Review of 'Wicked: For Good'

Picking up immediately following the events of the first film Wicked, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has been outcast by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and battles for the rights of the animals from her forest hideaway. The animals are being spied on by the Wizard's flying monkey spies so are leaving Oz completely. Glinda (Ariana Grande), now engaged to Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), is the Wizard's spokesperson. Fiyero goes off in search of Elphaba despite Glinda insisting that she likely does not want to be found. Elphaba's sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) has inherited their father's governorship of Munchkinland, prohibiting Muchkins from leaving in the hope of keeping Boq (Ethan Slater), her servant who does not share her amorous feelings, from leaving. Nessarose attempts to cast a spell to force Boq to love her but instead almost kills him, shrinking his heart, with Elphaba forced to change him into a tin man to keep him alive. Elphaba agrees to help the Wizard if he frees the flying monkeys who then follow Elphaba…though she then finds the wizard has imprisoned a number of other animals which she frees and recants her assistance. The fleeing animals disrupt Fiyero and Glinda's wedding then after helping Elphaba escape Fiyero proclaims his true love for her. Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) has her revenge by creating a tornado that causes a house from Kansas to fly through the air to land in Oz…

No where near as fun as the first film. “For Good” is far more serious with a lot of extra story elements that fans of the book/musical will find interesting but simply make things even more complicated. To me it seems like they had too much material for a single film but not quite enough for two but to make it worth while had to pad things out quite considerably. The choices they made will not be to everyone's liking such as why they didn't finish the first film immediately after “Defying Gravity”, the logical place and what was done in the musical.

There is a lot going on here with Oz falling apart. The story seeks to put into place the pieces that we see in “The Wizard of Oz” but this is somewhat drowned out with everything else that is going on - Glinda's wedding, freeing of the animals, Nessarose's obsession with a saddened Boq, Morrible's single-minded determination to destroy Elphaba despite her being her star pupil from the first film…As you might expect, it is all a bit busy but it sure looks great (Glinda's automatic bubble is quite fun as is seeing the yellow brick road being built). The additional music added (over the musical) is largely forgettable, basically consisting of a few small ballads that are added, it seems, to pad out the time which, at more than 2 hours, is quite considerable. All of this extra stuff means we lose sight of the key character elements such as Elphaba failing at making things good so deciding to be “bad”, here this is drowned out by the noise of the additional plot elements. I do have to say that the film does stop to take a breath very close to the end with a touching, tear-jerking rendition of “For Good” between Elphaba and Glinda which is absolutely amazing.

A somewhat satisfying end to the “Wicked” story that is somewhat overwhelmed by an excess of story and plot that somewhat distracts from the important elements, even drowning out the “Wizard of Oz” set-ups which are passed over so quickly you could not help but miss them. Still, the music is amazing and the performances incredible with a lot of impressive eye candy.

Rating: “Really good but I have some issues”

Review Date: 2025-12-31

Directed by: Jon M. Chu

Studio: Universal Pictures

Year: 2025

Length: 137 minutes

Genre: Musical

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19847976/

• In the Heights (2021)
• Wicked (2024)