Wicked: For Good

Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. The second of a two-part feature film adaptation of the Broadway musical.

Let’s talk about For Good, which I’m able to do a review on because we watched a double feature the day before it officially comes out. So that was kind of fun, seeing them back-to-back. It’s a long viewing, having both of these movies back-to-back. Wicked is 2 hours and 40 minutes, and Wicked: For Good is 2 hours and 20.

This movie necessarily has a darker tone. At the end of the first one, you’ve got Defying Gravity, where they’re being attacked. The Wicked Witch mantle has been given to Elphaba, and she runs off.

The plight of the animals is way more in the forefront. We’re less about establishing these two people as being great friends. These are two people who love each other. They’re friends thathave different perspectives on what’s happening in Oz.

So there is a bit of a tonal shift. And frankly, I read a review that said that this movie was not funny enough. And I just, I can’t kind of get that out of my head. I shouldn’t have read that until I put my own thoughts down. But of course, it’s not that funny. The situation isn’t very funny. The Wizard of Oz is this fascistic leader who has scapegoated the animals. Maybe I should find another term for that. But is using the animals as an enemy to get the rest of Oz together and working toward a singular focus. I am not sure what the road symbolizes other than the road needs to exist for when Dorothy comes. But this definitely seems like an authoritarian vanity project to me.

The Wicked Witch, in this instance, is a kind of terrorist trying to prevent the roads from happening. Even if her chief concern is freeing the enslaved animals.

The Nessa Rose and Bach relationship, which in about a year has taken some dark turns. Turns out you should be with someone because you want to be with them not because you can’t be with a person that you want to be with. She did turn into a bit of a bit of a tyrant. I know that was going to happen, but I still don’t understand exactly why. It’s kind of implied that she’s mad at her sister for not visiting after her dad died and feels rejected by Boq.

I think the biggest problem I have with the second part of Wicked, and this is true for the musical too, is just that the songs aren’t as interesting. One thing I really like is the reprise of I’m Not That Girl. This time sung by Ariana Grande after her wedding is disrupted, is just a completely different tone. So in the first one, Alphaba’s feeling sad about herself for not getting the guy. Singing the same word after you thought you were going to marry the love of your life, only to find out that this person loves somebody else is way different. And the timing of you figuring that out at the altar is rough.

Not to be too down on the music on this this half uh “Wonderful” is great and I like the change from the musical, which my wife mentioned to me, is that Glinda’s not in the original song. It’s like the Wizard is using Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship to manipulate Elphaba into agreeing to peace. I don’t know if this happens in the same way in the musical but I think it’s interesting that behind the portrait of the Wizard are animals. This is similar to what happened at Shiz in the first film.

No Good Deed is pretty great, too, and so is For Good, the title track. Too many of the other songs borrow from songs in the first half of the story and honestly seem a bit like filler. The musical has this issue too.

From here this movie Ttkes place during the events of Wizard of Oz, which is fun. This does require way more location hopping to pull off which can be a bit jarring but it’s honestly not much of a concern.

Bach turning into the Tin Man and Fieyero turning into the Scarecrow are handled beautifully. Both transformations happen off screen, which I’m totally cool with. I don’t know who was clamoring for whatever CGI nonsense would have had gone into making that transformation happen. It’s just not essential to the story you’re telling. So I’m glad they didn’t spend time trying to do that. I thought the Tin Man looked good. I thought that that was a smart way to handle that design. I thought the Scarecrow looked good too, for the little bit that you did see him. I thought the cowardly lion was fine. Looked better than any of the live-action Lion King.

In the musical, the Wizard of Oz stuff happens in the background of the musical. It is in there, but it’s also not a main focus. And I like the way they kind of carried that through, too. Like, you’re here to watch Wicked, you’re not here to watch The Wizard of Oz. If you want to watch The Wizard of Oz, go watch that movie.

So things that would have been like a shadow play in the musical end up being seen from Glinda’s point of view through the crack in the wall. You just get shadows on the wall of the castle. It was just really well handled. They showed you enough to know what was going on, but also not so much that you end up like they’re just recreating scenes from another movie.

I appreciated the amount of time, I think the musical does this too, but there’s a certain level of confidence with keeping the amount of time between when the Wicked Witch is supposedly killed by Dorothy and the reveal that she’s not actually dead. That amount of time in this movie and in the musical is significant. We go through almost the complete run time of both films thinking that Elphaba dies in the end.

It is sad that Elphaba and Fieyero are unable to communicate to Glinda that they’re both alive. I think there is definitely implication that Glinda is going to get her dream. The Grimmery is going to respond to her now, too, and she’s going to be able to use it to make Oz better.

I don’t know that Elphaba got what she wanted. It’s kind of not a great ending for her.

It does seem possible that people could come around and be told the actual story, and it would be fine. But the wizard certainly doesn’t think that’s true. He even tells her during the movie. They’ve bought into this con, and they would rather stick with the wrong idea than to feel like they’ve been tricked. There’s a few political messages in this movie, and I think a lot of people are going to point to how different aspects of this story relate to the world we’re living in. I feel like that line, that idea, is way more relevant and important than almost any of the others. Because that’s really what we’re up against. Everything else is kind of a knockdown effect.