Preamble

Hello everyone. Rather than start with a quippy quote or a reason for my recent prolonged absence, I will instead share a little tidbit about my process. Typically, for movies that really resonate with me, I don’t write about them (for a while, if at all). This is because I like living with them and seeing how they change for me over time. Wicked has been one of those films for me (warts and all), bringing me comfort during some of my more tougher times in the last year or so. For this reason and because I initially missed it at the cinema, I decided to go to a double bill last night. The experience was interesting to say the least. Are you seeing Wicked: For Good this weekend? Let me know in the comments below.

Review

Wicked had its heart in the right place. It had a gooey emotional centre (courtesy of its two main leads) that combined with some quite potent subtext made the film a commendable prestige-esque musical. From a technical and filmmaking perspective, Wicked: For Good is better than its predecessor, even if it never fails to feel safe.

The sequel picks up five years after the original. It depicts Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) further entrenching themselves in their respective roles as the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wicked’s greatest weakness lay in its technical aspects. For one, its muted colour palette, combined with a digital sheen aesthetic, undermined its power as a musical. The timid filmmaking and staging of certain songs did not help either. For the most part, For Good fixes this issue with a brighter sheen and much more interesting sequences. The opening is a Hitchcockian-inspired sequence as the audience waits with baited breath as some animals free themselves from building the yellow brick road.

Jon M. Chu also flirts with horror, as some of the sequences have a classical sense of the genre, such as a scene in the third act that plays with wide-angle shots to depict an ironic twist on the Frankenstein story. But above all, I really appreciated how Chu was bolder with the camera; many scenes have more breathing room, with much more detail, as they’re not confined to close-ups and instead let the characters feel more lived-in in their space. Myron Kerstein’s slick editing also helps, with a persistent sense of propulsion and ambitious cross-cutting.

Subtextually, Wicked was about how social discord is managed through scapegoating an innocent group whose voices and presence are literally silenced. At the same time, there was a sense that the film was about activism, when it was performative and when it was genuine. For Good is about complicity in this system and how the two main characters perpetuate it by playing into their public personas. There was something tragically ironic and powerful about how Elphaba’s attempts at magic cause ruin and harm, which makes her journey from animal advocate to privately acknowledging her public moniker all the more potent.

Cynthia Erivo effortlessly conveys this transformation, particularly in the song “No Good Deed,” which is as much a statement piece as a Disney-esque villain song. For the most part, Elphaba’s storyline works. I also appreciated the layers that Jeff Goldblum adds to the Wizard. His performance does not feel phone-in, but rather good, insofar as it conveys a weight of shame and subtle showmanship.

On paper, Glinda has the more interesting storyline. She’s a figurehead who has no real sense of magic, but eventually discovers that her true power is being good, thereby turning her performative morality in the first film into reality. However, in execution, it appears quite muddled. This is mostly due to the character feeling very passive. It always feels like stuff just happens to Glinda, whereas Elphaba faces the consequences of her choices. There’s a bit of flirting with Glinda being the true main character of the story, but this is undermined by a contrived ending, along with a few other narrative elements that don’t feel as bold as they should have.

This is a shame, as Ariane Grande has been the MVP of the musical duology, often combining sublime comic timing with subtle flickers of emotion that break the pristine image Glinda has of herself. This is apparent in the new song, “The Girl in the Bubble”, which subverts and adds to Glinda looking at herself in the mirror. Despite great moments like this, there’s a sense that the material lets down the character.