My obsession with musical theater switched off one day before I was able to join the Wicked fanbase. The music from Les Mis, Hedwig, Spring Awakening, Rent, Once, Rocky Horror, Phantom, and a few more still spin round in my head some weeks, but shows like Cats, Rock of Ages, and Frozen felt lukewarm and facile to me. Like cat claws on a chalkboard. So, when I went to the first part of the Wicked duology, it was as someone with zero expectations or familiarity with the musical or the book on which it was loosely based. While I found the first one to be an interesting deconstructionist take on The Wizard of Oz and with a couple of absolute bangers on the soundtrack (“Defying Gravity” and “Popular” were instantly iconic), Wicked suffered from being a 160-minute film that only adapted the first act of the musical. By the time the plot really gains momentum and puts the characters in some high-stakes and propulsive situations, the movie ends and hopes you’ll shell out another $20 in a year to catch the rest of the story. Wicked: For Good picks up fairly quickly after the last one ended with Elphaba (a luminous Cynthia Erivo) now firmly taking on the mantle of the Wicked Witch of the West after the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum doing his best Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (a wasted Michelle Yeoh) have used propaganda to manipulate the entirety of Oz into wanting Elphaba dead and being racist toward the talking animals and munchkins. Meanwhile, Galinda (a perfectly cast Ariana Grande) and Prince Fiyero (an also-wasted Jonathan Bailey) play their roles as good little fascists changing the evil government from within. That’s a solid place to begin, but there are several fundamental issues that keep the film from working as a stand-alone film, a sequel, or as an allegory for resistance against a fascist state that it so desperately aspires to be. First, because almost all of the character development is in the first film, not many of the dramatic moments in For Good land with resonance. The film might play nicely as a five-hour double feature with the first one, but on its own, the love triangle is flaccid, the character beats are rushed, and none of the songs are very memorable. Sure, songs like “No Place Like Home” and “For Good” are solid crowd-pleasers, but when you have a first half that ends with a literal curtain dropper like “Defying Gravity,” it’s hard not to feel like it’s completely front loaded as a piece of musical theater. This was a common complaint about the show on Broadway as well, so avoiding that level of anticlimax in the sequel was probably always going to be a losing battle for director Jon M. Chu. Where Wicked: For Good is foundationally broken is in its storytelling and what it aims to achieve as a companion piece to The Wizard of Oz. What I don’t understand is the film’s intention. Do the Wicked films want to revere the 1939 original, or do they want to demystify the classic and add a dark texture to the magical land of Oz? MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW: The opening scene of Wicked: For Good portrays all of the intelligent and verbal animals of Oz being brutally forced to build the yellow brick road. Eventually, the munchkins lose their right to travel across the borders of Oz. The Tin Man is portrayed as violent and driven by vengeance. The Cowardly Lion is pathetic and delusional. It’s almost like the creative team behind For Good wants future viewings of The Wizard of Oz to be tinged with an ugliness that, quite literally, will dilute the timeless magic inherent in the classic. I respect the subversive spirit that it takes to try and dismantle the untouchability of the original, but neither Wicked nor its sequel pulls it off. Instead, we’re left with something like baby’s first animal farm that wants to have its surface-level anti-fascist commentary and eat it, too. Make The Wizard of Oz as “edgy” as you want to, but don’t serve it to me as a glossy musical with forgettable songs and a grab bag of mixed metaphors. Still, I’m sure it will make half a billion dollars and the audience who were genuinely swept away by the first part will find more to fall in love with here. Erivo is a force of nature and the movie is always interesting to look at with gorgeously realized sets and design. But regardless, it’s a shallow waste of nearly bottomless cinematic resources. I hate to say it, but I’ve peeked behind the curtain and the wizard wears no clothes, stuck in a lead hot air balloon, still quite subject to gravity. Grade: D+ Have something to share?.
https://www.metrotimes.com/arts/movies/magic-wears-off-in-wicked-for-good/
Magic wears off in ‘Wicked: For Good’
