By Aliza Billet, Senior Arts & Culture Editor
A highlight of 2024 for many theater fans was the release of Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, a stage-to-screen adaptation of the beloved musical of the same name. Before the film’s release, Chu announced that just as the musical is told in two acts, Wicked(2024) would cover the first act, and a second film would cover the second one. This past year has been the longest intermission fans have ever experienced, and the success of Wicked meant the release of Wicked: For Good was highly anticipated by all.
Wicked: For Good hit theaters on November 21. My friend and I reprised the outfits we wore to the first film — pink for me in homage to Glinda and green for her as Elphaba. We nodded appreciatively to other audience members in similar getups and buckled down for the film.
Before getting into details of the movie, a quick note about musicals: Stage musicals are usually divided into two acts. The first act sets up the world and story, generally ending with a highly climactic moment. The second act serves as the culmination of that story. Second acts are generally known to be darker and sadder than their earlier counterparts, and this is true for Wicked.
Wicked retells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West — or, as she is known by here, Elphaba Thropp. In this version, she is not wicked at all, but rather fighting against corrupt rulers who slander and villainize her to cover up their own wrongdoings. Both the first act of the musical and the 2024 film version end with the song “Defying Gravity,” during which Elphaba escapes the Emerald City on a broomstick, officially rejecting the Wizard’s invitation to join him in ruling Oz and oppressing the animal citizens who live there. She sees him for what he truly is — a fraud — and flies off into the horizon, leaving her best friend Glinda behind.
Act two, and Wicked: For Good, focuses on Glinda struggling to reconcile her new position as “Glinda the Good” — in contrast to the propaganda Ozians are being fed about Elphaba being the “Wicked Witch of the West” — with her true feelings regarding Elphaba’s actual goodness. To make things more complicated, Glinda’s fiancé Fiyero is actually in love with Elphaba and wants to help with her crusade to save the animals. While all this is happening, the events of The Wizard of Oz take place, only it is revealed that Dorothy’s friends are a little more familiar to audiences than they might think.
Wicked: For Good lives up to its name in that it is good, but it falls a little flat when compared to the first film. Part of this probably has to do with the nature of the second act of Wicked to begin with; fans tend to agree that it is the weaker half of the story. Wicked’s strengths come from its original moments; the Wizard of Oz storyline connections in the second act feel contrived, weakening the whole work because of the way they are shoehorned in. However, I do still love the second act of Wicked. My three favorite songs from the musical — “As Long as You’re Mine,” “No Good Deed” and “For Good” — are from it. Also, Wicked (2024) exceeded all expectations for what a movie musical could be, so I was only looking forward to the sequel.
Interestingly, while the decision to split the two-and-a-half-hour musical into two feature-length films was a strength of the first film, that same choice weakened the second one. In Wicked: Part I, the extra time allotted expands the story and gives emotional moments space to breathe. One of the most impactful moments in that film is the scene in the Ozdust Ballroom, where Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship is cemented. Elphaba arrives at a party wearing an ugly hat Glinda tricks her into wearing. When everyone starts laughing at her, she simply begins dancing by herself, even though the music has stopped. Feeling guilty about the prank she pulled, Glinda joins Elphaba’s musicless dance, demonstrating great vulnerability and remorse by knowingly embarrassing herself so that Elphaba is not alone. The scene exists in the stage musical, but it is very brief and played comedically. In the 2024 film, the extended runtime of a single act into two hours and 40 minutes allows the scene to carry newfound emotional weight. I was not alone in contributing sniffles to the theater ambiance, and I appreciated that the filmmakers were able to create that mood.
However, despite Wicked: For Good’s runtime of two hours and 18 minutes being shorter than part one’s two hours and 40 minutes, the second film somehow feels longer than the first. I appreciated some expansions, like the integration of musical themes from act one into this second film. However, with fewer moments from the source material to expand upon, the film pads its runtime through the unnecessary additions, the most egregious of which is the addition of two unnecessary new songs which contribute nothing to the story.
While Elphaba’s “No Place Like Home” and Glinda’s “The Girl in the Bubble” seem to serve to further the women’s characterizations, both songs are just poorly written, boring and unnecessary. They rely on cheap repetition of words and phrases to achieve lengths of almost four minutes, and their lyrics are unimaginative. Elphaba’s song hinges on a silly reference to the famous line from The Wizard of Oz to express her love for Oz — something she never expresses before or after the song — and Glinda’s song also uses a reference to The Wizard of Oz as a gimmicky metaphor for characterization the audience didn’t need. It sounds like a lazily written and boring pop song, which is nice for Ariana Grande but out of place in the musical Wicked. Also, the cinematography during that song utilizes too many reflection-based camera shots. Traveling back and forth through the mirrors in Glinda’s room thematically serves to showcase the superficiality of her station, but it quickly becomes distracting and annoying; you get caught up being unsure if you’re seeing a reflection or the actual perspective. While that was probably the point, it was not as effective as the filmmakers would have liked.
Despite all this, the film also has its strengths. Jonathan Bailey, for one. His portrayal of Fiyero is so earnest and true that you can’t help but love him. And of course, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda seem like they were born to play those roles. They both shine in their own rights, and the chemistry between them only elevates their performances.
Above all, Wicked: For Good again proved that costume and set design is what the Wicked films do best. The creative team took full advantage of the film medium to make everything as grand as possible, and the reason it looks so good is because they made it real. With few exceptions, the sets were physically built and not computer generated (they even planted nine million tulips for the sprawling shots of Munchkinland!), and the same is true regarding the costumes. Look up the behind-the-scenes pictures; they’re worth the google.
Other moments in the film stand out as awkward, but they are all small. “As Long as You’re Mine,” a passionate display of longing and love in the original musical, was strangely choreographed and felt colder in the film. Michelle Yeoh is once again the one cast member whose singing chops are simply not up to par with the rest of the cast; however, she never claimed they were. The writers attempted to change a plot point so that wheelchair user Nessarose, played by disabled actor Marissa Bode, doesn’t need to walk like she does in the stage show, and it wasn’t executed perfectly. However, all these things are small issues compared to the bigger ones, and even the bigger ones were not as bad as what could have been. Movie musicals are notorious for their bastardization of their source material. At least Wicked: For Good correctly represented act two; Into the Woods (2014) infamously flattened important themes from its stage counterpart.
A question that remains is how the Wicked duology should be viewed in relation to its source material. Most of the issues I had with Wicked: For Good stemmed from the fact that the fan in me was not primed to appreciate significant departures from the stage musical. But does this mean that the changes are objectively bad?
With all its strengths and weaknesses, Wicked: For Good is a long-anticipated sequel that did not disappoint as much as it could have. Expectations were high, and the cards were stacked against it because it was based on the weaker half of the show. However, with what it was given, the movie did a good job. The Wicked movies will go down in musical history for all the things they did right. At the same time, Wicked: For Good shows that there are always more areas to improve.
Photo Credit: Flickr