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Was WICKED: For Good, good enough? | REVIEW of the 2025 film starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande
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Mickey Jo
So the fans are divided on the Internet, the critics seem objectively confused and as someone who considers themselves to be both of those things, I am here today to tell you in full glorious detail whether or not I think Wicked for good was good enough. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre, in particular musical theatre, in particular Wicked, one of the musicals on which I was essentially raised. I for some years now have been working here on social media as a full time professional theatre critic, in which capacity I have seen Wicked around the world, specifically on three different continents and with upwards of a dozen visits to the stage musical going back almost 20 years, I consider myself to be something of a Wicked aficionado. And for what it's worth, I know that those are actually rookie numbers compared with a lot of people out there. But it's still a show that I know very well. Which is why last year When Wicked Part 1 was released, I dedicated so much time here on YouTube and on podcast platforms to talking about the film. A full review both with and without spoilers. We talked about Easter eggs. We talked about predictions for the second film. Now the second film, Wicked for Good, has finally been released. Get ready for another series of videos, maybe some more Wicked Wednesdays heading through the end of the year, in which we'll find more time to talk in detail about changes made to the show's second act upon which this film is specifically based, as well as Easter eggs, hidden details, and the intriguing, much talked about possibility of perhaps a third film or an Oz set spin off. But before we get on to any of that, and as a follow up to the spoiler free review that already released here on my channel last week, today I will be sharing with you all of my thoughts about the film with many, many spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens in Wicked for good, if you haven't seen it yet, go and check out my spoiler free review in which I spare you all of those details. This is for the people who want to know everything and rest assured we are going to talk about absolutely everything. Not only performances and my general thoughts about the film and how it compares with the stage musical, second act and the first film, but also how it works as an adaptation, the specific choices that were made in translating this show to the screen. We're going talk about music, new lyrics, subtle changes to orchestrations, the two entirely new songs, and whether I thought they were a bit disappointing. We're going to talk about visual elements including but not limited to Jonathan Bailey's changing eye color and Ariana Grande's lopsided sleeves, as well as my thoughts on the much discussed Wicked plot holes that emerge when you try and perfectly align the story with the wizard of Oz. All that and more will be the fodder of today's review. I have not scripted this, but ahead of embarking I do get the sense it's probably going to be an hour long, so strap into those broomsticks. And as always, not that I feel like I need to encourage you to do on this one, but please share all of your thoughts with me and everyone else in the comments section down below. If you aren't yet subscribed here on YouTube, there will be much more Wicked for Good content coming over the next few weeks. Make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications, or if you'd prefer, go follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, though, I couldn't be happier that the day is finally here for us to fully discuss Wicked for good. Let's go. So, at the risk of repeating myself a little bit here, from my spoiler free review, I enjoyed this film. I think it is a strong film. I think it is still firmly based in the upper echelons of movie adaptations of stage musicals, if only because so many of them have been so so poor and fundamentally have not been able to translate the concept of singing your emotional inner thoughts to the screen. And we learned in Wicked Part 1 that that was not a problem that this particular story was face, both because John M. Chu was beautifully realizing these musical numbers with great choreography and this fantastical, whimsical, but emotionally honest quality. And another thing we have to consider when we are thinking about the success of Wicked on screen is that in comparison with a lot of other musicals, it does have a lot of cinematic license. By virtue of one of the cinematic classics of all time, the wizard of Oz, we are already comfortable seeing this world, this particular land, these kinds of characters on screen, because many of us have been seeing them for our entire lives. Now, all of that being said, I do agree with the verdict that Wicked for Good is not entirely as strong a film as the initial Wicked movie, and I think there are a lot of obvious reasons for that. One of them is the inherent shift in the tone. The first film is set almost entirely at Shiz, so it feels like this more fun and youthful coming of age story with these two rivals who become close friends and all of this with the backdrop of an educational setting. So it feels like a fun high school or college film. This one, they are older, it's more of a thorny love triangle, but it's a very politically minded film as well. I mentioned in my previous review that because our protagonist, or perhaps I should say one of our protagonists, is Elphaba, who is very much in opposition to the wizard and Madame Morrible, who are demonizing and vilifying her in order to solidify their power and their grasp over the land of Oz, it feels like a political movie. But more so than anything else, a political superhero movie is really the kind of tone that we end up with here and we're not digging particularly deep into any kind of a political conversation, but we are illustrating in real time how the propaganda machine can work against an individual, how Madame Morrible misrepresenting the message that Elphaba is trying to convey. There's this great moment in an early scene of the film amidst the song thank Goodness, when Elphaba appears. Not something that happens in the stage show, but very reminiscent of the skywriting that she does in the wizard of Oz. And she blasts through a layer of cloud and tries to create a message to Munchkinland that says our wizard lies. And fortunately for Elphaba, she chooses like the one thing that Madame Morrible is actually capable of magically manipulating, because Madame Morrible can only really do stuff with the weather. Bit unfortunate that. And not only that, she chose a message that contained within its letters via some fairly straightforward manipulation, Oz dies instead. But my point is, and the film is still aimed at a family audience, so I think it's important that it's having these kinds of conversations, even if they're not particularly in depth ones. That it is talking about propaganda, it's talking about scapegoating, and it's talking. Talking about the means via which dictators and corrupt leaders attempt to cling to power, which is all incredibly timely and relevant. It's a story ultimately about fascism. And in many, many moments in the film, John M. Chu really leans into that idea by illustrating historic parallels. There is a sequence of scenes added to the storyline that flesh out the trajectory of Bok and Nessaros by this point residing together in Munchkin Land, where she has assumed the duties of her late F, who died for stress related shame reasons at the end of the first film and who can currently be seen in the Producers in the West End Shout out to you Andy Nyman as the new governor of Munchkinland, with Bok being the only one of her university friends who stood by her side in this time of difficult grief and political transition. Admittedly, her sister had a lot going on. She was literally fleeing some flying monkeys. Oh, fleeing flying monkeys? That's hard to say. But Nessarose is a strong young woman and she can take all of these hardships in her stride. What she can't take is a hint, because she still has startlingly little grasp of the fact that Bok has little to no romantic feeling towards her and instead is still perhaps foolishly pining for Glinda. So, after another of their university friends turned staff, Avarick brings to Nessa a proposal that has already been approved by, and I quote, all of the other governors of the Land of Oz, despite the fact that we only ever see the Emerald City, Munchkinland, and one abandoned castle in Kyamiko, even on the wizard's diorama. Back in the first film, it was like. Like Emerald City, Munchkin Land, mysterious castle we're not going to talk about, but that's definitely going to end up being in the second film. Anyway. There's this proposal that animal motility is what they call it would be restricted and that they would need a permit in order to travel. Just another way in which the wizard and Madame Morrible are trying to scapegoat animals and trying to infringe upon their rights, the beginnings of which we heard about back in the first film. Nessaros is being encouraged to sign this decree. But when Bok decides to leave to head to the Emerald City on what he naively believes to be good terms with the woman who up until this exact moment believed herself to be his girlfriend, he discovers that hell hath no fury like a newly fascist dictator scorned because she has taken this one little cute step further and insisted that Munchkin's motility also be restricted. So we have an entire scene at a train station in which BOK is not permitted to travel away from Munchkin Land, but we also have Munchkin families being ruthlessly pulled off of a train. And it's very moving and interesting to see the way in which other individuals suffer as a result of the personal grudges at the center of this film. We will see more of that a little bit later on, and I will talk more about changes made from the stage show's second act to the screen. But I do think that that's one of the really beneficial scenes that fleshes out these character arcs. And it's definitely an improvement on the version that we get in the stage show where it's just one line that Bok has where he says, ness has been stripping the Munchkins of all of our rights, and we didn't have that many to begin with, and you know why. And she then confesses to keep you here. And they've really taken that idea and run with it by having her literally restrict his movement. Finally, then, while we're still discussing the overall tone of the film and changes from the stage material, it's interesting to me that they made so many specific choices to cut lines that gave it, at several moments, a feel of levity and comedy. And instead we remain in A just slightly more tense and dark realm. I say tense and dark not particularly, but certainly a lot of scenes remain more emotional or more serious. For the most part, it's Glinda's comedy lines that have gone in order for this to happen. And I think that helps to explain the journey that she has on screen as well. I think if she was still saying these slightly ditzy things throughout the movie, then we wouldn't get the same sense of her emotional journey that we do. For example, in the moments before they sing the song for good, Glinda now just says, let her go, rather than saying, and her dog Dodo, like her mistaking Toto's name for Dodo, is now moved way earlier in the film to the yellow brick road scene around the time of the fallen house. But there's another comedy line in and amongst there. In fact, there's several lines that Glinda has in the stage version that didn't make it to the film. One is her very naive interpretation of the circumstances of Nessa Rose's death via falling house. Another is a little line that she normally delivers to herself after she sends them off and says, you know, just follow that one road the whole time before saying, I hope they don't get lost. I am terrible at giving directions. Of course, one big change from the stage version is that her, his friends Fanny and Shen Shen remain with her as she becomes Glinda the Good and becomes more and more involved with the wizard and the AAN regime. And so they are able to do a little bit more of the silly stuff for her. I also like a lot of the additional lines that have been added in. There's one really great one towards the end when Dorothy fails to leave with the wizard on his hot air balloon. And you can see her from far away in the crowd dashing through saying, no, wait for us, and trying to to recover Toto when Glinda looks down and says, I swear, it's always something with that girl. Great line, great addition. Let's continue talking about the tone of the film by talking about its relationship to its score. Old and new. Now, one of the other things that I said about this previously is that it didn't feel as much like a true movie musical as the first film did. And I think part of the reason for that is we are adapting the second act of a musical in which music is generally sparse. You don't have this extended introduction a la no one mourns the wicked we have, thank goodness. But it's a series of different musical moments. Even more so in this film because before we get to the main thank goodness song, as we are hearing every day more Wicked, we have something of a here's what you missed on Wicked Glee moment where we move between different characters, we find out what Elphaba has been up to, we find out what Glinda has been up to, and we hear little reprises of some of the songs that they sang in the first film. Elphaba has new lyrics for a reprise of the wizard and I when she's singing when I stop the wizard with a little bit of a minor key change in there. At which point she heads over to a conspiracy theory style board with propaganda posters and all sorts pinned up there upon which she has written in case, you know, she wakes up one morning and forgets something like Expose the wizard, Save the animals. All of this in her Tarzan esque hideout. Glinda, meanwhile, is sung about in a little reprise of the musical moment from what is this feeling? The dear girl Linda, you are just so good. And now with her having changed her name for entirely performative reasons, they sing instead. Dearest Glinda, you are still so good. And this is like in the Loathing book choreography moment from the first film, a sequence in which they are all facing down the barrel of the camera, walking down a corridor doing group choreography, which since the likes of the first Wicked film and Matilda on screen, we have come to recognize as the moment that they want people to replicate on TikTok. They want this to go a little bit viral. As of right now, I don't believe it is. And I think the reason for that is not just that a lot of audiences don't know this bit of the song yet because it's new, but also because the choreography at this moment is actually really tricky. And not that the first one wasn't complicated, but this one takes it even further and I think it's too hard to dance and too hard to sing. Maybe people will, you know, prove me wrong on that front and manage to take it to TikTok, but it seemed to me like that was what they were trying to have this moment be, but also like it was going to be a really difficult ask. We also get a reprise of Glinda's act one song popular, but she just sings the La La bit as a fanfare and in fact we have members of the Ozian Guard then chanting it back at her, including Fierro, who is now captain of the Gale Force, which they have been renamed into something of a fun little Easter egg nod both to the concept of winds, which will come to be relevant to the plot. And Dorothy Gale, who herself is named for, you know. It all nods to cyclones. Now, the first sung moment that we hear that every day. More Wicked, I initially thought was in the lower key. I now, after seeing the film a second time, think it's just that they've changed the vocal arrangements and the male harmony lines sit lower. That moment is a reprise of the no one mourns the Wicked melody. I like the manipulation of this melody for the more major version that they sing at the end as they are celebrating Glinda when they're singing we believe in Glinda. I think that's really lovely and takes us beautifully towards. Thank goodness. What I have a little bit less time for is some of my favorite ensemble solo lines from the show. I am talking about like some terrible green blizzard throughout the land she flies, defaming our poor wizard with her calumnies and eyes. Great stuff that I sort of resent that it's been given to Madame Morrible to sing. Not because it doesn't make sense dramaturgically, but because we learned around a year ago that Michelle Yeoh is not necessarily a gifted singer. And there is bafflingly a moment in this film where Michelle Yeoh has sung more solo lines than Cynthia Erivo. And that's just a very hard place for us to live in. Anyway, my point out of all of this was that we are getting little snippets and sections rather than a full extended song. And they do their best to give us a strong musical introduction to the film. This after an introductory scene in which Cynthia as Elphaba is trying to free animals who are being enslaved in order to help build the Yellow Brick Road. But because we are taking the second act of a show, it is more reprise based, it is more dialogue based than the first act was. In the first act you had that great run of like wizard and I straight into. What is this feeling you had? Dancing through life almost immediately into popular One Short Day, through Sentimental man, through Defying Gravity, a lot of great emerging, strong self contained melodies and big powerful musical moments. Much of the second act of Wicked, outside of as long as you're mine, no good deed and for good is reprised. Musical moments or scenes that move in and out of music. And when you're on stage reprising a song that was sung 45 minutes ago and it's like, oh, Glinda's now singing the heartbreak, I'm not that girl. Song rather than Elphaba singing it before. What a plot twist. We got it when the green girl was unlucky in love, but now the beautiful blonde popular one is. What an unexpected switch. And there's something a little less powerful about it. When the reprise of that is coming a full year later. I don't know that we really felt the impact of Glinda singing the same melody that Elphaba sang. I'm also going to join the chorus of people online who are a little bit upset about the fact that it no longer in the orchestrations immediately segues into as long as you're mine and we don't get that delicious I am not that girl do. Because it was. It was nice. It was a nice moment. That being said, I like the orchestrations an awful lot. There are so many clever, deliberate uses of motif in the orchestrations that are choosing to highlight particular themes from the first film, foreshadowing themes that would come later in this film. Interestingly enough, little bit Merrily we roll along, that is. And while as a fan of the film, it can take a little bit of time to adjust just to the new sound of some of these songs. Like I said, new vocal arrangements, different orchestrations, occasionally a slightly different key. Looking at you, Wicked Witch of the east and we will get to you as well as the many unexpected new lyrics. Ultimately, I think that great choices have been made. When I talk about new lyrics, I am talking about the beginning of the Wicked Witch of the east sequence as well as the beginning of Wonderful. These are the two songs from the stage show that have been the most changed for the time first film. And I don't want to spend too much time on this because like I said, I'm going to make an entire video where I talk just about the changes. But the Wicked Witch of the east changes I understand. The wonderful introductory verse changes I understand a little bit less. What I do like is putting Glinda in that moment. Not only because it absolves Elphaba of ever having to really start singing and being like, it does sound wonderful. Which always kind of undermines her character and her entire political determination, but also because it allows Glinda and Elphaba a little bit more of a moment of reunion in this film than they get in the second act of the show, which is probably what people want to see. The melody for the new introduction of Wonderful, I have no idea where that comes from. With Wicked Witch of the East, I initially didn't recognize this melody. Then I realized it's the Same melody Nessa has always sung on stage, but slightly manipulated and considerably slowed down because she normally sings, all of my life I depended on you, you. How do you think that feels? And now what she sings is something along the lines of like that night at the Oz Dust. La la la la la la. It's still the same melody, it's just slower. And it doesn't have the same sense of frustration and rage, which is a good choice for Nessarose. And they have very carefully reworked this scene in order to avoid framing Nessarose's disability in a way that is uncomfortable or resorting to Ableist tropes, much of which I think and successful. And it's been great to hear from disabled audience members who have gone to see the film who have really liked the changes that have been made. I'm not sure I'm wholeheartedly convinced of the changes that they have made to the ensuing scene and to what happens in the plot with Elphaba and Nessaros and what she does with magical enchantment, but we'll get to that. For now, I will say I am glad to have a recording of Wicked Witch of the east, because is it. Inexplicably, we never got a recording from the stage musical. It is a little saddening that the vocal isn't a stronger one, but the vocal that we get is sort of in line with the characterization of Nessarose. You know, she doesn't have the same conviction and strength that Elphaba does. That's why she spent her entire life pining for a Munchkin and Bach, of all people. I also miss the counter melody that is Elphaba singing the spell that she casts in order to save Bok's life, while Nessa is musically feeling sorry for. But what we really ought to talk about are the two entirely new songs. One for Glinda, one for Elphaba. Very fair, very democratic. Elphaba's is a song called no Place Like Home, which we will all recognize as a little bit of a nod to the line that Dorothy famously says at the end of the wizard of Oz. From Elphaba's perspective, it is a song intended to encourage the animals of Oz, Oz, not to flee amidst all of the oppression that they are experiencing at the hands of the wizard. Elphaba finds them. And I told you that there were parallels with actual historical details here, burrowing into a sort of an underground railroad in the middle of the yellow brick road. I would argue that it might be easier to, you know, not use such an obvious setting if they were trying to escape Oz surreptitiously. But, hey, what do I know? I've never fled a magical land before. For I'm also, in spite of rumors, not a talking bear. And in order to try and discourage them for fleeing in fear of their lives and the safety of their animal families, Elphaba sings an incredibly tepid song, which repeats the lyric, there's no place like home in almost every single line. It reminds me of a lot of contemporary musical theater writing, where you have these message songs and it's like one character trying to convey something to another, and they just. Just sing that one message over and over and over again. This is not whatsoever reflective of Stephen Schwartz's best work. If it hasn't become obvious by this point, I did not enjoy this song. I thought this was the weaker of the two. And while I enjoyed the Girl in the Bubble a little bit more, the problem that that song has is it comes in entirely the wrong moment and it doesn't meet the tension and drama of the moment where it is the moment when there's no place like home. Hat happens. It feels like a great opening for a song, but it feels like we need something a little more powerful. It's a little surprising and disappointing, perhaps, that Elphaba doesn't duet with Dulcie Bear upon their reunion. If you'd remember, Dulcie Bear is the bear midwife voiced by Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke, who cared for Elphaba as a child. It's a very meaningful reunion, one that would be made even stronger by having the two of them sing together, but they don't. Instead, bizarrely, you have this barely impactful song. And what I don't understand about this is this was written for Cynthia Erivo. And how are you going to write something for a voice like Cynthia Erivo's? I understand not wanting to upstage no good deed. I don't think it has to be full scale and drama, but it needs to be a better song. Even just in the direction of the melody, it just kind of falls flat in the way that it's phrased. There's no place like home. It just feels heavy and boring and pointless. It also, weirdly, in its early moments, sounds a little like another Stephen Schwartz score, the Prince of Eden, but even more so, like one he didn't write, which is Aida. The first time I saw this, I lent over to my friend K and I said, this sounds a little like Aida. And then we both started silently losing our minds because the next two lines sounded way more like Aida than the ones we just heard. Moving ahead to Girl in the Bubble then, which I think sounds not dissimilar to some of Stephen Schwartz's most recent compositions for his new Broadway musical the Queen of Versailles. The problem with this one is that it comes in the midst of March of the Witch Hunters and all of this tension and drama, and Bok has just been singing if it let him fight his own battles when he was young, he would be a coward today. He's belting at the top of his little munchkin tenor range, and Glinda comes in with this moment of low key head voice, heavy mix introspection, which is very welcome in terms of her ultimate character arc. But musically it does not pick up where we just left off. And lyrically it feels like the kind of idea that she ought to have been ruminating on Way Way earlier. Like if watching the arrival of the guards to arrest Elphaba at the moment of Nesaro's clearly suspicious house death didn't alert her to the fact that she might have been inadvertently participatory in an authoritative fascist regime, then honestly, I don't know why a high belting Tin man made her get there any faster. It's like, yes, girl, you are in a literal and metaphorical bubble. What are you going to do about that? How did we not get to this conclusion earlier? Final Musical Thought no, I lied. I have two final two musical thoughts. One. I missed the reprise of Sentimental Man. I know I said reprises don't really work in this film that is arriving a whole year later, but it's sort of the only real justification for the song ever existing in the first place. Like the only good things that have ever come out of the song Sentimental man are the Sentimental Men Podcast the one lyric that informs what Elphaba sings in Defying Gravity when she sings as someone told me lately, everyone deserves the chance to fly that comes from his song and also the reprise of it when you know our after oversharing with us an hour ago back in the first act and he says he always wanted to be a father and we're like, cool. No one asked. He then gets to reveal at the end of the second act that he was a father this entire time. Final Final musical thought happens right at the end of the film and we are going to talk about this ending because interesting choices were made. But it's also the final musical moment of the show and they've actually changed where this is set because it's now after Glinda flies off to go and address the citizens of Oz and Munchkinland, she has returned of that in the film version. So the fact that we hear some of the earliest lines of no one mourns the wicked no longer makes sense from that perspective. Instead it's just this ethereal nothing chorus. We see Elphaba and Glinda sort of singing out to each other. Perhaps Elphaba can perceive Glinda, but Glinda really is just singing out to the winds because she thinks she's dead. She in fact thinks she melted because you can take the privileged white woman out of the propaganda machine, but you can't take the propaganda machine out of the privileged white woman. White woman. Like she's no longer in the bubble, but she's still in the bubble, you know what I mean? And so you have them giving it because I knew you. And then just this chorus on the wind going, no one mourns the wicked and we don't even have any kind of a shot to suggest who that might be coming from. It's just like the song of the wind. We got to the end of this film and they're like, it's, it's just, it's just music. It's just happening. I don't know whether that's coming for someone singing it. We have, we. We have no more ideas. And you know what? It's fair. They made a lot of film. They were probably hoping that I wouldn't be a pedant in the final few minutes. But guess what? What I am.
- [29:14]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [29:33]
GrowTherapy Advertiser
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- [30:49]
Mickey Jo
I want to talk next and if this has seemed very similar to my spoiler free review, this is where we're really going to get into all of the specific details about the narrative choices and the alignment with the wizard of Oz and the plot holes from Wicked Act 2 that continue into the film. I said in my last review that they fixed and addressed some of the changes, like that expansion of Boccanessa's early scenes in the second act. There are others that they continue to just drive straight past and disregard, which is mostly all of the Oz stuff and the questions that arise when you consider everything that we know to happen in the plot of the Wonderful wizard of Oz and the notion that it's happening concurrently with Wicked for good, a lot of questions arise about the Scarecrow and the Tin man, who we now know to be Fierro and Bok, coming into contact with each other and either recognizing each other or not, as well as all of them in the Cowardly lion being brought before the wizard by Madame Morrible, who has every reason to recognize all three of those people. Actually all of them were at shiz, lion included. And since we're on the subject, let's talk about the Cowardly lion because I have a lot of thoughts about this lion lion and none of them good. I will say Colman Domingo did a great job of providing the voice. You could have offered me a million dollars and a hundred guesses and I would not have been able to tell you after watching the film that that was Colman Domingo and we see him for the first time as Elphaba is singing the very bland song no place like Home. And while all of the animals are readying to leave Anatevka, as it were, and while whatever it is that they call the amount of time that has passed 12 tide turns, I think it is we don't actually, from what I recall, call see a time dragon clock in this film the same way that we do in the stage adaptation. But my God, do they let you know that it exists because we are constantly saying just a clock tick, give me a clock tick, I will see you in a clock tick. The lion cub that we met in the first film has in demonstrably little time, relatively speaking. Hakuna matata. Yes, I'm using that as a verb. Into a full grown lion, complete with the imperceptible voice of Colman Domingo and frustratingly misplaced ptsd. Like just the worst takes coming out of this lion. He's out here telling the other animals that the should stay in Oz and not listen to her because she freed him from a cage at an early age. It's giving gay Republican, if I'm being completely honest, a little bit race traitor as well if that's not too far to go. All of which makes even less sense when you consider that after this the lion chooses not to stay there. Perhaps because the tunnel to flee Oz is too scary. Like he's happy to tell the the families of like koalas and everything that they should go through through and flee the land of Oz, but he's just gonna stay there with the scary green lady. And not for nothing, in spite of the fact that we are led to believe that Oz is becoming such a dangerous place for animals who continue to speak out literally, who continue to speak because there are animals in the Emerald City who are allowed to be there just fine, but they are not speaking animals. When the line eventually does turn up in the Emerald City with Dorothy and friends, nobody seems to have any kind of a problem with the fact that he's very chatty, perhaps just because he's sufficiently self aggrandic. It's a little familiar of how some people feel about the British royal family. They're allowed to exist as long as they constantly exude a deep sense of personal shame. And let's talk about Dorothy and friends while we're here. I think it probably still was the right choice to have her existing on the sidelines in the same way that she does in the stage musical. I don't think we needed to see her. It might have been fun to see a few more of the moments when Elphaba really did, in her grief and her frustration, become as wicked as they had always said that she was. As a reminder, wicked has never been a story about how Elphaba was never really wicked. It's a story about how she got there and what you can learn from considering the story from her perspective. And this annoying little girl who stole her dead sister's shoes, she does still imprison her. But of course, if you were to depict every encounter that the witch has with Dorothy, you would have to get past the moment that she is reunited with The Fiero Scarecrow. The Fiscarecrow, if you will. Now, I think the design of Tin Man, Bok and Fiero Scarecrow, both really great. With Bok in particular, he is unrecognizable enough. And there's sort of a moment with him and Glinda where it's like you can't. It's not necessarily clear whether or not she recognizes him. He clearly has a lot of resentful feelings when he looks up towards her. Not necessarily because of anything that she personally did towards him, but certainly because she is representative of everything that he wanted in life that he now can't have because he's made of a periodic table element. The most horrifying part of which, by the way, is nothing to do with his face or the steam coming out of him. It's the knees. It's the very thin, like, lack of flesh and muscle around his knee. It's the CGI knees. They did a great job with those knees. And like, the horrifying, clunky way that he walks and tries to run out, the sort of bizarre way that he axes down the door to get out of Nessaro's study when we see him for the first time. Even though I believe the handle's still very functional and not to consistently be throwing strays at Bok, But I do think some of this is deserved, if only because of how much it frustrates me that men would clearly rather remain in a toxic workplace environment, lose a vital organ and be metallicized than go to therapy. Now, let's talk about Jonathan Bailey's scarecrow face. And this finally answered the question of why they gave him bright blue contact lenses as Fierro. Because when he turns into the Scarecrow, and I don't know if everybody noticed this, he finally has his own eyes, his own brown Jonathan Bailey eyes. I have seen them in person. I noticed the color, what I wasn't prepared for. And I have seen scarecrows before in my lifetime. I have played the scarecrow in the wizard of Oz was the Hessian. Hessian face. And I think it was something around the eyes. It was something around about the nose. We just needed a little bit more sense of shade. It was just all the same fabric. And I have an awful lot of respect for what Elphaba had to say about, you know, like, you're still beautiful. It's looking at things a different way that objectively, whichever way you look at that Hessian face, she's going to get some kind of a rash. Casting our minds back a Little bit earlier in the film, I liked a lot of the Fiyero material. I liked that as long as your mind was now restructured so that the scene that they have together when they're talking about being together and Elphaba sees this vision of a house flying through the sky. I like that that is now explicitly post coital because they do get a little bit cock blocked in the show. But now you have Michelle giving it the Madame Marble wind magic, which is probably some of the best work that she does in the film, if I'm being completely honest, as an interjection in the middle of that scene so that we can cut to the afterwards. And this scene has been talked about a lot. I'm talking about as long as you're mine. Not just the cardigan that Elphaba puts on in order to have an amorous moment with Fiyero, but also the entire way that it's staged with so much distance between them. I think there's a version of this that so makes sense. It just wasn't quite realized. I don't need them to be constantly embracing in the way they are on stage. I think that's a little too literal and it gives you nowhere to go. It will would get boring. They would just have to start getting more and more intimate. And this is still a family film. I respect that. I think I wanted to understand the emotional place it was coming from. Because there is something of a disconnect between how they're feeling in this moment, having just fled, being on the run together, being under the thumb of this oppressive regime, that they are both now outlaws from having just betrayed Glinda, who was their friend for both of them. Like there's every reason that there should be this sense of melancholy running beneath it, fear. Guerrero is coming face to face with all of this propaganda that he realizes that she has been collecting. He's looking at all of these horrifying, false, monstrous depictions of her as he is singing these lyrics. And she is clearly feeling such a heaviness. At the same time, they are finally, after years of repressed longing together. So you have to try and balance those two qualities. And I don't know that we got as strong a sense of that, but also. So one of my biggest issues is the flying that happens towards the end of the song. And admittedly, there is a whole thing where Elphaba can sometimes do magic without the grimory, because she does magic at shiz before she ever learns about the grimory. And sometimes she needs it. What gets a little Bit frustrating is that almost all of the magic that Elphaba does, and she's meant to be more powerful than Madame Morrible, right? Like, Elphaba can read the Grimory. Elphaba has all of this power. Madame Morrible can just do the word weather. Elphaba, however, 90% of the time is just making herself or other things fly. It is almost exclusively flight magic. At Shiz, she makes Nesseros wheelchair fly up in the air. When she returns to Nessa in Munchkin Land, when she is now the Governor, she makes Nessa herself fly up out of the chair, which for some reason is much better now, and makes Nessa so happy and makes Nessa believe that anything is possible. Possible. And so now she can have a relationship with Bok, even though he still doesn't want it. The moment when she's flying out of her chair after they have this whole interesting conversation, admittedly, when Elphaba's like, you never wanted my help. And Nessa's like, well, now I do. Because she's reached this point of real depression and desperation when she does fly up out of her chair and Bok calls out to her and says, nessa. And she's like, see, it's working. I'm like, what? What would that have changed? How would that have. He's not come into the room yet. He's not seeing you floating above your chair. And even if he does, what does that mean to anyone? Like, it's a miracle that he gets as far as the justification of, well, surely now you won't mind if I leave. And I'm like, why? Because she's floating for a bit. Like, if we saw her do a little bit of, like, left, right or forwards back. And like, there was some sense that she didn't need him anymore. The problem is, that's the entire idea that they're trying to get away from. That's why they changed the lyrics at the beginning. They didn't want to see, say, this hideous chair with wheels. They didn't want to say, all of my life I've depended on you. And for completely understandable reasons. I just think the rewrite, while being more respectful, makes less sense. But like I was saying, Elphaba does just make things fly and via different means. Nessaro's flies either because her chair flies or because the shoes get enchanted. The monkeys fly because she gives them wings. She flies because she enchants the broomstick. And when she's with Fierro, the two of them just start flying together. It's kind of pixie dust logic because they start flying when they're real happy, shall we say. And Nessa begins to descend slowly and sadly down back into her chair when she is sad. Hey folks, it's Marc Maron from WTF and today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. So you're thinking about upgrading to the.
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Another Fiat scary moment I really liked is that he is the one who forms a substantial connection with Chestery and the other freed flying monkeys. That's been a really interesting quality of the film adaptation is that they have so fleshed out the characters of these flying monkeys because it was so interesting. You still had them chasing Elphaba at the end of the first film, you still had them chasing Elphaba at the beginning of the second and you were starting to really want wonder when are they going to rally to her side. We know this from the wizard of Oz that she becomes the commander of the flying monkeys rather than the wizard. So you started to get curious when that was going to happen and they now it's really nice. They watch her from afar I think. Chestery watches her speaking to the animals of Oz and he watches her with intrigue. She then, after wonderful with the wizard and Glinda, demands that the monkeys be freed. She helps to free them. She apologizes, apologizes to Chestery and she says that this is something she is just always going to have to live with and nothing can undo what has been done to him. She acknowledges that she gave the monkeys torturous wings and in return Chisery reveals to her where the animals are still being imprisoned that the wizard did not point out to her all of these caged animals, including her beloved former teacher Dr. Dillamond Elphaba subsequently frees all of these animals so that they can go and stampede the wedding of Fiyero and Glinda, which from her perspective, I guess is just, you know, happy accident, I would say killing two birds with one stone. But we're very animal rights in this moment. We're killing as few birds as possible. Also not killing people, for what it's worth, like the wizard gets slightly stampeded and then she threatens him a bit with a broomstick. I think this was the moment. Like if I was one of the big cats being freed from a cage, I think eating the wizard's face would not have gone amiss in this moment. Or indeed Madame Morrible. They only kind of like Matilda, punish her by smushing her face into a cake after she was inexplicably performing the wedding of Elphaba and Fierro. Because in addition to being, you know, a very established teacher and a press secretary, she apparently is also ordained, like has the most impressive CV of anyone in Oz. And it was really nice in general throughout the film to see so many animal moments. What I loved was not Elphaba's interactions with the animals, but Glinda's because I thought these were so interesting. Interesting. And it was positioning her as someone of privilege because she had animal staff around her very often, even when she's getting ready for the wedding. And it's a cute little scene and she's doing the Aussie and language version of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, which I think was something old, something newish, something askew, whatever else it was. But she had two little birds who were getting her ready, who were just tweeting, they weren't speaking. So the. These are submissive, well behaved, Oz approved animals. But she was giving them instructions because they were working for her. And we get to notice later on in the film that Glinda is a little bit woke now because when she goes down to Fiera's horse in the stables and she's put on the sassy cape and Elphaba's boots that she kept from their time at Shiz together, don't think I didn't notice that, because I did. And she's taken off the ridiculous napkin sleeves that we will talk about, don't you to want worry. She doesn't just like pull the horse out. She says to the horse, I need your help. She enters into conversation with the horse and it's still like, you know, there's still a power balance happening there. But it felt a Little bit more honest. It felt like she was beginning to respect the animals more. Some other plot thoughts. I thought it was a really great choice to have, thank goodness, be about the opening of the Yellow Brick Road. It was curious to me that that happened in Munchkin Land Land. And yet, you know, clearly the only other place in Oz. Even though they keep gaslighting us and trying to convince us that other towns and subsections exist, it's just Munchkinland and the Emerald City. That's all it ever is. Equally, I liked that the ball that was announcing Fiyero and Glinda's engagement that had already been announced scenes before in the musical version became just their literal wedding. Even if it meant we had to change a lyric into something that no longer made grammatical sense. Because boxing's the moment that I read that Glinda would be wed to Fiyero. Something like that. And he never finishes that thought. He's like, the moment I read that. And then he just carries on and sings, I've got to go appeal to her, confess the way I feel to her, whatever it is. And I can honestly excuse the incel Munchkin behavior. What I draw the line at is poor grammar. I did think that the rewrite of the Glinda and Elphaba fallen house scene that turns into to the fight on the Yellow Brick Road after Nesteros's death and the arrival of Dorothy does less in the film than in the stage show to remind us of the fact that they just spoke. It feels in the film too much like a reunion moment because Elphaba makes her jump and she says, oh, shiz. And she's like, did I startle you? I have that effect on people. Whatever. And then they start hashing things out that they haven't had a chance to talk about yet. But in the stage show, there's a line where she says, I don't believe Glinda says this. I don't believe we have anything further to say to each other other, because they just spoke because the witch Elphaba appeared before Dorothy. Dorothy saw both of them. And Elphaba and Glinda in the wizard of Oz have a little bit of dialogue there. I also think generally, one thing that we really lost from this film was the reminder of Elphaba's whole identity journey. The fact that she's green barely matters by this film. We just don't talk about it. You see a little bit of insecurity when Fiera tells her she's beautiful and she's like, you don't have to lie to me. After she's put on the inexplicable cover cardigan. But for the most part, we lose any sense of that. And this beautiful Elphaba journey that we were building in the first one with the flashbacks to her as a child feels very much pushed to one side in favor of the Glinda journey that we are going on in this film. And Glinda's flashbacks to her as a child. This extended scene about her wanting to have magical powers but not being able to and her mother reassuring her that being popular was more important. Her entire raison Detra. I've started to touch on this. So let's continue talking about some of the visual choices. Let's talk about the cinematography. Let's talk about some of the costuming, but also some of the specific shots that we are shown. As an example, I really loved when Morrible was creating the tornado. I loved seeing it carrying the house towards Munchkin Land. And in particular the fact that it was tearing up the Yellow Brick Road. I love the implication of these oppressive dictators actually damaging their own infrastructure and their own citizens in the name of the goals that they are trying to achieve. So determined to capture and stop Elphaba that they are causing so much damage and destruction in the process. I mentioned before that somebody was clearly very enamored with mirror shots and shooting things through a mirror. And then, like, we think we're in the mirror, but we're not in the mirror. Or we think we're looking at the mirror, but then we're in the mirror. All of this stuff was happening. Lots of mirrors moments, lots of, like, glass cracking or mirrors cracking. When Elphaba appeared. When Nessa sees her finally in Munchkinland and the two of them reunite for the first time in 12 tide turns, whatever that may have been, and she sees her reflection rather than seeing Elphaba herself in the mirror. It's a nice nod to the way that she appears in the stage musical behind the Glass. Bok also looks at himself in a mirror when he is hoping to get on the train before learning that he knows no longer has civil rights. He's also trying to fix his hair, which I think is both charming and fraught. The majority of the mirror moments that we get, though, are in the song the Girl in the Bubble. And a lot of those mirrors are circular. But there are so many other ways in which they manage to frame Glinda in this sort of idea of a bubble. They show her amidst encircling furniture or beneath a circular structure or through a circular doorway. She is constantly encircled as she's singing about being in a bubble, which I just think is really smart. I also thought that one of the first shots that we see of Jeff Goldblum as the wizard, when he is very enamored with a little toy train that he is playing with as well as this little Zoetrope of him, really hammers home the notion that he is meant to be in some way representative of Walt Disney. Like, they are keeping with that parallel and you have to respect it. And I do find that very funny for Universal to be like, do you want to know who the real villain is here? Well, we are going to seduce suggest it to you subliminally, generally speaking. I really loved all of the cinematography. I loved the visuals of the yellow brick road being built at the beginning. I loved for this to be wicked and for this to be like. Consider a different perspective on the wizard of Oz for it to be opening with. And you know that yellow brick road that you like. As we're getting ready to do the wizard of Oz bit, like, this is how we're gonna point out to you. Everything that you're expecting is coming. But you know what else it is? Slave labor. Like, brutal, grueling slave labor that Elphaba arrives to prevent and put a stop to with this great fight sequence before she then flies off to be chased by some flying monkeys in a forest sequence that felt to me like a direct nod to the chase on the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. I would confidently call that an Easter egg, but I just don't know why it would be. There were really only a couple of visual choices in terms of, like, the editing and, like, just about everyone else. I would like some slightly more vibrant and vivid colour a la the original wizard of Oz. I think everything could have been a little bit more saturated, but there were only a couple of moments that I thought were puzzling. One of them was the grayscale torture of Fierro. And whether that was still within the realm of them, trying to keep this scarecrow secret until the last minute, which they really, really committed to. And whether it looked too straw, like before they put that kind of a filter on it. I don't know. I just thought, in general, we didn't really have any kind of consistency between what Elphaba's visions actually looked like. Like. And that would have been nice to have. Sometimes they were kind of blurry and hazy, Sometimes they were, like, real Zoomed in and abrupt, like with the horrifying Dillamond bleat. And sometimes they were the grayscale. And we weren't really sure if she was seeing that or if we're just seeing that. I also loved everything about the final few images that we got. We have Dr. Dillamond going back to work, presumably some kind of a phased return with a lot of speech therapy, even if it seemed like Peter Dinklage wasn't coming back to the booth to say anything else. But I also was a fan of the crossfade between Elphaba wandering out into the endless desert and Glinda by the night sky, looking out sort of mournfully with the Grimory, then suddenly flashing open. I don't subscribe to the fan theory that this was Elphaba opening the Grimory to tell Glinda she was still alive. I think this was some sense of the Grimory opening itself to Glinda and her. Her learning how to read it. And I think there's some sense of, like, her needing to become a person who deserved those magical powers. And the version of her that we saw in childhood who really just wanted to be magic, who was very privileged and entitled, and even the version of her who worked with the wizard and wanted to lift people's spirits but still be celebrated and be seen as Glinda the Good, still didn't deserve those magical powers either. There's a line that she says to Madame Morrible, added in for the film version, where Morrible says, I can now see how truly good you are. And she says, I'm not. Not yet, anyway. And I think when she finally does make the powerful speech and says, fellow Ozians, all Aussians friends, because I don't see any enemies here, and it's all like, hashtag, all Aussians, then by that point, the Grimmery is like, you know what? You can read me. You can read me. That was. That was a nice speech. But of course, my favorite moment from the final few frames of the film film was the nod to the poster that Glinda whispering to Elphaba image that we got. And I didn't see it coming. They showed us that scene so many times. It's one of the earliest scenes that we saw, I think the first time we saw the two of them together, right back in the first film. I didn't understand it at the time. Now it makes full sense. You had to wait until the end. I thought it was a little bit of a random shot for them to show Us. When Glinda was first saying, like I did, we were friends. That is to say, our past did cross at school. And we saw that shot overlaid, and I was, like, a little bit abrupt to cut to that. By the time we get to the end of the film and we see the whisper moment, it all makes sense. And I can't believe I didn't see it coming. That was so good. That was the moment that nearly made me cry. The moment that did make me cry was a few scenes before, after, for good. Not during for good, but after, when Elphaba hurries Glinda into a closet, which we could discuss the meaning of, of that. But it was the dialogue there when she said, everything's going to be fine, clearly with tears in her eyes and Glinda's crying and she's trying to smile. To suggest to her, either choose your own interpretation here, you know, just to try and reassure Glinda that it's going to be okay, or to secretly let Glinda know everything is going to be fine. I am going to be fine. In spite of what this is about to look like. I just can't tell you that. But the emotional climax, obviously, of that whole moment was her shutting the door and them having this Legally Blonde, please, won't you open the door? Slash, do you want to build a flying monkey moment where they're both crying on the door? Absolutely beautiful. Loved that shot. Wasn't emotionally prepared for it whatsoever. We'll talk separately about all of the Easter eggs and nods to the stage show and the wizard of Oz. But I liked the few shots that we got that really spoke to the wizard of Oz. The monkey carrying Dorothy away and her legs kicking in in the air. Elphaba shutting her down in the cellar scene from Dorothy's perspective. Those were great. And since we're talking about visual elements, I really loved all of the wig styling, still the makeup stuff. Paul Tazwell's costume design, with the exception. And I promised you I would get to this. Of Glinda's iridescent gown sleeves. And I loved the gown itself. I loved it because it incorporates pink and blue. I've had a chance to see see that dress as well as Elphaba's for Good costume with the sleeves up close. I love the details on both of them. What I love about Glinda's is it's made up of pink and blue sequins, nodding both to the pink dress worn by Billy Burke in the wizard of Oz film and the blue dress worn on Stage that Dior esque bubble gown worn originally by Kristin Chenoweth in the stage musical. And so the sort of iridescent purpley quality is really made up of, of a Sleeping Beauty compromise between pink and blue. What I don't love is the sleeves. I don't mind the napkin sleeve structure. It's the fact that one of them was consistently off the shoulder. Like, one of them was at like 15 degrees, the other was at like 35 degrees. It was bugging the hell out of me. And it only got worse. It only got worse. And you can tell me they don't have adhesive in Oz. But when she comes back at the end in the dress that everyone thought looked like sliced meat, you know the one, you know it well, the pink one with all that going on, she has little jewelry things stuck to her shoulders. So if you can adhere jewels to your collarbone, then we can have the sleeve. It just needed one person just go on to set and be like, by the way, just, just like, just that. Just like that little bit. That much all we needed. Also the nude illusion bejeweled sleeves that were coming down and were then loose at the ends by the wrists. We could, we could hem that in a slide better way. It could go to like a finger. I had unrealistic problems with the loose nude illusion sleeves because you're in a magical realm and we can't do better than like a poor nude illusion fabric. The word nude illusion has started to sound strange in my mouth, but I have strong feelings about it. I just think these are pseudo magical beings who could have come up with something slightly more convincing. Elphaba's outfit, meanwhile, I loved even more than the stage version and that's an iconic, really great detail dress in the stage version. But I love that, like Elsa in the stage version of Frozen, she's now in trousers with a boot and it's a coat like thing going over that. I love the. In the design of her hat and in all of the garments. It sort of spoke to the texture of broomstick bristles. I thought that was really clever. I love that it's so structured and so tailored and that it had strong shoulders and lapels and it was sort of businesslike because Elphaba in this film is getting down to business. I love, now that I think of it, that we had callbacks to her, like pulling the hair across her neck, that that's clearly like a thing that she does. And I love that we had a little bit of the waving on the forehead moment and them Doing the dancing through live choreography again when they reunited in wonderful. I do think if Elphaba had crossed the room to go and await Dorothy the killing her via bucket, that if they'd done one final like waving through the hin, through the crack in the door, that would have absolutely ruined me. I'm realizing as I conclude this and as I sit here for approaching 90 minutes that I have so much more to say and there's so much more that I will say when I talk about the Easter eggs, when I talk about the chains changes from the show to the film. I enjoyed it an awful lot and I enjoyed the performances. I think everything that I have to say about the performances I said in my spoiler free review. I thought Cynthia was great. I would have liked a little bit more emotional intensity and really distraught quality in no Good Deed, but I also thought the film really framed itself as Glinda's story this time around and Elphaba was kind of sidelined just a little bit. If they try once more to justify Ariana Grande in supporting categories for the awards this season, it's going to be really, really difficult because she is so central to the screen time and the narrative of this film. It's going to be really hard to call hers a supporting performance, but I also thought that she was great. It made me excited to see both of them hopefully doing much more work on screen, but also specifically to see Ariana returning to the stage. I think that'll be very exciting, exciting to see when that inevitably happens. I also thought, and it goes without saying at this point, they both sounded absolutely fantastic. There was one little moment in thank Goodness when Ariana sounded very inspired by Kristin Chenoweth and she is a lifelong Wicked fan. So it was nice to hear what perhaps might even have been a deliberate homage. I also love that they both got a couple of opt up on the original written melody moments in there. Cynthia with the Fiyero no Good Deed moment and Ariana in Thank Goodness a couple times. Times. And when I put out my spoiler free review last week, I guess I must have inadvertently called it a sequel. And a couple of people popped up in the comments saying it's not a sequel, it's a Part two. And I think that is a much better way of looking at it. It's not necessarily how the film was marketed, but it's probably the best way for it to be consumed and enjoyed and after it, you know, is done being in cinemas and being successful and we all finally get the chance to see Part one and Part two back to back. I think that's going to be the best way for this to be enjoyed. I don't think it's necessarily as strong as the first one when just consumed by itself when asked and expected to stand on its own two feet. But when you watch it purely as a part two of one really long two part film adaptation of Wicked the musical, then I think it's going to feel like a thorough, detailed, cohesive masterpiece. One of the things I really loved about it was how similar it felt to Wicked Part 1. It really felt like we were just carrying straight on. It didn't have this sense that you can sometimes feel find of people having returned to a set months or years later. So my advice to you, if you didn't necessarily all the way love it in the cinema, wait until you have the chance to do that and then see if it changes your relationship to the film. I am very excited for whenever I get the chance to do a Wicked Part one and Part two marathon. That's going to be a great day. In the meantime, that is not everything that I have to say about Wicked for Good, but that is, I think, as much time as I ought to dedicate to it today day. There is more to say. There will be more videos, more podcasts from me over the coming weeks talking about the changes, talking about the Easter eggs, talking about the possibility of future Wicked films, TV projects, whatever that might look like. Maybe I'll even do a little bit of a review roundup to dig into some of the online discourse around this film and some of the negative reviews that have been published about it. But for right now, the only other opinions that I want to read about Wicked for Good are yours. Let me know what you thought of this film in the comments section down below. If there's anything I didn't get down below the chat chance to expand on in this because I had so many thoughts swirling around my head having seen this film twice now in a week. Then feel free to ask any questions in the comments below and I will do my best to answer. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed if you did make sure to subscribe here on YouTube. Turn on notifications so you don't miss my upcoming Wicked Wednesdays content through the end of the year or go follow me on podcast plus platforms. As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
- [63:34]
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- [64:18]
Mickey Jo
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- [65:15]
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