Before ye read any further, you lovers of musicals and defenders of talk-singing, please remember that I really liked the first Wicked movie.
The second one is an abomination. It is a pinata stuffed with cringe that was designed by the kind of blood-sucking executives who have made every, every, every single thing in the whole wide world worse. Fitting for a franchise big into broomsticks, I’m about to swing at it hard and spew its contents, lame as they are, all over the carpet.
Wicked: For Good shouldn’t exist, plain and simple. It has about 15-20 minutes of actual content that should have been squeezed into the first film by removing its bloat. It would have brought that movie down from being quite good to being just okay. That was the best-case scenario, as it turns out.
The fact that this sequel is over two hours long should be a prosecutable offense: premediated boredom inducement or something. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect the hundreds of millions of dollars that this will 100% collect.
Either trusting that you remember exactly where things left off last time or not caring at all if you do, the film opens with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) still on the run. She’s trying to expose the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) for being a phony who is mean to animals who can talk. He is mean to them for reasons that the film also doesn’t care to fully explain. Couldn’t spare any of the five hours of total screen time filling in that gap, apparently.
Galinda is now Glinda (Ariana Grande), a distinction that is a metaphor for this entire Wicked ordeal: It is a nonsensical, wholly unnecessary and superficial change from the original The Wizard of Oz that improves nothing. Glinda, who has no actual magical powers, does the bidding of the evil Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who has actual magical powers that she uses to prop up the Wizard. Morrible does this for reasons that are also wildly unmotivated.
Glinda’s motivation is that she wants to be liked and powerful. We should hate her, right? That is a bad motivation. Theoretically that is the exact same motivation that the Wizard and Morrible have. Yet, we are supposed to like Glinda. Why? She never does anything heroic. She sucks. She sucks from start to finish. But Wicked wants you to like her…because her songs are sometimes funny?
Glinda’s not the worst though, as Boq (Ethan Slater) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) are still around. Boq is stuck at the mercy of Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who has become Oz’s “governor.” He doesn’t love her, he loves Glinda, but Nessarose still selfishly forces him to stay by her side. The end result of her storyline is that we are invited to dislike the only disabled character while giving the hinky pinky Glinda a pass. You can follow the yellow brick road all the way to hell, apparently.
Did you notice that Elphaba isn’t doing much in this synopsis? That’s right, the titular witch is barely in this thing. She has no triumphant climax. We are not left to rethink or reframe The Wizard of Oz. Things just get grossly shoehorned into the events we already knew would happen. This was all a spectacular waste of time with one good song. A song that isn’t included in this movie.
Wicked: For Good is sincerely, remarkably, uniquely awful. The pacing is atrocious, the visuals are wonky, and sidelining Erivo for Grande is like trading an ice-cold beer on a hot day for a glass of lukewarm milk. A glass of milk that is trying way, way too hard. This is the first movie in as long as I can remember where I cannot think of one nice thing to say about it. Every half hour or so since I saw it, I have thought of another new thing to loathe.
Maybe the Broadway version is better? Maybe… Although, it almost certainly can’t soar all the way to actually being good. It has to have the same general muddled message and the same lack of good musical numbers in the second half. Did people maybe just confuse the fact that “Defying Gravity” is objectively a very, very good song with the whole thing being good?
The more years I do this critic stuff, the less I want to make people feel bad for liking what they like but I don’t. If you dig Wicked: For Good or the theatrical version, you see something that I don’t or can’t. That is entirely possible and actually quite likely. But what I can say is that Frozen is what everyone told me Wicked was and is decisively better in every way than what I just endured. It’s getting frosty in here.
Grade = F-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Siddhant Adlakha at Joysauce says “Between its fealty to past versions of the story, and its unwillingness to break free from even the most rigid emotional and formal modes, the sequel refuses to even attempt to defy gravity, making it sink like a stone.”
Rua Fay at Cinemasters says “As a lifelong fan of the source material, Wicked: For Good was much more of a mixed bag than I ever could’ve anticipated. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed, but overall this film does a decent job at delivering the epic conclusion this story deserves.”
Jenn Adams at Strong Female Antagonist says “Wicked: For Good admittedly takes a while to get started and lacks the heft of the first film’s majesty, but it strikes a powerful emotional chord and provides a fitting end for beloved and iconic characters. Fans of Wicked will love its second act, but both films work better as two halves of a single story of personal discovery and feminist empowerment.”