This review was made possible by Popped attending an advanced screening of Wicked: For Good.
This review is primarily a non-spoiler review, but it contains ONE SPOILER for Wicked: For Good regarding the fate of Fiyero Tigelaar.
Wicked: For Good is the second part to the hugely popular Wicked. Not just two movies but a phenomenon built up from a legacy that is well over a hundred years old. The movie is based on the 2003 Broadway musical, which is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, which is based on the Oz books by Frank L. Baum, which are all in the Public Domain. BUT like the musical, the Wicked movies also takes cues from MGM’s 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz – most notably the inclusion of the Wicked Witch’s green skin, an element adopted by most adaptations that you won’t actually find in the original Oz book series.
Table of Contents
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in ‘Wicked: For Good’
For Good wastes no time throwing us into the action, picking up immediately after Wicked ends, so like the movie, I’ll waste no more time stalling. Wicked tells the untold tale of the witches of Oz: Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) who will become The Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda (Ariana Grande-Butera), who will become Glinda the Good Witch. Part One saw their friendship grow and split as their paths hit a fork in the road: Elphaba is an activist who wants to free Oz and the animals from the Wizard, while Glinda wants to make a name for herself as a respectable witch. Now, Elphaba has been banished from the Land of Oz and made an enemy by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), forced into the shadows, Elphaba must try and find a way to bring down the tyrannical leaders of Oz.
With Elphaba gone, Glinda has helped the Wizard and Morrible create a propaganda campaign against Elphaba and the Animals* of Oz. How can Elphaba bring down the Wizard and Morrible? Can she reconcile with her friends, Glinda the Good and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey)? What about her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode)? All questions are answered in this adaptation, which I’d argue is more faithful to the original show than Part I was.
*In the novel, animals are split between Animals (upper-case A,) who can talk and anthropomorphised in some way and animals (lower-case a) who are more akin to real animals.
Picking Up Where We Left Off
As mentioned, For Good picks up immediately following Wicked before its almost unnoticeable time-jump. Glinda is now a respectable figure in society and is betrothed to Fiyero, now the Captain of the Guard. Nessarose is the Governor of Munchkin Land with Boq as her unwilling assistant. In basic terms, everything is fucked for almost everyone. A true testament to the old saying: “it’s all fun and games until Act II,” that sums up Wicked: For Good perfectly.
One of the highlights of Wicked: Part One was how fun it was. Fun songs; fun imagery; fun choreography. It felt like an old-fashioned musical we hadn’t had in a long time. Then comes For Good, where the lively atmosphere is replaced with a feeling of repression. It fits the tone of the story, but dialling down the fun-factor ultimately makes For Good feel like a little more as its own film rather than a second part, which oddly also makes it feel less like an Act II than it does in the musical.
We revisit many of the same settings, giving us a good look at how Oz has both progressed and regressed. The often heavy-handed political themes of the novel are sprinkled more throughout For Good than Part One and the musical, with familiar locations we know and love twisted by the events of the last film: the Yellow Brick Road is built with slave labour, the Munchkin Land borders are closed, and Animals are being rounded-up to be caged and their ability to speak diminishing. So yeah, Part One was all fun and games, and For Good is where shit is really hitting the fan.
Wicked screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox do a good job adapting Act II into its own feature, but the biggest issue with the movie is the pacing. The pace of the film feels so fast, and with so many stories to tie up before the end, we wind up teleporting all over Oz to get everyone’s perspectives, unlike the previous, which strictly followed Elphaba and Glinda’s. The dialogue scenes go by so fast that the songs almost feel like breaks, which is a shame to say because they (as with any musical) are the biggest highlights of the movie. It’s very much a GO-GO-GO-GO-song break-GO-GO-GO-GO-song break-GO-GO-GO-GO.
But Holzman and Fox do a great job of weaving in Dorothy’s journey through Oz, which, like the musical, happens in the background of For Good. It really does feel like we’re seeing another side of the Oz story, dare I say more so than the musical, with Dorothy’s appearances finely woven into the story without crowding the already crowded affair. They also do a good job of adapting Act II. The new scenes included don’t hinder the progress of the film, and I can’t think of any that I thought deserved to be cut. If anything, I was hoping more scenes would be included; one such scene involves the Tin Man, which we’ll discuss in a moment.
The Ozlings
A majority of the Wicked cast returns in For Good with a few supporting roles like the Wizard and Morrible given a lot more to do than the previous entry, with the lead stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera absolutely shining. If Erivo wasn’t locked the fuck in during Wicked, then she certainly is now! Wow! In the early screening, her solo for “No Good Deed” received a massive applause, bigger than those for “As Long as You’re Mine” and “For Good”. “For Good” has been labelled as Grande-Butera’s movie, but this isn’t very true because Erivo is still very much the lead. What we do get is a little more background on Glinda via flashbacks (one of the few included in the movie), but she is still in as much of a supporting role as she was in the first movie.
Both actresses shine in their parts and together, with both of them becoming even more synonymous with Elphaba and Glinda. Erivo adds a razor edge to Elphaba, making her more dynamic and forgiving. Speaking as someone who is not an Ariana Grande fan, Grande-Butera is fantastic as the misguided Glinda, continuing on from her perfect-poise performance in Wicked. Grande-Butera shows off the innocence of Glinda while managing to be the heroine Oz believes it needs, all while doing some antagonistic meddling with the Wizard and Morrible. Both will get Academy Award nominations; unfortunately for Erivo, Grande-Butera has a better chance of winning simply for being in the Supporting category. But at the end of the day, awards don’t mean too much to us regular folk. Just take solace knowing that Erivo is still very much deserving in her upcoming nomination.
Jonathan Bailey has had quite the year, hasn’t he! Recently crowned the Sexiest Person Alive, he returns as Fiyero, who is turned into the Scarecrow by Elphaba. Bailey is outstanding as Fiyero, with more to do, and his impressive duet of “As Long as Your Mind” with Erivo is everything fans are waiting for. In fact, he performs it much better than he performed “Dancing Through Life” in the last movie. In a clock-tick, he’s suave and sexy but switches to commanding and authoritative in a clock-tick.
Then there’s the Scarecrow design, which is jarring and a far cry from Ray Bolger’s 1939 design, which it pays homage to. I’m not one-hundred per cent certain on how the Scarecrow is brought to life, but it seems to be a combination of visual effects and makeup, with a mesh superimposed over Bailey’s face. The results were enough for me to openly say: “Oh… “and for other people in the audience to laugh. A similar reaction actually occurred earlier in the film involving some shoddy de-aging on Jeff Goldblum – it’s not uncanny valley, it tiptoes close to looking more like Renesmee Cullen crossed with Jeff Goldblum – think back to 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake (conveniently starring a young Jeff Goldblum) wherein an alien clone accidentally cross-mixes its DNA with a dog and a human.
Follow The Yellow Brick Road…
The rest of Dorothy’s troupe are in the background, which is as expected, as the sun is hot. It’s not their story. Where the witch is an obstacle in the book and the villain in the 1939 movie, Wicked turns the tables and has Dorothy and her gang be the obstacle. Allowing us a deeper window into what happened to Dorothy when she was held captive by the Wicked Witch in the castle, as well as what caused the witch to become so scornful towards her. We see the Tin Man in all his metal glory, and he looks brilliant. Paul Tazewell knocks the ball out of the park with the design. The CGI appears more complimentary to the costume and makeup (by Frances Hannon), with the more obvious CGI-segments focused on his legs – done brilliantly, might I add. The Tin Man is certainly one of the best character designs in the entire film. Unfortunately, his reveal is a tad disappointing. While the Wicked Witch of the East sequence is exciting, we only see one quick glance of the Woodsman’s transformation into the Tin Man – his hands. I understand that they likely wanted to stray from revealing the entire transformation since it would (pretty much) be body horror, a few more glances at other sections of his body turning to tin wouldn’t have hurt anyone. That also being said, this scene is one of the many scenes in Wicked: For Good that goes by in a flash. The film is so tight that many scenes, such as this one, feel almost too quick.
The Cowardly Lion is voiced by Colman Dolmingo. His performance is fleeting, but a nice inclusion since the lion’s lines could have been relegated to other characters or cut entirely, like in the musical. His voice is a honey-flavoured mixture of his regular voice and Bert Lahr, the 1939 Cowardly Lion. The design is – shockingly – a regular lion (though he can talk). He’s more reminiscent of the Cowardly Lion we see in W.W Denslow’s original Oz illustrations, and created with CGI as opposed to an actor in a lion suit. The CGI is fine, but a little distracting. I think a puppet would’ve gone a long way since the rest of Dorothy’s troupe are live-action, and the difference is striking.
As for Dorothy, it’s already been stated that we won’t be seeing her face. Which is disappointing because seeing her face would not have detracted from the story. I figured that seeing her face one time after she taps her heels to return to Kansas would’ve been a neat addition. Alas, Dorothy is treated like Miss Bellum in The Powerpuff Girls.
Jeff Goldblum as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz seems like a role that was written for him. His singing is all that, and his dancing feels like a dad at a party, but it all works perfectly. The same, sadly, can’t be said for Michelle Yeoh, who is best as Morrible when she’s not singing. She was able to get away with talk-singing in the first movie, as many past Morrible’s have done in the past, but For Good has her sing and sing again. The problem is that Yeoh cannot sing, something she herself has stated in interviews and was a question she raised with Chu before accepting the role. The decision to have her try to sing in For Good is nice, but the talk-singing would have worked fine – it’s that or dubbing her over, something that’s seemingly frowned upon in the present day (Marni Nixon, I’ll never forget you). Yeoh’s acting, though, is fine. I do think Miriam Margolyes should have reprised her role (having originated it on the West End in 2006), but Yeoh makes for a decent antagonist.
The Two-Part Body Problem
Splitting a movie into two parts is not a novel idea created by Jon M. Chu and Universal. But because Wicked is a product of the Millennial era, many of us (as well as Gen Zers) got a wave of either nostalgia or rolled our eyes when it was announced that the long-in-development Wicked film would be split into two parts. Back in the days of yore (the 2010s), we saw a slew of movies (mostly based upon novels) find themselves cut in two, usually under the guise of being able to fit everything in. Warner Bros. was the first to kick off this new fad with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts I & II. Warner Bros. followed Potter with The Hobbit Trilogy, a children’s book that found itself split first into two movies and then three. But it was Lionsgate who really stuck their feet in the mud, splitting the final books of Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Divergent into two-part movies. However, by the time Divergent came along the interest had dwindled and Lionsgate cancelled the second part (to be titled Ascendent) in favour of a TV series, which was also cancelled.
As time went on, the occasional two-parter flick caught the eyes of the public, IT, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and Dune, but we no longer get as many in such a short span of time as we once did. Many of the more recent two-or-more-part affairs have been generally well-received, with both Dune Parts I & II winning OSCARS and nominations for Best Picture. Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing movie of all time before being overtaken by Avatar, a movie which it overtook for some months.
Needless to say, the interest in two-parter movies is still here; it just depends on the property, and Wicked, or Oz in general, doesn’t sound like its ripe for the axe to chop it up. But with the release of Wicked last year, we saw that at least the first half of the Broadway musical worked well as a starter part. It follows the first Act of the musical, almost beat-for-beat with some updates and changes to the material, ultimately creating a part one that is not only longer than Act I but the whole musical – and I still wanted more!
But all this to say, does Wicked work as a two-part series, or would one movie have been fine? Well, the answer is yes to both. Yes, they make it work better than Mockingjay and Divergent. It also could have been worked into one three-hour film, quite easily with the right adjustments. Am I glad it’s two movies – yes, actually. While it could’ve been one movie, the two-parter actually works because of the novelty of each part focusing on one act of the original musical, something I can’t think any other movie has done(?). It’ll make for the perfect movie night for those who wish to emulate the theatre experience, something that would’ve been a big hit during the COVID-19 lockdowns, with Wicked: Part One serving as Act I, followed by an Intermission of your desired length, and Wicked: For Good serving as Act II.
The Music Men
Stephen Schwartz returns as the lyricist and composer, with John Powell also working on the score. The music is one of the most hyped things about “For Good“, which is surprising for a musical, and the better songs are the ones you know. Some are a little chopped apart to allow dialogue into the song’s narrative, and even then, they flow quite nicely along despite the songs feeling like a break from the fast nature of this film. The two original songs, “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble” did not hit it for me, I’m sad to say. Many will enjoy them, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they didn’t get the Best Original Song nomination at the OSCARS. If I were to pick, then “The Girl in the Bubble” is the better song.
All my favourite Wicked songs are in the first part, so I had to go in with a little bit of an open mind, despite having seen the show three times, but I’m pleased to say that overall I enjoyed the performances. “As Long as You’re Mine” is an obvious stand-out; I just wish it didn’t just… begin. We jump right into it, much like Elphaba and Fiyero do when singing it; there’s no foreplay – you try riding down a dry slide. If there were any scenes needing a few more beats to build up a scene, it was “As Long as You’re Mine”, though performed brilliantly, earning an applause from our audience, the scene went by too quickly. The titular song, For Good, is a fantastic ballad that caused many (or at least the lady beside me) to cry, but the song that everyone will be talking about is Erivo’s rendition of “No Good Deed.” No other scene or moment, not even when the credits began to roll, got a bigger applause or cheer than that final moment in “No Good Deed.” I’m obsessulated and you will be too.
‘Wicked: For Good’ – Final Thoughts
Wicked: For Good feels like the editor was told to keep everything while keeping it under 2 and a half hours, with many scenes going by and a hare’s pace, but that doesn’t take away how impactful and great a finale it makes. Perfectly tailored as a double bill for theatre fans, with wonderful performances and songs, stellar costumes and set design. Although it has now come to an end, Wicked and Wicked: For Good will hopefully mark the beginning of a new era of movie-musicals, and maybe further adventures into the Wicked World of Oz.
Wicked: For Good releases in theaters on November 21. Check out the trailer below:
The Review
Wicked: For Good
Wicked: For Good feels like the editor was told to keep everything while keeping it under 2 and a half hours, with many scenes going by and a hare's pace, but that doesn't take away how impactful and great a finale it makes. Perfectly tailored as a double bill for theatre fans, with wonderful performances and songs, stellar costumes and set design. Although it has now come to an end, Wicked and Wicked: For Good will hopefully mark the beginning of a new era of movie-musicals, and maybe further adventures into the Wicked World of Oz.
