“Wicked” cinematographer Alice Brooks knows why the “For Good” number tugs at heartstrings.

Aside from the split door scene with Elphaba and Glinda on either side in tears, the handholding moment also hits emotionally. Thematically, it’s also a repeated shot in “Wicked” and “ Wicked: For Good ” — and it was something important to filmmaker Jon M. Chu .

“Hands were the very first thing that Jon talked about when we first started talking about ‘Wicked,’” says Brooks, who sat down for Variety’s Inside the Frame . She added at that point Chu didn’t yet have the script. “He said, ‘There’s something about touch. Two friends; how they embrace each other, how they hold each other. And the hands became the thing that he wanted to become a visual theme.”

The two, who have worked togethe

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