What a difference a year makes. Holiday Season 2024 brought us the movie musical that Broadway fans have been clamoring for with 20 years of anticipation and drool. Well, at least half of it, as my review of Wicked, Part 1 elaborated on. Stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera (who used her full name because that was the name she went by when she fell in love with the musical as a child) went on a seemingly never-ending press junket wherein they proclaimed their everlasting love for each other and all the girl power it involved, singing each other’s praises louder than the final riff of “Defying Gravity”. They became the darlings of the theatre world. And everything culminated with a handful of Golden Globe and Academy Awards for the design team, sparking a celebration from the lifelong Broadway fans. Cut to Holiday Season 2025 and this year’s tepid reception to the second half of the movie and complete lack of Golden Globe wins and zero Academy Award nominations have been slammed by the same rabid group as “snubs” and “outragous”.
But Broadway fans have never been the best at critiquing their stage-to-screen adaptations. Usually they fault the refusal to cast their original stage favorites (Yes, there are serious Wicked fanatics who were angry they didn’t use 50+ year olds Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth to immortalize their legendary performances on film—as prep school students….). This year it’s a crime that the movie got zero Academy Award nominations—robbery.
Well strap in, theatre buffs, because here’s the, as promised in my website intro, brutal but honest truth: They didn’t deserve any. I just heard a thousand pearls clutched, so let’s review the movie, and then back up and justify this theory.
Let’s start with a positive. Visually it’s as stunning as the first. Nathan Crowley’s Oz is still a cinematic masterpiece, this time deliving more into the shadows of the secretive castles than the bright light of Shiz U. And Paul Tazewell’s costumes are again smart and creative. Glinda’s new signature blue and pink rhinestoned gown is an achievement. Michelle Yeoh’s Asian influenced gowns are equally beautiful, and the conversion costumes of the supporting players into their final Ozian roles are serviceable if not particularly inspired and derivative of their looks beforehand, as they should. The outrage is that why didn’t it get the artistic recognition it did first time? Even I questioned that originally, but then I remembered…
The problem that while it is as visually stunning as the first, the reason is because it still is the first. Since both parts of this bloated story were shot together while they had the cast intact and the sets and costumes constructed, what they actually did was shoot one big movie and cut it into two parts for a combination of corporate greed and artistic pretentiousness. And the Academy did reward this effort. Once. Why should they give a second Oscar for the the same set design and costume plot? Mark Coulier’s prosthetic makeup for Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater in their new roles as the Scarecrow and Tinman respectively are well done (Bailey in particular looks so good with his burlap textured face that it seems CGI; again props to the design company to go for reality over CGI like the 9 million hand-planted tulips discussed last year—which are still there this movie), but it’s two quick instances when other movies have much bigger scenes and casts for specialty make up. Elphaba’s green is still the same Elphaba green. So nice work, just not enough.
As far as choreography, Christopher Scott has significantly less dance to stage than in the first act (which is another reason why it is important the two balance each other out as one complete story), and that one number he had, Glinda’s “Thank Goodness”, is a watered-down derivative of his last year’s Instagram “Loathing” challenge sensation. All the same group walks, taps, slaps, and head snaps, just less effective because we saw it all—ad nauseum—last year. Sets, costumes, choreography, direction, all nothing we didn’t see in the first movie.
Director Jon M. Chu gets the same critique as before—if the decision to split this story into two overly long movies was questioned last year, it was decidedly obvious this year. This second act, particularly, drags, even in the stage show, till we get to the quick change conversions to take us to the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. This is not a stand-alone movie. Period. All the fun and engaging material is in the first act and singing “For Good” at the end of the dark second act just isn’t enough. It was a good 20+ minutes into this movie before they even got to the top of Act 2 of the stage show.
Even the performances, all stellar, mind you, suffered by cutting their character arcs in half. All the supporting charactes were totally screwed because they did nothing remarkable in each half story. I will make a case that splitting his story in half and diluting his story line cost the incredibly engaging Jonathan Bailey a Best Supporting Actor nomination last year. But even stars Erivo and Grande, commanding and perfect as they were, suffered because their story is bisected, and all the good, fun material is in the first act. This movie is a second act that depends on the first setting the arc in place, not a year’s wait in another movie. Again, it is not a stand-alone story and suffered from the bloat and the greed.
Not to mention that many voters lamented they were tired of the never ending “sisters for life” press tour again. They suffered it last year. But that was tolerated in anticipation of the film yet to come. This year we had the movie. We knew what we were getting. And their cloying, juvenile behavior was insufferable a year later like they had learned nothing.
“But the new songs!”, they cried. New music from the legendary Stephen Schwartz, he of iconic 50+year career giving us Godspell and Pippin and The Baker’s Wife and Pocahontas and Hunchback and Wicked. How can you snub him? To which I respond, using his own lyrics from “Popular”, “Don’t make me laugh”. Those new songs were the usual thrown together crap they always add for an Oscar nomination. There’s no “Hopelessly Devoted to You” or “You’re the One That I Want” there to liven or improve the score. Neither Erivo’s “No Place Like Home” or Grande-Butera’s “The Girl in the Bubble” was remotely necessary let alone the quality of his already cohesive, perfect score. They were blatant Oscar begs and vanity numbers for the leading ladies that not only added nothing to the story, they weren’t even good songs. Even worse, they just bloated the already too long movie by another ten minutes. I’m actually happier the Academy didn’t give them a vanity nomination for those trivial melodic minutiae to encourage or reward their bad judgment.
So again, the review of Wicked: For Good is that it suffers much like—no, significantly more than—it’s predecessor by the split. There is nowhere near two and a half hours of material in the show’s 45 minute second act. Mistakes were made from the top down. But as for the lack of nominations, it was not “a snub”. It was a matter of having received all the accolades they deserved last year and exactly what they deserved this year. Asking for more honors for essentially the same project (and what should have been the same project) is as greedy as the corporate decision that damned them in the first place.
So yes, Elphabots and Glindaphiles, it saddens me to give the second act, second rate installment of Wicked-mania a downgrade. A solid B at best. And I rarely ever agree with the pretentions Academy as far as their honors. They get it wrong significantly more than they get it right, but in this case I have to admit they stood their ground and nailed this. Universal Studios and Director Jon Chu not only condemned this ill-conceived separate movie and all its duplicate nominations, I daresay they cost the project additional nominations, and maybe even victories, if they had just made one single blockbuster movie out of the material we waited twenty years for to see it as we know it on stage. Cho’s other argument was that “Defying Gravity” is such a penultimate number there is no continuing after that. Claiming that theatre audiences get an intermission to rethink, regroup, and return refreshed and rebooted for Act 2 is just an excuse. There was an easy answer—make yourself one good three hourish movie (we’d have tolerated that; it’d be a refreshing break from the current combined running time of 5 hours), and add an intermission break like the old event movies did. Gone With The Wind, The Sound of Music, The Ten Commandments are all doable in a single sitting in a form longer than Wicked should have even been, with a very welcome break to relieve oneself or replenish one’s snacks. Reigning Oscar winner The Brutalist and 2024 nominee Killers of the Flower Moon revived the practice to great appreciation in the last two years. It was possible.
There was, I have to admit, one minor plus from splitting the movie into two parts. When I read the early reviews for the second half, I was impressed with some of the hilarity and creativity I rarely see from my fellow critics, especially in the lazy big papers. Some of my favorites headlines included “Wicked: For Mediocre”, “Wicked: Forever”, “Wicked: For Good—No One Mourns the Pacing”, and my personal favorite, “Wicked: For Good—Defying Brevity”. I know I’ve been harsh in my judgment, but not wrong. The movie—even all 5 hours of it—is by no means bad. It’s just unnecessary and hurt the product in the end. Scenic Design, Costume and Makeup Design, Cinematography, Acting, Singing, even Direction are all painstakingly thorough and excellent. It’s just too much, too long, and too little to spawn two separate movies. Hence I will stick with my titular statement. The bloated film version of the second act of Wicked may have intended to be For Good, but it’s nowhere near For the Better.
See the link to last year’s review “Something Wicked This Way Comes—Eventually”.