Wicked: For Good

Rating 5/10

Last year, I went into Wicked with a lot of reservations and walked out delighted.  It became my favorite film of 2024.  So it genuinely pains me to say that Wicked: For Good confirmed every fear I originally had.  Expanding a 2.5-hour stage show into two separate films running nearly five hours combined was always a gamble, but this distortion proves the decision was never about art; it was about money.  What we’re left with is a bloated work without the thrust of a compelling narrative.  The plunge in quality is so staggering that it’s hard to find a historical precedent.  I suspect it’s the kind of whiplash audiences might have felt going from the original 1977 Star Wars movie to the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special on CBS the following year.

The story picks up five years after Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) defies the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).  “The Wicked Witch of the West,” as she is now called, is living in hiding while fighting for Animal rights.  Glinda (Ariana Grande) has risen to become the polished public face of goodness.  Oz tightens its grip on public opinion in a propaganda war by silencing Animals, exploiting Glinda’s image, and spreading misinformation.  Michelle Yeoh is Madame Morrible, the regime’s calculating press secretary.  She looks fantastic, but her performance is stilted, with laughably tone-deaf vocals, especially next to Ariana Grande’s superior skills.  Jeff Goldblum exploits the Wizard’s goofier side.  He can’t sing either, but because his character is meant to be ridiculous, his shaky abilities make more sense.  Elphaba’s attempts to help only backfire, reinforcing her reputation as a menace.  The estranged paths of these once friends converge when the Wizard’s government engineers a crisis to frame Elphaba as a threat.  Glinda must decide whether she will continue supporting a corrupt regime or finally stand against it.

There are so many problems with this sequel, but the root is the weakness of the source material.  Act II of the Broadway show is simply not as strong as Act I.  The first unfolds like a classic, tightly structured hero’s journey with a thrilling climax.  Act II is an episodic jumble, involving political plotlines, a shoehorned romance, and Wizard of Oz tie-ins.  On stage, this section runs about an hour; here it is stretched to an agonizing two hours and seventeen minutes.  A strong filmmaker makes the hard choices to cut where the material is thin so it plays better.  Director Jon M Chu is entirely out of his depth.  There isn’t enough emotional momentum to justify this interminable slog.

A major flaw quickly emerges: the script has no sense of pacing.  The endeavor swings from long stretches of exposition to clumsily inserted plot threads.  There’s a smorgasbord to choose from: Animal rights, the Wizard’s vaguely fascist government, and Glinda’s moral struggle over image versus integrity.  There’s also an unconvincing sexual affair involving Elphaba and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), which weakens the far more compelling sisterhood dynamic.  Glinda and Elphaba remain the strongest elements.  Yet they spend so little time together.  The spark that made the original so enjoyable is sorely missed.  The few scenes where they do reunite are indeed excellent, but they only remind us what’s missing.

Worse still is the creative team’s insistence on retrofitting this account into the 1939 Wizard of Oz continuity.  The tornado, Dorothy’s arrival, and the Magic Slippers are addressed as if they demanded origin stories.  (Legal copyright prevented Universal’s adaptation from using the ruby design owned by Warner Bros, so they are silver here.) But the rushed origins of the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion are the most egregious additions.  Anyone unfamiliar with that film will be even more bewildered as to why this trio must accompany Dorothy to see the Wizard in this installment.  Dorothy is wisely kept blurry and peripheral.  Considering the heavy use of computer effects, I should be grateful they didn’t insert a CGI Judy Garland into this mess.  Nothing, however, saves the expanded storyline of Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and Boq (Ethan Slater), two peripheral characters who add confusion and raise more questions.  Nessarose suddenly becomes the Governor of Munchkinland, while Boq inexplicably becomes her resentful servant.  They exist to explain 1939 characters, but I wish this manipulation didn’t force these connections.

Even a musical with a weak narrative can survive on great songs, but those are lacking, too.  The film opens with a medley of callbacks designed to bridge the two parts called “Every Day More Wicked,” Yet it only reminds you how much stronger Part One’s melodies were.  “For Good” at the end remains the emotional peak, though it repurposes the “Unlimited” motif from “The Wizard and I,” which makes the moment feel oddly familiar.  “As Long as You’re Mine” is a pleasant love duet between Elphaba and Fiyero, and “No Good Deed” is Elphaba’s passionate lament at being vilified.  But the new numbers, “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble,” are obvious filler created solely because previously written Broadway tunes cannot qualify for Oscars.  Nothing here approaches the galvanizing electricity of “Defying Gravity” or the pop sensibilities of “Popular,” which was an outright banger.

Wicked: For Good stands as a cautionary tale about the perils of stretching a beloved musical beyond its natural limits.  What was once charming has been diluted into an unwieldy mess.  Only Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo save this from becoming a full-blown desecration of The Wizard of Oz.  When they are on screen together, the musical comes alive.  The production is still lavish at least, but the story can’t withstand this much padding.  This one never lifts off the ground.  One day, I hope a talented filmmaker will combine the two films into a single, efficient three-hour production.  Sometimes bigger is not better.

11-20-25