"The PG film had to do something with its love song, and now there is confirmation that they massacred my boy: "As Long As You're Mine" is no longer horny. "From the very beginning, she goes, 'Kiss me fiercely,'" director Jon M. Chu told Deadline during the the BFI London Film Festival. "In this movie, they're actually apart. There's hesitation." But this song is not about hesitation; it's about going for it."
"Instead, in the film, out on November 21, Chu explained that Fiyero will spend the song looking at the Ozian propaganda saying Elphaba is evil. "He looks at her and it's like, 'Wow, you survived all of this and you're still kind and you are beautiful,'" Chu continued. "And he says, 'You're beautiful.' And I think that intimacy, getting them closer in the song, actually makes it feel more sensual. Even though they're not actually physically doing anything.""
"While Chu is describing a nice time, "As Long As You're Mine" is about physical intimacy. The melody is crooning and desperate, and their harmonies intertwine in a way that is supposed to mirror their bodies. "They say there's no future / for us as a pair / but just for this moment / I don't care," the two sing."
Wicked: For Good reconfigures the Act Two duet "As Long As You're Mine," reducing the original song's explicit physical sensuality and replacing continuous kissing and touching with physical separation and hesitation. The film stages Fiyero observing Ozian propaganda about Elphaba and verbally admiring her beauty rather than sustaining physical contact. The Broadway staging used intertwined harmonies and constant touching to mirror bodies and convey a desperate, crooning intimacy. The song originally centers on seizing a single intense, sensual moment together despite warnings about an impossible future, not on cautious emotional discovery.
Read at Vulture
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