This article was originally published via the DIASPORA Substack newsletter on November 21.
Wicked: For Good is out in theaters and my immediate thoughts:
- Dorothy isn’t the heroine we thought her to be. Instead, she’s an annoying little interloper.
- Dorothy’s appearance alongside the Cowardly Lion and the “Making of” the Tin Man and the Scarecrow doesn’t quite make sense with the world created by the original movie. If it did, then Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba would be the equivalent of Dorothy’s Miss Gulch, aka The Wicked Witch of the West.
- Love how Elphaba is essentially a superhero in this movie.
- As hot as Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey are, they had lukewarm sexual chemistry.
- New songs are cute, but forgettable.
- I foresee Ariana Grande being the major acting contender during awards season.
- The Wizard is a punk-ass bitch.
- And Nessarose… wow. Just wow. She is shady as fuck.
- Kudos on the Tin Man makeup design.
- The Scarecrow was… interesting.
- Let’s face it, this movie franchise was all about Cynthia and Ariana. Everyone else is an accessory.
- The flying monkeys get a bad rap.
- Love the movie’s multi-pronged message of anti-discrimination, acceptance, empathy, and disrupting the status quo.
- The “For Good” moment between Erivo and Grande was just as magical as you think it would be.
- I love the fact that I was super excited to use the phrase “WAM: Wicked Ass Movie” in this review. I would use the term “Wicked Ass Pussy” but that would just be vulgar.
The most memorable part of my Wicked: For Good theater-going experience at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles was the mushroom pizza that I ate. I didn’t realize it was vegan… and I don’t like vegan cheese.
Other than that, this second installment of John M. Chu’s Ozian opus has all the flash and pizazz of the first installment — and that’s the problem. We’ve already seen all the tricks, and there’s nothing really to drop our jaws at. It’s a lived-in space that we are revisiting after a year, and at a 137-minute runtime, it feels like a time commitment rather than a movie.
That’s not to say the movie has its moments. Erivo’s Elphaba shines the most when she is atop her gothic castle in the cloud, enchanting the powers that be while belting out “No Good Deed” with airborne primates orbiting around her. The first film ended with Elphaba singing her “Defying Gravity” war cry to the high heavens while flying through the atmosphere with a self-declaration of identity. She knew who she was. For Good gives Grande the chance to do the same. However, a story about a privileged princess struggling “to do the right thing” isn’t as engaging a story as a bullied outcast stepping into her authenticity and slaying all the bitches around her. As strong as Grande’s performance was, For Good’s focus on Glinda wasn’t interesting. Rooting for privilege never really is.
The second act of the stage version of Wicked is about an hour. With double the time, Wicked: For Good seems to suffer from the same condition that we have seen in The Hobbit movies or any other two-part finale franchise (i.e., Twilight Breaking Dawn Parts 1 & 2). The movie has too much time and not enough of a viable story.
Chu stretches the remaining narrative of Wicked like an elastic workout band to get as much story out as possible, including two new songs: Elphaba’s “No Place Like Home” and Glinda’s “The Girl in the Bubble” (I am not on board with the title of the latter). The result feels labored and reminds us that this could have been one movie.
My indifference to Wicked: For Good is eclipsed by the cultural impact of the Wicked movie movement as a whole. Wicked gave Chu this huge canvas to bring Wicked to the big screen — and he went balls to the wall, proving that he is a master technician of the contemporary movie musical, giving us an epic, inclusive scope of grand performances and visuals that include intimate and personal moments that humanize the art and make the storytelling universal.
And of course, there’s the world’s favorite duo since Dr. Dre and Eminem: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. There has never been a press tour duo that has blessed us with their authenticity, humor, openness, love, and the ability to “make space”. They also had the incredible performances to match their entertaining TV appearances and press interviews.
And this was a scary moment for Ariana:
… and an iconic Bodyguard moment for Cynthia!
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have taken the Wicked torch from original Broadway bad bitches Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth to light up movie screens, and they have met the bar and created their own iteration of two iconic characters that will forever be in the annals of cinematic history.
