, surrender, separation, and consequence.

And in the middle of all that, a simple touch becomes the most powerful storytelling tool of all.

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