A year after Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) stole the Grimmerie from the Wizard (Jeff Goldbloom) and went into hiding, Oz has turned to Glinda (Ariana Grande) to keep their spirits high.  As the hunt for her continues, Elphaba continues to be a thorn in the side of the Wizard and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), his chief adviser.  A plan is hatched to endanger Nessarose (Marissa Bode), the governor of Oz and Elphaba’s younger sister, but things get out of hand, and a young girl from Kansas, along with her little dog, too, find themselves transported to the wonderful world of Oz, desperate to get home. 

Shot in tandem with Wicked (2024), director Jon M. Chu steamrolls with his cast and crew into Wicked: For Good.  Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox continue their adaptation of the Stephen Schwartz musical, stretching the roughly 45-minute-long Act II into a 137-minute production. Universal took the film on a world tour across many major cities before its wide release for general audiences, fitting for such a global sensation and capping off a massive year-long marketing campaign. This second time around seemed more merchandise and cross-promotion-focused, possibly due to some of the backlash from the outlandish, preening antics of the leading duo displayed ad nauseam the first time around. 

The film opens with the animals laying the bricks on the yellow road to Oz while a few foremen bark their orders, and then, as the opening credits fade in, we become aware of the strange sensation that there is no dialogue.  While an entr’acte helps to reset after an intermission, it is a clunky reintroduction to a world we have spent a year apart, especially when we left off on the high of “Defying Gravity.”  It is a truncated interlude that ends as awkwardly as it plays, but editors Myron Kerstein and Tatiana S. Riegel are able to right the ship quickly enough as the ensemble breaks into “Every Day More Wicked.”  This pair has some of the heaviest lifting to do across the runtime of the film because it is racing through so much lore and plot while also trying to balance the rush of a live stage production.  For the most part, they keep things moving at a steady clip; however, the individual scenes often read a little strange due to Alice Brooks’ insistently close camera that never quite lets the actors breathe or have the room to explore the scene as they would on the stage.  This added barrier of a lens proves to be a harder chasm to cross than any proscenium arch. 

Beyond that broad stroke criticism, it is rather hard to talk about Wicked: For Good as a stand-alone entity because it is so genetically close to its predecessor and is saddled by many of the same weights that drag Act II of the stage show down.  To be fair, more of this film takes place indoors, so the strange color grading of the exterior scenes that made all of the physical sets appear digital does not affect For Good in the same way, but that is not to say this installment has made leaps and bounds in how it looks.  Yes, because so many of the scenes are interiors, the actors and Lee Sandales‘ set dressing do appear to be homogenous on screen, but the lighting palette is so dark that production designer Nathan Crowley’s work is practically obscured, and like so many fantasy films of the modern age, the CGI budget would have been much better spent on a team of matte painters.  That being said, Paul Tazewell’s costumes do shine even under the glaringly artificial sun that streams through the windows. As far as the songs go, there is not much to be said.  The lyrics are weak, and the melodies are limp without an earworm to be found crawling around anywhere.  The cast does what they can, but even still, it feels like they are only hitting their notes half heartedly because there is little in the lyrics to inspire. 

Thankfully, though, the story on the page is enough to keep us involved in the film across the – admittedly, still bloated and convoluted – runtime.  Holzman and Fox are working within dual frameworks of both the musical as well as serving as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz (1939).  As they lay the groundwork for Dorothy’s arrival in Oz, there are some neat little payoffs, but that is more due to Gregory Maguire’s work on the prequel novel than true ingenuity on behalf of the script.  Where the film excels is in its darker and political themes, but in an effort to reach a wider family audience, those themes are only hinted at instead of being deeply interrogated.  As is often the case with musical theatre, the reliance on songs to push the story forward prevents the themes from being more fully explored in favor of the pomp and circumstance of a showstopping number, and even if there was a song that could tiptoe to the expectations of such a number, Chu’s direction of Brooks’ camera would harldy go wide enough to actually appreciate it.  Wicked: For Good shies away from trying to solve the inherent problem with the medium that is trying to serve two masters – entertainment and interrogation – and instead relies on the audience’s pre-arrived at allegiance to the property instead of actually trying to push the story forward. 

As far as the entertainment aspect is concerned here, the cast really struggles to bring any energy to the scene.  Some of this is due to the songs, but even still, Erivo, who is playing the role rather softly compared to the energy she brought to Part One, still outshines every other character in the film.  This can largely be written off when she is sharing the scene with some of the secondary cast members – Yeoh, the still dull Jonathan Bailey, and the out of place Goldbloom – but when she is in a duet with Grande, this disparity becomes undeniable.  Grande brings a strange sense of discomfort to the role, possibly due to overplaying the general state of mind of her character, but in her defense she is afforded no favors in the script as this story is mostly shaped by Elphaba’s experience so that when she is not on screen, Glinda is stuck trying to bridge the narrative until Elphaba can take back the reins.  All momentum is driven to a halt when the story is in Grande’s control, as she has far fewer laugh lines than before and is instead given more emotional beats that the simple worried contortion of her face just is not enough to accurately convey.  With half of the leading cast and almost the entire supporting cast coming in so far below the bar, there just is not enough punch from the performance to really sell us on the conceit of the film beyond the neat little inlays towards the Judy Garland classic, and even those are rushed by so that the timeline and the motivations of that trio do not line up accuratley with how we know them to be from Frank Baum’s Ur Text. 

For Good is a serviceable sequel to wrap up the duology that will please general audiences well enough, but probably hit harder for acolytes of the stage show as the shorthand that the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda is written will be more effective for those with that broader, outside context.  There is an attempt to catch the uninitiated up to speed through the obtuse use of flashbacks, but they just serve to further disrupt the flow of the enveloping scene, and oftentimes, what they reveal is so blunt that we already have a good handle on what is being shown by the leading scene.  With such deep cultural penetration, it would be finacially irresponcible on behalf of the studio to mount an adaptation of Wicked and stick only to the Gregory Maguire novel instead of the stage show, but had they worked harder to uncouple the narrative flow of the musical to better fit into the structure of a two-part film, the overall cinematic Wicked experience would have been greatly improved.  It teases at themes in Part One that do pay off in For Good, but with almost all of the plot momentum saved for this finale, it races by, leaving audiences who would love to see this story more carefully explored left behind in the dust.  Despite the breakneck speed at which the scenes progress, the actual progression of the story instead feels strangely languid, and with such a deep and interesting text, it should be a much more invigorating experience.