by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
For more than two decades Wicked has been one of the toasts of Broadway. A play that is universally beloved by critics and audiences alike. Nevertheless, for more than two decades there’s been another universal truth about this play — the second act is significantly weaker than the first. As immutable as the sky being blue, or the pull of gravity onto the Earth. Now, this criticism usually pails in comparison to the overwhelming praise of the first act and the experience of seeing the musical in its entirety.
But what if you separate the first act from the second? What if you made a movie that contained all of the fleshed-out characters, emotionally ranging and interesting narrative, and richly dynamic music of the first act, and then made a second movie that is narratively messy, tonally dour, and entirely somber in its music? How would that impact the viewing experience?
Unfortunately, with Wicked: For Good, we have that answer.
It’s not that Wicked: For Good is a bad movie. There’s too much brilliance to it. It’s just certainly not a good movie either. It’s your standard musical fare. Average. However, in the wake of last year’s Wicked phenomenon, and considering the brand-new wave of fans who’re excited for the second film to finish off the story, average is simply not good enough. In fact, it’s disappointing.
When it comes down to it, it’s quite simple — when taking a 50-minute second act stage production and turn it into a two-hour-and-17 minute film, you need to completely rework the structure of that stage production, and this movie refuses to do that.
Loyalists who proclaim to want an authentic, accurate representation of the stage musical may disagree with this. There’s a lot of people who like film adaptations to be as faithful to their source material as possible, whether that source is a play, book, television show, or video game. But at the same time, film is a different medium, and the whole point of an adaptation is to adapt to the different medium. This screenplay refuses to do that. It’s notable that this was written, in part, by Winnie Holzman, who wrote the book for the Wicked Broadway musical. It’s possible that Holzman truly felt nothing was wrong with her original text from over 20 years ago. But that feels like a grave miscalculation. Making the second movie exclusively the narratively messy, tonally dour, and entirely musically somber half of the play, that has been universally panned as the weaker part of the show all these years, while only adding two new songs to fill the void, both of which are also somber ballads, is rough. It makes the pacing unbearable at times. It drags the film to a crawl with all of this runtime stretching, robbing the story of its emotional tension. When the “cry here” moments finally came to fruition, I waved at them as they sluggishly moved on past me. I wasn’t invested enough to care anymore. This is the main issue with this film, and it’s a big one. You will feel its weight as the clock ticks go by.
To be more transparent, without spoiling the plot too much for those unfamiliar with the play, the events of the second act, and therefore the events of Wicked: For Good, eventually overlap with the events of the classic Wizard of Oz. That textbook example of Golden Age Hollywood Cinema from 1939 which has still held up as a masterpiece today. This shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler, since we see Dorothy & Co. in the opening seconds of Wicked as they’re following the Yellow Brick Road back to the Emerald City to give the Wizard the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom. So let’s just say that we get the classic moment where Dorothy‘s house lands in Munchkinland. For comparison, in the stage show, this event transpires roughly between the 25- and 30-minute mark of the 50-minute production. In this film, Dorothy‘s house lands in the center of Munchkinland, crushing the Wicked Witch of the East, at an hour and 30 minutes into this two-hour-and-17-minute film! Holy yikes…
Are you understanding this correctly?
Are you?!
If you are, you should immediately recognize the problem. That there’s 25 to 30 minutes worth of material being stretched out to over three times as long to fill an hour and a half worth of film runtime. There’s just not enough here, here. The film languishes in a bog of indecision. Its energy and momentum evaporate entirely, and you start to feel as if you’re sinking into the muck like Artax in The Neverending Story. While there are a few interesting moments here and there that will certainly hold people‘s attention, especially as For Good makes its connections to the Wizard of Oz, revealing that some characters were actually nostalgically beloved characters all along, for the most part the movie becomes a barren wasteland, devoid of purpose, drive, and emotion.
By the time the movie starts to pick things back up with its pacing, it’s too little, too late. The best song of the film, “No Good Deed,” ratchets up the war drums and heavier musical riffs to create an almost hard rock sounding anthem. This is shortly after Dorothy has entered Oz and is leaving Munchkinland. There’s a new energy to the film in this moment, coming in like a life-saving gust of wind. Unfortunately, even this excitement dissipates fairly quickly, as the film then begins to rush the Wizard of Oz elements with a mangled narrative construct, character arcs that go unresolved, and a further continuation of songs that don’t deliver the excitement or emotional punch you’re craving. By the time we get to the climactic moment where we hear the much cherished song “For Good,” it’s hard to care.
Good pacing in and of itself can’t make a movie great, but bad pacing can absolutely, single-handedly derail a great movie, and I can’t recall a movie this big ever being so undercut by its poor pacing than For Good. These frustrations only become heightened when you realize that the vast majority of these problems were inherent in the play itself, and had a proper adaptation took place in the writing of this script, these issues could’ve been avoided entirely.
With all that said, it’s entirely impossible that you just don’t care about any of these pacing concerns because there’s still so much awesomeness in For Good worth appreciating. Jon M. Chu’s direction is commendable. What little energy the film does have is captured incredibly well in his camera, he gets great movement throughout many of the musical numbers, and you can clearly see his fingerprints across the entire production. Which makes sense, seeing as the production of Wicked last year was top-notch, and these movies were filmed simultaneously.
Additionally, Chu certainly gets the most out of this great ensemble cast. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are once again tremendous. The emotions they convey, the power of their vocal performances, and the chemistry they exude through the portrayal of Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship is palpable. While the first film was clearly Elphaba/Erivo’s story, this one is Glinda/Grande’s affair. She’s not given nearly as many humorous elements to entertain the masses as she did in the first outing, but she certainly has enough emotionally compelling moments to fully claim this film as hers. Although it’s inevitable that Erivo will campaign in Lead and Grande will campaign in Supporting for award season, I’m letting you know right now that this is category fraud. Grande is the lead of this film. She opens and closes the movie, has the greatest emotionally changing character arc, and even has the flashbacks to childhood Glinda, much like how we saw flashbacks to childhood Elphaba in last year‘s adventure. Both women are fantastic, but Grande truly seems to be doing next-level work, and should immediately be considered a front-running contender for awards consideration.
The rest of the cast outside these two leads also does a great job… Except for maybe Jeff Goldblum. Just like last year, he is miscast in this role. He’s playing Jeff Goldblum, and not the Wizard of Oz, being a little bit too goofy and whimsical, even when he’s supposed to have moments where he’s seen as threatening or scary. Still, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, and Ethan Slater, among others, are putting in noteworthy work.
In many ways, the star of the film is its visuals. Last year’s spectacle was slammed for having poor color saturation and an ugly pallet in general. Weird filter and lighting choices had many criticizing the cinematography. With the caveat that I saw For Good in IMAX, which is certainly a step up in quality that most theatrical experiences won’t deliver, this is a marked improvement over the original film. It is visually arresting. The color criticisms from the last film seem to have been taken to heart, as this journey sees a plethora of vivid colors and gorgeous visualization. A lot of shots are filmed from medium to wide ranges, reducing the amount of closeups that we saw from the first film, giving the picture a much more tactile feel and a greater sense of immersion. The amount of shots set with a perfect portrait frame with a blurred background, disconnecting audiences from reality, have considerably dropped, allowing for a more haptic and analog feel that grounds the picture, making it feel more real. That phony sheen that hung like a heavy blanket over last year’s Wicked is largely absent here.
This allows the film to flourish with its gorgeous set direction, beautiful costumes, and excellent editing to highlight everything that makes Oz so wonderful. It indeed makes every frame a painting. This is a big, bold, and beautiful journey, sans Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. There’s almost zero chance this isn’t nominated in spades for its craft work, and I would even expect some Oscar wins. Even the CGI visual effects are a step up from last year’s outing. Though not as good and sharp as they could, or should, be, this is a visual improvement. The monkeys are still distracting, but we’ll take what we can get.
The sound design is also triumphant. The pounding score from the original Broadway production is here in full, and it’s set to dazzle you. The music ongoing in the background does so much work to fill you with tension when the pacing is giving you every excuse to check out and not care anymore as you watch the clock ticks fly by.
It has to be said though, I find myself wishing that the music was as triumphant as the score. While “No Good Deed” and “For Good” are certainly the highlights, and “For Good” is likely to bring a lot of people to tears, the rest of the music is… fine. At best. As mentioned earlier, this has long been a criticism of the second act of the play. Musical numbers like “The Wicked Witch of the East” or “March of the Witch Hunters” barely feel like songs at all due to their short length and lack of narrative dimension or character development. There are also a ton of reprises from the first film. Truth be told, though, they just feel like they’re here to pad the runtime, since we don’t get the context from the changed emotions and/or lyrics, as the first rendition of these songs are entirely absent from this movie. More than anything, it hurts that the songs here just aren’t that good. Even bigger songs, such as “Wonderful,” probably the most traditionally fun and upbeat song of this film, are just not energetic or entertaining. There’s nothing in this movie that’s gonna give you even half to satisfaction or enjoyment as “What is this Feeling?,” “Dancing Through Life,” or “Popular” ever gave you in the first film.
That’s the problem with separating the “fun” act from the “serious” act. These tracks are largely all morbid and depressing. A series of ballads that have so much of the same musical composition, connotation, and lyrical cadence that it all begins to feel redundant. Whomp whomp.
The new musical numbers don’t help either. While they are stitched together in a way that feels like they could’ve belonged in the original Wicked production, there’s too much tongue-in-cheek in their lyrics, and their tone is just dull and unappealing. I don’t think many are going to be excited to sing along to these tracks while driving home from the theater. “No Place Like Home” is a political ballad sung by Elphaba in the early stages of the film that’s supposed to show the persecution of the animals of Oz, and work as an allegory for fascist authoritarianism in the real world, like much of the tome of the original Wicked book and play. “The Girl in the Bubble” is a solo for Glinda at the end of the film right as her character is making a critical judgment choice about who she wants to be, and how she wants to be perceived, as a human being. Both tracks are full of winking nods at the audience due to their lyrics and visual representation. But they distract you from the story at hand, as they makes you think of the Wizard of Oz, devaluing the impact of the lyrics and what the songs are trying to convey. Did we really need to sing that “There’s no place like home” over and over after we’ve heard Dorothy say those words for decades? What was gained watching Glinda sing to her own reflection in a giant pink bubble? At some point, allegory becomes irrelevant when the messaging is so blunt. Worse, both songs are somber ballads, which is exactly what this act did not need, as nearly every other song is also a somber ballad. We desperately needed new tracks to break up the flow, the monotony, of the music. Alas, that’s not the decision that was made.
This is the part of the review where Heath gets to play screenwriter/director, so buckle up…
I’m normally not a fan of condemning a movie for being what it’s not. I like to assess a movie for what it is, what the director decided to make it be, but in this case, I feel this is actually a healthy exercise that articulates the larger point that I’m trying to make about For Good. You needed more from this story, this movie. More than just two additional songs. The film tiptoes around that possibility with an opening credit sequence in which we see Elphaba committing acts of “terrorism” against the Wizard by trying to sabotage the construction of the Yellow Brick Road, but that is not nearly enough.
So why didn’t they just… remake The Wizard of Oz? Not in its entirety by any stretch of the imagination, but just in the moments that would count. That would make a difference.
We obviously don’t need the stuff in Kansas, because that’s in Kansas, not Oz. We can leave “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to Judy Garland, where it should be. But why not, when Dorothy‘s house lands in Munchkinland, give us a visually and musically updated version of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”? That would provide some fun and exciting nostalgia, while still servicing the story and giving a justifiable reason to inflate the runtime. We certainly don’t need every song — there’s no reason to have the Cowardly Lion sing “If I Were King of the Forest” once again, but we can at least show the moments where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion, right? Would one rendition of “We’re Off to See the Wizard” have hurt us so badly? This would singlehandedly deal with the abundance of lackluster and non-energetic songs throughout most of this movie, and fix so much of its pacing concerns.
Because of the unwillingness to tackle The Wizard of Oz elements, the seams and cracks of the theater medium creep into For Good far too much. We never even truly see Dorothy. She’s always filmed from so far away, or we just see a closeup of her slippers, or, more insulting, just see her shadow against a wall, just like the play. I really don’t need all of the Quentin Tarantino foot fetish shots — I would’ve much rather seen her face. Hell, you’d be forgiven for thinking Dorothy was even a CGI creation and not played by a real actor in this movie. But no, she was real. She was portrayed by Bethany Weaver. Not that it matters — she’s never even allowed to talk. The film’s dogmatic adherence to the play in this regard, because the play never shows Dorothy, is a massive mistake. This kind of decision in theater is fine. Here? It’s just so contrived and phony.
How about we see the scene where Dorothy and the gang battle their way through the castle to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West? I mean, we don’t even see the face of the Scarecrow until the final five minutes of the movie. Even though we know what happened in the narrative, the film just refuses to show us the Scarecrow until the end, because the play doesn’t show us the Scarecrow until the end. We never even get a resolution to the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion storylines. More mistakes from the play that could’ve been rectified here, but that the movie outright refuses to deal with. If this movie took a more adaptive approach to fitting the play to film, instead of putting the play on film, and really revitalized The Wizard of Oz section, this could’ve been really special. C’est la vie.
Very strong performances, powerful vocal work, beautiful sets and costumes, and lush colors and visuals keep this film afloat, ensuring that your time isn’t wholly wasted. But, will you be engaged? At first, sure, but throughout the whole runtime? Hopefully your investment holds out, but poor pacing sluggishly pulled down my investment levels to make this a disappointing affair. Don’t be shocked when you’re tempted to look down at your watch and check how many clock ticks have gone by… Also, why was this review movie so desperate to make clock tick happen?! It’s never going to happen!
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Wicked: For Good is currently playing in theaters
You can read more from Heath Lynch, and follow him on Letterboxd