Josh Reviews Wicked: For Good

As anyone reading this probably knows, Wicked: For Good picks up the story from last years Wicked Part One and adapts the second half of the acclaimed Broadway musical.  Elphaba has been denounced as a villain, and she’s now known to all of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West.  She’s continuing to battle the Wizard and help the oppressed animals of Oz, but with little success.  Glinda, meanwhile, is the happy public face of the Wizard and Madame Morrible’s regime.  She’s in a position of authority and, as the film opens, she announces her engagement to Fiyero, now Captain of the Wizard’s guards.  She has everything she ever wanted, but she’s not as happy as she thought she would be.  The two women are on a collision course, with Fiyero caught in between…

I’m not a big movie musical fan, so I was surprised how much I enjoyed last year’s Wicked Part One!  I thought it was a wonderful adaptation of the Broadway show.  The cast was fantastic, and the film looked great.  I was glad they expanded the adaptation to two parts, giving the characters and the story time to breathe, allowing the film to develop to a powerful emotional climax.  I thought the film was great, and I was eager to see the second half.  A year later, Wicked: For Good has arrived.

I’m a little disappointed to report that I thought this second film was not the home run that the first film was.  It was fun to watch in a theater, on a big screen with great sound.  But I don’t think this second film works nearly as well as the first one did.  It didn’t capture me the way Part One did.

Why is this?  Part of the problem is with the source material.  I’m not a Wicked expert, but as a casual fan, my feeling is that the first act of the Broadway show was stronger than the second.  Certainly all the songs that I walked away from the show having stuck in my head (songs like “What is this Feeling?”, “Popular”, and “Defying Gravity”) all came from the first half.  There wasn’t as much story in the second half of the play — it runs a brisk 45 minutes.  It feels to me like the major character arcs for Elphaba and Glinda all occur over the course of the first act, with the second half being more about plot developments once the two women are set on their paths.

I think the filmmakers — director John Chu, and screenwriters Winnie Holzman & Dana Fox, adapting the book for the musical by Stephen Schwartz and Ms. Holzman — tried to expand the short act two of the show to create a more complete film, but I don’t think all of their choices were successful.  It should have been tragic to see Elphaba and Glinda on opposite sides for most of the film,  but I didn’t feel the film landed the emotion of that conflict for me.  There’s a lot of plot in this movie, a lot of back-and-forth as characters move around the world of Oz, but it all felt a little disjointed to me.  Events didn’t flow together as smoothly as I’d hoped, nor land with the emotion that I think the filmmakers were hoping for.

As an example, the staging of Fiyero’s mid-movie rescue of Elphaba sticks out as a problem the filmmakers didn’t quite solve.  This should be equal parts heroic and tragic, but I got stuck on why couldn’t Elphaba have easily taken Fiyero with her, thus avoiding everything that comes after?  The staging made it feel to me that Fiyero could have easily just hopped on Elpaba’s broom with her and flown away to safety.

One big problem for me was the way the film seemed to be far more focused than the show at connecting to the events of The Wizard of Oz.  We see a lot more of Dorthy and her gang of friends in this film then I remember from the show, and the film spends a lot of time in the last hour to try to put all the story-pieces in place for the events of The Wizard of Oz.  I understand the impulse to do this, but I don’t think it works.  I don’t think Wicked actually connects that smoothly to The Wizard of Oz!  So every time the film tried to draw our attention to these connections, it just kept leading me to think about all sorts of plot problems that pulled me out of the story.  (For example: Why is the attitude of the Tin Man here so different than in The Wizard of Oz?  If the Scarecrow is who Wicked tells us he is, why on earth would he go along with Dorothy’s mission to defeat Elphaba?  How did Dorothy get home if Glinda doesn’t have real magic?)

A lot happens in this movie but I didn’t feel emotionally connected to much of it.  For an example of how the film’s story feels somewhat undercooked, look at the way that sweet Nessarose has now become an evil dictator, restricting the rights of the Munchkins.  The film needs this for plot-reasons, to explain why the Munchkins are happy when “the Wicked Witch of the East” is killed.  But Nessarose isn’t given enough screen-time to really allow us to feel how her broken heart curdles into hatred.  (Same goes for Boq.  Ethan Slater is terrific when he’s asked to portray the angry & vengeful version of his character that we see in the film’s second half — it’s fun to see Mr. Slater play those beats — but I wish we’d been allowed more time to show us his journey and how the sweet and unassuming Boq became that creature.)

I really liked the way the film spent more time than the Broadway show exploring the plight of the animals who were persecuted by the Wizard.  This was a great change.  This aspect of the story has always been, to me, one of the most interesting parts of Wicked.  This has always read to me as a Holocaust parable, with a fascist leader stirring up hatred and persecution of a minority, demonizing them and labeling them as sub-human.  I’m thrilled to see the film lean into this dark aspect of the story, and I was happy to see them find ways to keep this storyline alive here in Part Two.  (Also, it was clever to bring back Elphaba’s nanny/mother-figure Dulcibear.)

The cast remains terrific.  Cynthio Erivo and Ariana Grande absolutely own their leading roles as Elphaba and Glinda.  The film soars when they’re on screen together.  (I wish they weren’t separated for so much of this movie.  I know that’s inherent to the source material, but it plays differently in a movie that is two-plus hours long versus a 45-minute second act of a show.).  Not only are both women incredible singers and performers, but the power of the friendship they seem to have formed off-screen really shines through in their scenes on-screen.  This is a special pairing.  And Jonathan Bailey remains note-perfect as Fiyero.  He does a beautiful job in portraying the passion and focus that Fiyero, formerly spoiled and disinterested, now possesses.  (His delivery of the line “I’m not lying” to Elphaba during the “As Long as You’re Mine” sequence was one of my favorite moments in the film.)  We get more Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard than in film one, which is a pleasure, and Michelle Yeoh is fun to see in full-villain mode now as Madame Morrible.  (I love both Mr. Goldblum and Ms. Yeoh; they’re both terrific actors and very charismatic on-screen, though their singing chops do leave something to be desired.  I noticed that more in this film than in film one.)  I was happy to see Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, and Bronwyn James all back; they’re all terrific; I just wish they all had more to do in the story.

I didn’t walk away humming the music as I did after seeing Part One.  “Wonderful” was enjoyable.  I liked the “As Long as You’re Mine” scene, as I’d mentioned above, though that song didn’t really stick with me.  “For Good” is great.  I enjoyed the two new songs created for the film, especially Elphaba’s “No Place Like Home”.  That was a good song with a clever hook.

I’m bummed that that Wicked: For Good didn’t connect to me as strongly as Wicked Part One.  I’m curious to see what the Wicked faithful make of this.  (Will they love it more than I did?  Or will they be even more critical?)  I thought this was enjoyable to watch, but it didn’t hook me the way Part One did.

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