Review - Wicked: For Good

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

The existence of Wicked: For Good may very well be remembered as the most misguided creative decision in the history of cinema—as far as Hollywood blockbusters of the 21st Century are concerned, anyway. Splitting a single adaptation into multiple parts with a year-long delay between the release of each installment is bad enough already (and it’s hardly a recent phenomenon—see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, the Hobbit trilogy, Andy Muschetti’s It), but Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked is a particularly poor candidate for such narrative bisection. Even the source material loses a lot of its momentum following the intermission, rarely returning to the soaring heights of “Defying Gravity”; Act Two simply plummets in quality, unfolding as a series of loosely connected episodes that feel more like an extended epilogue than a true conclusion.

In the absence of a properly structured plot, the movie is obliged to invent its own framework, and its contributions are seldom beneficial—indeed, they’re frequently antithetical to the established thematic foundation. Familiar lines of dialogue are haphazardly inserted into otherwise original scenes, now devoid of dramatic context, emotional weight, or comedic impact; words that once progressed the conflict or revealed characterization (e.g., “We can’t all travel by bubble!”) are reduced to perfunctory footnotes, conveying nothing of substance. The running gag of The Wizard of Oz occurring entirely on the periphery of Elphaba’s adventure is the greatest victim of this tonal mismanagement; the inherent humor of the audience constantly missing Dorothy by literal seconds (as is the case in the live theatrical version) is lost when she’s promoted from a prop to an actual supporting cast member—albeit one that is still only briefly glimpsed.

I could have forgiven these blemishes had the film at least offered some decent spectacle; unfortunately, Jon M. Chu’s flaccid direction consistently fails the musical numbers—a rather glaring flaw, considering the genre. His blocking for “As Long as You’re Mine” is especially baffling; in a romantic duet about intimacy and connection, Chu positions the lovers at an awkward distance for several verses, introducing a sense of dissonance between the lyrics and imagery that I’ve never seen in any previous production. He likewise fumbles “No Good Deed”; although it is essentially the show’s climax—the culmination of the protagonist’s arc, in which she confronts her prior mistakes and grapples with her self-doubt—this rendition appears to have been recorded against the will of every participant involved: the choreography is unimaginative, the editing choppy, and the overall pacing noticeably rushed. Chu seems to have reserved all of his visual ambition for “The Girl in the Bubble”, which was written specifically for the screen; in a reasonable facsimile of a continuous tracking shot, the camera gracefully glides through various reflective surfaces, distorting and expanding the space that its subject inhabits in a surreal technical ballet. It’s a genuinely impressive sequence; I sincerely wish that the obvious effort on display was in service of a better song.

Ultimately, Wicked: For Good suffers because it is fundamentally incomplete. The fact that it begins with a medley of reprises epitomizes its shortcomings as a sequel; it just cannibalizes and regurgitates the iconography of its predecessor, adding little of value to the larger cultural conversation.