Review: ‘Wicked: For Good’ Has Not Changed for the Better

Let’s rip off the bandaid: act two of Wicked isn’t great. Plot-wise, it’s a speed-run through a narrative landscape resembling Swiss cheese. The culmination of Wicked act one feels pretty climactic and complete in itself, with satisfying journeys for both leads and the iconic belting of “Defying Gravity” ending things with a bang — if only there wasn’t still Dorothy and her whole story left to deal with.

Fortunately for the stage musical, a weaker act two is considered pretty par for the course, and flying through the plot of The Wizard of Oz plus extra in an hour means rushing through the story so quickly that individual issues get somewhat smoothed over in the blur of it all.

When we last left Oz, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) had resoundingly rebuffed the politically powerful but magically fraudulent Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and painted a giant target on her back while best frenemy Glinda (Ariana Grande) agreed to play figurehead. But Elphaba’s rebellion is hardly an issue for Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), the real power behind the Wizard’s operation, who’s quick to scapegoat the younger witch and make her public enemy #1. Meanwhile, Elphaba seeks to expose the Wizard’s lies and save the animals.

From a 10,000 foot view, the plot of Wicked’s second act — and Wicked: For Good, in turn — makes sense. The issue is the extremely condensed storytelling that leaves little room for the set-up and build-up required for satisfying payoff; characters say one thing and then do another with only a vague suggestion of what changed in the interim, and there’s no real space to show repercussions or even reactions to much of what happens.

Wicked: For Good manages to not only avoid fixing any of the issues of its source material, but actively makes them all worse by being over twice as long. Various clunky character turns that feel like minor potholes on stage are stretched out into gaping craters with all the extra time available to ruminate. Beyond two perfectly fine but bland new songs (“No Place Like Home” for Elphaba, “The Girl in the Bubble” for Glinda), most of what screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox have added here, instead of adding depth or stronger connective tissue to the existing story, is the narrative equivalent of cotton candy: saccharine, fluffy, and utterly lacking in substance.

Where Wicked favored Elphaba, Wicked: For Good tips the scale towards Glinda. In theory, this is reasonable, she’s really the only one with any remotely interesting internal conflict at this point, still collaborating with the villains offering her at the very least an illusion of everything she’s always dreamed of — fame, adoration, the appearance of magical prowess and a happy relationship with Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who’s struggling much more with staying complicit. In practice, much of what is added, especially some blatant attempts to emphasize the timeliness of a fascism allegory, instead feels like an embarrassingly outdated throwback to Obama-era girlboss “feminism.” Arguably, the most significant plot change, which comes in at the very end, casually undermines the foundation of Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship as dramatic foils in service of some hackneyed nonsense about coming into one’s own power more see-through than Glinda’s bubbles.

All the shortcomings of the first film have also returned, from the washed out colors to how director John M. Chu’s misguided adherence to almost theatrical staging mostly fails to embrace cinema’s ability to traverse space and time through things like montage editing (which really could have helped with some of the wonky pacing here). It’s also even more blatantly apparent this time around how miscast Michelle Yeoh is. She’s not a singer, but the even bigger issue is that Wicked, for better and for worse, is a big, cheesy musical and she’s the one cast member here who does not embody theater kid energy in the slightest. Every time she has to deliver a line about “braverism” or “rejoycifying” there’s a clear sense that she regrets the series of life choices that brought her here. While Jeff Goldblum’s musical abilities are similarly suspect, he knows how to ham it up enough to feel like he belongs in Oz (as long as he’s not singing).

The financial incentive to split Wicked into two parts is obvious, and sure to pay off. But that did not need to mean making a pastel-colored slush puddle that feels more like watching two hours’ worth of Wicked-themed music videos than a narratively cohesive film. But thanks to a slew of filmmaking choices more cowardly than any lion, here we are anyway.

Wicked: For Good is now playing in theaters.