Oh my Oz! We’ve reached the continuation of Wicked a mere year after the first. Recalling the stage musical, this is where the story of Wicked starts to lose its bristles, where Dorothy’s grand adventure is happening concurrently, and previously established characters of Wicked are recontextualised as familiar ones – why, everyone MUST be connected in this day and age of prequels and sequels, and unless you’re Lost aiming to make some grandiose point about life’s serendipity, my concern is that it only makes your magical world less fantastical and smaller. Here, but know that I really loved the first Wicked, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande; the direction, visuals, songs and efforts of the entire cast I applauded in the aftermath. But I’m also a stan for The Wizard of Oz, well before being a stan was even a thing. I can barely remember the specific plot of the second act of the stage show from back in the day, so let’s hope a second go round with John M. Chu’s cinematic edge can broach my… concern-itudes.
In the years or minutes since Wicked, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has set her efforts to freeing enslaved animals, while Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldbum) have led a smear campaign against her as a Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda (Ariana Grande) works with them but brings joy and comfort to the citizens of Oz, while she can never forget the bond she once grew with Elphaba, knowing her to be a strong and deeply natured person in truth. If only this power spill could be made right, Elphaba and Glinda would guide Oz hand-in-hand, as Best Friends Forever.
Hey guys, remember Oz? That awesomely magical world where anything is possible? Well, it’s not, and it isn’t! If anything remotely interesting appears, then it’s probably because Elphaba did it. Remember all the happy townspeople? The citizens of the Emerald City who could “make a dimple smile out of a frown”? Or the Munchkins who joyfully rejoiced in their peace? Fools and dimwits, the lot of them, finagled by the fake news media. Remember the beautiful friendship that Dorothy and the Scarecrow built up through courage and adversity, where she told him that she would miss him most of all? Well, Dorothy was a patsy, and the Scarecrow probably couldn’t wait for her to shut up and leave, to jump the bones of his hidden green secret. Ain’t all that swell? So yes, I do recall my fundamental problems with Wicked in the second half; but more than that, for me, this movie never leaves the station. And you could put it down to me being like a broken record player that couldn’t fit the groove, but I think the very nature of this second act is disjointed, in that it takes place all over of Oz, instead of the one university, and relies on a knowledge of The Wizard of Oz to fill in the gaps of its own story. But what surprised me most is how there isn’t any story. Genuinely. I commented on the first Wicked, how the animal drama sub-plot isn’t given enough attention, and it’s given less here. The Wizard is scapegoating the animals, but why? What threat is there in Oz that requires a scapegoat? What relationship do the animals pose to alternative knowledge that would threaten the Wizard? It’s never explained. The Wizard even has his own private stash of assorted caged animals, which is unforgivable, and what a peculiar place to story them for unspecified reasons.
What I liked of Wicked: For Good will be a tiny list – the attempt to define Glinda through a backstory as a child, making her continue to long to be magical but recognise that her true gift is making people feel contented with her warm smile 👍 I thought the song and set piece as Elphaba and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) are about to get jiggy was… interesting, but then I would have to say that I only really truly enjoyed this movie at the song “For Good”, which comes so late in proceedings. I found the songs unresounding, which is strange, because the first movie’s songs are all replayable. The concept of a song where Elphaba sings about how there’s “No Place Like Home”, echoing Dorthy’s famous last words in The Wizard of Oz, is a cool idea, but I’ll have to learn to like the song if I do at all, because it’s not hitting day one. I thought Cynthia Erivo affirmed herself as a wonderful casting choice for Elphaba, as I didn’t buy into her hype around the first movie. But she out-acts Ariana Grande here honestly, where I’m adamant Grande was the clear standout prior. I guess Elphaba has more to do in this second act, expressively, yet I’m still left to wonder, how much does she push the events of the story in any way? She barely ever knows what’s going on. She couldn’t stop her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), from casting a spell from her book, despite her noted objection, and she couldn’t offer an explanation to Fiyero’s love while Glinda foundered on her wedding day. Her actions weren’t even clear to the cowardly lion cub she once rescued, as he thinks she kidnapped him. Throw on top of that the green prejudice, a father that doesn’t love her, a mentor out to destroy her, and a malicious ruler as your disgraced idol, and Elphaba just cops it and cops it left and right! “Oh, what a world, what a world!” indeed! And now I’m ragging on her! Will the injustice ever cease?! How sad is it when you eventually have to venture into the barren void to find your only source of impartiality? 😄
I like Michelle Yeoh too – she’s the weakest singer, but at least she plays the character with an intended focus, and it’s fun watching Yeoh lavish in the wickedness herself. Oh Oz, but now we need a prequel-prequel to discover how the Wizard and Madame Morrible first met and formed their manipulative partnership 😮 I can’t wait for that to undoubtedly alter the events of Wicked for it all to make sense. And all the handholding, and singing in unison, as we learn how the Wizard and Morrible have actually been the misunderstood good guys all along, and the animals truly are super destructive. Coming to a cinema near you in 2090! I thought it was never explicit in Wicked if Morrible had her own powers or not – I may be misremembering. I thought it was all a ruse as she searched for a magical student. But here, she can effortlessly manipulate the writing in the sky, and is powerful enough to summon cyclones! But she can’t read the book. Because she’s not chosen, I suppose. And I think the ending that has Glinda granted the glow of the book indicates how you must be pure of heart to read it, and not merely magically gifted. Even though Nessa somehow read it too 🤷♀️
The Wizard singing about history being filled with alternative truths was also another headscratcher, in that it doesn’t absolve you from doing the right thing in the moment. Along with the parlour tricks, I really feel like that song wants to be “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago, how it explains the perspective of the seedy villain’s actions (while also acknowledging how Wicked is different to The Wizard of Oz), but it doesn’t deliver. I think Oz: The Great and Powerful found a better way to explain how the Wizard snuck through to a position of reverence in Oz, even if that movie somewhat feels like a shallow product of the time. But for our current high-concept prequel, or reimagining, I can’t see much more beyond an elevation of tween idolisations, like pink, friendship, thoughts of thwarting animal cruelty, and a literal cat fights over shoes and boys – and not magical shoes anymore, by the way. Sentimental shoes 🙄 And all this would be fine, if it were infused with something savoursome. Yet this is truly fanfic that has gotten out of hand.
I don’t even find the direction particularly noteworthy here, and that includes editing cohesion and shot composition too. I praised the wider cast in the first Wicked too, but there’s rarely those group scenes in this, and they don’t hit the same anyway. True, I went into Wicked: For Good with trepidation, but the movie is still a disappointment. But I’ve now paid to see Wicked on the stage, didn’t like it, and still saw it again in the cinema anyway, so who’s the real mug? Yet, once I calm down, and take a step back, I guess that movie could be given credit for what it decides not to include. Like, it doesn’t include the Winkie Guards at the Witch’s palace, because we don’t need them – the winged monkeys serve enough of a purpose as the sympathetic guards. The movie also avoids showing Dorothy’s face, for which I am thankful; I certainly don’t need an alternative Judy Garland to go along with everything else that’s changed. And if you had no prior knowledge of the stage show, it’s smart to discover that the identity of the scarecrow isn’t revealed until the end – I’m certain the play does that differently. So, I can concede, some good choices made, but you’re still polishing a turd.
The following rating is also a reflection of this movie’s contribution to cinema. It’s almost an anti-contribution, in that it aims to flip a fundamental founding pillar of the silver screen, in The Wizard of Oz. But I found this movie clunks around worse than Wonka from a few years ago, where I suppose you might be able to put Wonka‘s failure for me down to marketing, or a cheeky leaning on the original, when it’s really quite its own production. This movie is worse than Joker: Folie a Deux, shockingly, by my assessment, because it isn’t trying to be bold, and is extremely thin in story – and yes, thinner than the pontification over the plot of your first movie as they did in Joker 2. At least Joker 2 only obliterated one established character, where, how many does this cover? 🤔 Wicked: For Good is in the category of the worst of those Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies, which is probably the third one, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, relying on a previously agreed upon aesthetic and a firm connection to an established material to be in any way relevant. I award Wicked: For Good a 1.5, and I weep for cinema. If the Loki universe was real, I’d have this movie pruned. Which shouldn’t take more than a… clock-tick 🤮
1.5
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