Oz has never felt more great and powerful than it does in “Wicked: For Good.” Where the first entry in director Jon M. Chu’s exuberant two-parter succeeded in wowing audiences last fall, its more familiar follow-up delivers what we might call the “whew factor,” as in: Thank goodness, he didn’t blow it. By now, the world has been built, and Chu and company are free to deliver the best defense of witches this side of “The Crucible,” going so far as to improve on the source material in the process — not L. Frank Baum’s turn-of-the-century novel, but the hit Broadway musical based on Gregory Maguire’s revisionist bestseller.
The emotional “untold” story of how green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was unfairly villainized, and the friendship that eventually redeemed her (with Ariana Grande’s sparkling pink Glinda), runs nearly five hours in toto, not counting the yearlong intermission. Treating the two halves as separate films has effectively served to “eventize” the Hollywood musical, which looked like an ailing genre until “Wicked Part 1” scored three-quarters of a billion dollars.
With so much green to embolden them, Chu and his gifted ensemble return to the Emerald City, from which Elphaba was freshly exiled, after exposing the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) for the charlatan that he is. Dorothy has yet to appear — which she will, though this enchanted telling is only nominally interested in the “mulish farm girl” so famously played by Judy Garland.
Instead, “Wicked” focuses on the J.K. Rowling-worthy feud between witches and wizards, whose relative goodness and badness is constantly in flux. As far as Ozians are concerned, only Elphaba is evil, though the behind-the-scenes situation is considerably more complicated. The film also supplies fresh origin stories for Dorothy’s travel companions — the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man — which serve to explain their collective animosity toward the so-called Wicked Witch of the West.
Good luck to anyone who watches “Wicked: For Good” without first seeing the earlier film, since Chu picks up right where he left off, throwing audiences smack into a spectacular Emerald City celebration. Onstage, the second act unspooled in less than an hour and lacks a song as strong as “Defying Gravity,” which makes seeing the rushed, plot-heavy segment live a letdown for many, compared with the more well-rounded backstory of how Elphaba became friends with Glinda the Good. The film fixes a common complaint of the show, giving the pair more scenes (and songs) together in this final stretch, which now feels like a robust tale unto itself.
Of the two witches, only Elphaba has the gift of magic. She also has in her possession the Grimmerie, an ancient book of spells that have a way of backfiring — hence Erivo’s soul-searching solo, “No Good Deed,” in which the frustrated Elphaba decides she might as well embrace her reputation for evil. Meanwhile, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) has turned all of Oz against her, from the flying monkeys to Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode). The latter’s promotion to public office has unfortunate consequences for animals and Munchkins alike, leading to a heartless split with the once-affable Boq (Ethan Slater).
As Part 2 opens, the iconic Yellow Brick Road is under construction. Elphaba objects to the use of animal labor for the task, swooping in on her broomstick to liberate several beasts of burden. We mustn’t forget, the Wizard has been treating all of Oz’s talking animals as scapegoats, ousting distinguished critters like Peter Dinklage’s Dr. Dillamond (as great a goat as they come) from positions of respect. In the film’s PG-rated Kristallnacht, elegantly green-clad soldiers round them up the way Brownshirts once did the Jews of Europe — which would make the propaganda-producing Morrible this world’s equivalent of Joseph Goebbels.
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Such comparisons are no accident, though “Wicked” even more acutely critiques real-world politics, presenting its Wizard as a “wise old carnie” who’s fooled his followers with so much “blarney,” they’re too brainwashed to believe when shown the truth. As presented in the film’s visually dazzling but unmistakably disillusioned song “Wonderful,” the Wizard’s testimony none too subtly resembles a certain huckster-in-chief with a gift for obscuring the lines between fact and fiction — or, as the dreamy Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) more romantically puts it, “It’s not lying. It’s looking at things another way.”
The observation that leaders are capable of mass manipulation was front and center in the 1939 classic. And yet, co-writers Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox add more than an hour of worthy material to Holzman’s Broadway book (plus two new songs), while sharpening what such deceptive practices mean to contemporary viewers.
Even the idealistic Elphaba seems to agree that commoners can’t handle the truth, recognizing that exploiting her unjustly evil reputation can do some good. That’s the reason she insists that Glinda do nothing to correct the record after Dorothy does the deed (no spoilers there, as it’s not only how the classic movie ends but also where “Wicked Part 1” began).
Emotionally speaking, the movie’s most touching themes involve the durability of friendship (nothing like dropping a house on one’s sister to test such a bond) and the virtues of change. Whereas Grande had a relatively one-dimensional role to play in Part 1, Glinda now faces a complex evolution, showing fragility in the new song, “The Girl in the Bubble,” and something far more nuanced than simple anger when Fiyero makes the choice that will cost him his brains.
One could argue that the first film was the story of how Elphaba came to be empowered, while this one deals with Glinda’s redemption, and yet, neither half works without the fullhearted commitment of both parties. To that end, Erivo also gets an original song, “No Place Like Home,” which gives fresh meaning to Dorothy’s famous mantra: Elphaba doesn’t want to go back but forward, to push the unaccepting place she comes from toward a more inclusive future.
Among the second film’s satisfactions are more detailed accounts of how Scarecrow and the Tin Man came to be cursed, as well as a knock-down, drag-out witch fight. The art nouveau-style sets and ornate costumes are nothing short of astonishing, though the film relies more heavily on virtual effects, eschewing the techniques that made the blend of practical and virtual elements so seamless last time. The emotions are real; everything else is movie magic, representing where we now stand — at the apex of artificiality — for better or worse.
From Variety US