I have a tough relationship with the first Wicked film. It’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’d hesitate to even call it bad but it’s also woefully unimpressive to me. Some good performances wrapped up in an unmoving film that sets up a much more intriguing second act on which I had to wait another year. Admittedly I’ve grown more fondly of Wicked over the last 12 months, having seen it twice again because of my lovely girlfriend, but I could never shake the feeling that “Part Two” – Or “For Good” as it has been dubbed – might just be more my thing. It sets up this thrilling confrontation between Elphaba and Glinda, an emotional clash between sisters wrapped around the classic tale we’ve all seen so many times before. Though now, 24 hours after seeing the hotly-anticipated follow-up I can confidently say that I was wrong in getting my hopes up. “Wicked: For Good” is pretty terrible.

Wicked Part One ends in an incredibly memorable way. Even I have to admit that its defying gravity routine is an effective tour-de-force that has left a genuine mark on audiences, a feat that is becoming increasingly rare these days. So you’d imagine that this sequel starts off with a similar bravado, yet “For Good” ends up doing the opposite. The opening scene is a culmination of all the elements I disliked in “Part One”, a drab-looking faux-spectacle that is unintelligible to the eye. For a musical film with grand spectacle and dance-numbers, Jon M Chu is astoundingly terrible at framing what the audience needs to see. Dance numbers don’t actually look impressive (a problem more applicable to the first one since there are zero dance-numbers in “For Good”) as most of the choreography gets lost in a series of close-ups of actors faces and action scenes often leave your optical nerves in a twisted knot as you try to follow along with what is happening through odd angles and one-too-many cuts. The opening minutes of “For Good” feature a mixture of all those faults as Elphaba saves some weird looking rhinos from slave labor in a scene that is as boring as it is ugly. In a sense it’s a perfect opener to this film, as it tells you exactly what you can expect to see in the next 2 and a half hours. The scene is indicative of all the film’s more technical faults. As the hairy-rhino’s dig their hooves into the mud, so does the film; Getting stuck in the mud, Stuck in the nonsense, stuck in pointless scene after pointless scene, never truly reaching any heights or delivering any memorable moments beyond some scenes I’m sure will make the rounds on “stan Twitter”. The movie never truly starts, it has no real arcs or acts and has a baffling ending. It is a total filmmaking failure from beginning to the end. 

Yet, while I could get stuck on the technical faults of the film for many more paragraphs, analyzing the shoddy flying CGI or the weird prosthetic work on one particular actor – I won’t even pick-apart one of the worst face-replacement/DeAge effects I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing – because it is not those parts of the final film that irked me so bad that I had to write this. These parts of the filmmaking process become inconsequential when you compare them to the film’s story – which is inconsequential and thoughtless at its best and down-right harmful at its worst.

I wasn’t aware of the story of Wicked before seeing this. I knew about some of the twists and turns and I was aware of its connection to the original book and film but I had never really delved into it any deeper. So I cannot rate this movie on how well it manages to capture the spirit of the original. But, what I can say is that, if this is exactly how the original plays out, I cannot fathom why this became the cultural juggernaut that it did. I came out stunned at just how nonsensical this whole thing is. An unengaging and unchallenging piece of work that tricks its audience into thinking they saw something by throwing forgettable ballads at them while in reality nothing really happened at all. 

I understand that many of the people that seek out a film like Wicked For Good are not interested in politicizing it. I don’t agree with it, far from it, but I understand that there are those that are unwilling to be challenged by a film like this in any way shape or form. You want to be entertained, you want to laugh and cry at your favorite pop-girly singing about bubbles and not think about what a story like this means or represents – but when a film is this obvious in it’s messaging and then so hopelessly fails at delivering on that it becomes hard to ignore.

We live in a day and age where fascism rises- where racism, sexism, homophobia and all other forms of prejudice run rampant in the streets. Wicked is the story we absolutely do not need in a time like that. At face value Wicked is a story about oppression, persecution and propaganda, about false prophets and dictatorship but mainly about fighting against injustice. That’s what is presented to us from the opening frames of both films, but once the 5 hour long story has washed over you you realize that Wicked is actually the opposite. That Wicked tells you the store of complicity, about shutting up and playing along. Wicked is a story where the oppressors learn no lessons and face no real consequences, where the oppressed happily rejoice back into society while those that had rather seen them perish happily cheer them on. Where the propaganda is never challenged and where those that benefitted from the misery of others are happily left in their do-gooder fantasy. 

The Land of Oz (as we see it at the start of the film) is a dark place, yet it’s a direct reflection of the times we live in. A society that is blinded by its “ruler”, with followers that cannot see him do anything wrong or take any missteps whatsoever as they are blinded by his faux-leadership, happily rejoicing in witch-hunts, even if the hunted are innocent. They cheer on as anyone who looks and acts even slightly different to them is rounded off in gestapo like fashion, either annexed from society or thrown in literal cages. And a land that is so spellbound by propaganda that it has become their truth. But where-as most films would slowly make way for a beacon of light to come through that Darkness, Wicked for Good decides it’s not concerned with any of that. Instead of taking a stance against this hateful regime and letting those who have been wronged get the justice they deserve, they are instead quietly disposed of – barely punished and never held accountable, and the totalitarianism is never questioned, leaving behind a legacy of oppression and pain that will never be acknowledged again. The people of Oz never have to face their prejudice or their misguided sense of hate and fear, they all get to live in the fantasy that their racism was good actually, and that those that fought to protect others were in fact evil to their core, they never learn the truth. The Victims of that hatred, the displaced populations just have to reintegrate with those that wanted them dead, because apparently hatred should stand unopposed, and instead those that actively took part in keeping that empire of pain and lies strong and resilient should be able to waltz into a higher seat of power even if they didn’t do a single thing to stop the hurt. 

Glinda is the most obvious offender of this phenomenon. She is for all intents and purposes a “cog in the machine”. She is the right-hand woman to Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible, A Goebbels-like propagandist for The Wizard. The movie portrays Glinda as this ill-guided woman blinded by the adoration she is getting by being this mascot for the Wizard. But what the movie doesn’t ever address is that, though she might be blinded, she is very much aware of the evil that is being committed. She witnessed the unlawful prosecution of the animals first hand and is one of only a handful of people who know the Wizard is behind said prosecution. She had a front-row seat to the many attempts on Elphaba’s life and she is intimately aware that everything said about her is a lie. And she just kind of rolls with it. She’s really not that fussed that an entire species is being enslaved, displaced and destroyed – all of which is largely happening because of the propaganda she is pushing out there. But the movie never portrays that as a flaw, they never have her take accountability for her complacency – the movie actively rewards her for doing nothing. 

I would be more forgiving of such an oversight by the filmmakers if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s not an oversight at all, it’s an unwillingness to actually delve into this story in any meaningful way. It’s not just Glinda who seems totally unfazed by the Wizard’s horrible plot – Elphaba herself only really gives a damn after her boyfriend gets mutilated. Before that she’s mad, sure, but she’s also fine with forgiving and forgetting everything the Wizard had done to her and the animals. Elphaba knows what is happening to them, she’s seen the abuse first hand – but she also just forgets about it when needed. One of the bigger turns in the story happens around the 50 minute mark when Elphaba decides to have her “big” confrontation with the Wizard by just walking into his room and talking to him in a sequence that really exemplifies the horrible writing we are dealing with here. Glinda follows her into the room and it only takes two parlor tricks and a nice little song about friendship for Elphaba to forgive and forget all the animal torture and slavery she’s witnessed. As long as The Wizard stops being such a meanie, he can continue to rule this world by her side – a completely baffling decision that is way out-of-character. The whole thing truly exists for the sole purpose of rediscovering a “twist” that we already revealed at the end of the first movie, ostensibly rebooting her arc in such a way that it renders the first hour of the film as obsolete. 

The complete lack of any real thought that went into the script’s sub-themes becomes even more bizarre when you factor in the film’s decision to add two new songs into the story – one for Glinda and one for Elphaba, with the latter adding an entire new layer of idiocy to this already idiotic script. “No Place Like Home” is a song about the American Dream. No matter how you spin it, that’s what it’s about. With lyrics like; “Oz is more than just a place – It’s a promise, an idea – I want to help make it come true”, subtext turns into straight-up text, slapping you in the face with its meaning. When you have a woman of color singing what is ostensibly a protest song in the middle of your movie, how can you still end up with such a tone deaf final picture.

That’s truly what I find most strange about this whole thing. This is a blockbuster film led by two women – one of which is a queer black woman I might add – directed by an asian man and featuring a widely diverse cast including queer people and disabled people in major roles. You would think that a group like this – in a time like this – would want to be just a little bit more angry? Would want to be a little bit more interested in using their giant platform to say something – anything at all?? I think they try to do so at times, they’re building towards this like revolt – opposition – against Oz, but the movie pivots right before the finish line into this bizarre third act that leaves you with a confused final message: Runaway and hide – hopefully someone better will eventually step up to the plate and fix the mess you’re leaving behind.

I struggle to completely write the film off as wilfully ignorant – as actually harmful – because I think most of its flaws stem from stupidity. From thoughtless writing and an expectancy that most of the film’s audience will not want to engage with it beyond the surface level (Though I feel that even if you don’t engage with the movie’s themes, you’ll still end up with a baffling story that does nothing and goes nowhere). But maybe, just maybe that’s even worse. Maybe a film of this scale could’ve done just a little bit better, and maybe the audiences that watch it should demand just a bit more – especially when you want to tout “Wicked” as anything more than a shoddily produced musical.