At last, “Wicked: For Good” reveals the mechanics behind Glinda’s bubble. It’s not magic. It’s technological wizardry engineered by the man behind the curtain himself to convince the Munchkins that Glinda, charismatic but haplessly unskilled, has supernatural talents. To use the parlance of his press secretary, the gimmick is merely a “vehicular spherical globe.”
“The wand really sells it,” says conniving Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Likewise, after 2024’s narratively dreary “Wicked,” returning director Jon M. Chu persuades us to come back to Oz for this smarter, sprightlier follow-up that’s all about the pageantry of propaganda.
In this Oz, image is everything and the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is the spin-master. “Once folks buy into your blarney, it’s the thing they’ll most hold on to,” he croons in a playfully retro ditty whose balloon dance and squawking horns allude to Charlie Chaplin in “The Great Dictator” and “Cabaret’s” Joel Grey (who coincidentally played the Wizard role on Broadway).
The script by Dana Fox and original Broadway playwright Winnie Holzman follows the structure of the 2003 stage musical, itself an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.” Consider the break between films a year-long intermission between acts. The first installment was all tedious set-up. The second has a body count.
To briefly recap the first “Wicked,” Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the future Wicked Witch, were once college roommates. Glinda is charming and popular; Elphaba, a green-skinned outcast with paranormal powers, is embraced only by her moony sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), the impulsive Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) and, gradually, the perky, pink-clad Glinda. Now vaguely older, the girls have become figureheads for opposing sides, with Glinda an Emerald City influencer and Elphaba an animal rights activist: the lime-colored embodiment of Greenpeace.
Erivo is a major talent with lungs like twin airplane engines and a screen presence of pure steel. The last film suffered due to her strength; she was simply too much woman to play an insecure young student. Broadway productions can cast Elphabas over 30. (Idina Menzel was 32 when she originated the role.) But onscreen — especially in the close-ups Chu enjoys — there’s no spell on Earth, over or under the rainbow, that could convince me Erivo is a pigtailed wallflower. That’s as fantastical of a demand as Sidney Lumet’s 1978 “The Wiz” insisting that the great diva Diana Ross’s Dorothy was a nervous nelly who’d never been south of Harlem’s 125th Street.
Thankfully, Erivo’s maturity now works since her character is wiser and more cynical — although it’s still goofy to see her skateboarding on a broomstick. In her introduction, she swoops over the poppy fields to free the enslaved oxen forced to build the Yellow Brick Road. (The cattle are treated so horrendously that at least one kid in every theater will pledge to go vegetarian.)
Later, Erivo’s Elphaba even enjoys a night of adult shenanigans with Bailey’s Prince Fiyero. Their love scene starts awkwardly. The actors don’t have much chemistry and they’re both wearing two tons of costumes. Yet, by sheer force of will, Chu strong-arms the scene into a sophisticated tryst that just happens to take place in a tree. As they sing the ballad “As Long as You’re Mine,” reworked to sound a bit sleazier, like something Sharon Stone would have skulked around to in a ’90s thriller, Elphaba slips out of her frilled black gown and Fiyero strips off his military belt and suspenders. By the morning after, the pair finally manage to work up one smooch with a bit of heat.
The real love story, however, remains between Elphaba and Glinda. To the script’s credit, their bond is strained but never snapped — their friendship has an admirable elasticity. Both want what’s best for each other and for Oz. Alas, they can’t agree on how to get it: fisticuffs or flattery.
Elphaba, a fighter toughened by a life of cruel, hard luck, wants to tackle the tyrannical Wizard head-on and expose him as a phony who props up his clout by convincing the Ozians (yes, Ozians) to subjugate talking animals. By contrast, toxically naive Glinda is convinced that everyone could be kind if she drizzled them with honey. At its core, “For Good” asks if it’s it better to tell the ugly truth or put a pretty face on things. Intriguingly, it leans toward the latter.
With her butterfly lashes and hair bleached an unnatural shade of news-anchor blonde, Grande couldn’t look more artificial. Yet, the phony look suits her — Glinda is burdened by being the happy face of the Wizard’s regime. Grande has practiced doing this kind of lovable ditz since her teen years on Nickelodeon and I’m not sure if she can play any other kind of part. But she’s marvelously funny here, making her Glinda at once deeply sincere and uproariously shallow. When she and Elphaba brawl, Grande hurl-plops onto her rival like a cupcake in a food fight. When bereft, she even manages to sadly tip-tap her tiny feet up a staircase.
That song, a new number called “The Girl in the Bubble,” is staged in one whirling tracking shot. The CG is too synthetic to be truly impressive, but you have to admire cinematographer Alice Brooks’ ambition to crowd more razzle-dazzle into a movie where even the background characters are costumed like haute couture lily pads. Often, the camera is too untethered from its surroundings to take in the details or the emotions. Swooshing and circling dizzily around the actors, it deserves to have its tripod rusted to the ground.
The static shots have genuine impact, like a motionless image of Glinda and Elphaba singing on opposite sides of a wall, each letting their bravery drop when they think they can’t be seen. Equally good is a long take that stays on Glinda’s teary face as, just behind her and out of focus, the Wizard and Morrible hatch an assassination plot involving a twister.
Despite knowing the house-crush is inevitable, you still can’t quite believe the movie will go through with it — especially since the script has already sensitively adjusted one character’s fate. To spare the PG audience, Chu has swapped out the curling corpse feet for a moment of mourning. Each death or disfigurement lands with a splat. The scarecrow scenes are klutzy; the reveal of the Tin Man plays like a spoof of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” Yet, these welcome sour jolts keep things from getting too sugar-sweet.
“For Good” is a worthwhile return to Oz. The extra scenes and rejiggered duets justify the running time (even if the 160-minute length of the first film remains unforgivable). The other newly added song, “No Place Like Home,” empowers Erivo to turn Judy Garland’s famous line into a radicalized political anthem. “Think how you’ll grieve for all you’ll leave behind,” she sings to a herd of otters, koalas, flamingos, giraffes, bunnies and kangaroos fleeing Oz for the safety of the Yellow Brick Underground Railroad. I was moved. The beasts weren’t.
We never see the face of this film’s Dorothy, but behind her back, the heroine is either treated as exasperating (“It’s just that one road the whole time,” Glinda trills impatiently) or moronic (“That mulish farm girl,” Elphaba sneers). Judge Dorothy by her actions and she’s one part political pawn, one part the heedless sociopath described in that infamous TV listing blurb who “kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”
Children who see this movie before the 1939 classic may never forgive Dorothy. Maybe there’s no going home after all.
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