Jon M. Chu’s ‘Wicked: For Good’ is a major step down

This loaded premise gestures towards even deeper symbolism in its opening scene, when enormous, buffalo-like creatures are captured and forced to lay the gilded yellow brick road, evoking a charcuterie board of past American horrors (chattel slavery, Chinese railroad workers, the California gold rush that hastened Native genocide, and so on). Which is to say: the film has plenty to mine thematically, perhaps more so than the stage play, upon which it improves in at least one other regard. One of its two original songs—“No Place Like Home,” co-written by Erivo—is both deeply emotional, and helps strengthen the connection between Elphaba’s actions and her political outlook in a way the Broadway version never did.

Those are, however, all the improvements you can expect. In fact, it may not be a stretch to say that all the aforementioned political imagery is far too potent for a film unwilling to actually do anything with it. See, while the ostensible heart and soul of the story is Glinda and Elphaba’s rocky friendship, the film is ultimately beholden to the stage show’s story, which—although it departs from the 1995 book by Gregory Maguire—is itself beholden to the most recognizable screen version of The Wizard of Oz. The first Wicked film, and much of the new one, function as prequels of sorts, before speedrunning the plot of Victor Flemming’s 1939 classic from the sidelines (our protagonists largely watch Dorothy and her friends go on their adventure from a distance). The biggest problem with this reverential fidelity is that, although the entire premise of Wicked is meant to be subversive, its conclusions are cultishly adherent to the outcomes of prior versions. This means that Chu’s darker on-screen take on the story, in which Glinda ends up resembling a gleeful Fox News talking head, can’t really break her out of that mold by the time the movie ends, nor can it offer Elphaba (and the world she loves) something resembling a truly happy ending.

It is, quite frankly, bizarre to watch a film in 2025 that all but says, the people, prone to believing lies, will not only continue to do so, but must be compelled to do so, and that doing so is heroic. The story of the stage show may be 22 years old, but the world around it has changed too drastically for a one-to-one recreation, especially in a world where The Dark Knight approached a similar topic in the pop culture sphere—not as a reflection of idealism, but as a necessary evil amidst the War on Terror. Wicked: For Good is, after all, a children’s fantasy, but it’s one that begins by exposing the blood that went into building pristine memories, like the yellow path Dorothy once walked. “Stay in your land of illusion,” the movie says. “Never wake up from it.”

Whether or not one objects to these thematic underpinnings, they expose—and have always exposed—the fact that Wicked, both the stage play and now the movie duology, have the wrong ending, meant to send audiences home with empty catharsis. Maguire’s novel was, by comparison, much more forthcoming about the story it was telling, and more willing to remix The Wizard of Oz if it meant baring the dark soul of a people (and a body politic) led astray by misinformation; it ends with Oz in turmoil. But alas, this is Wicked by way of a Universal theme park, where artifice matters most.

It would be one thing if Wicked: For Good was at least effective at inviting the audience along for this journey, and convincing them that Glinda and Elphaba believe in their respective happy endings, even if we don’t. But Chu’s sequel is also an eyesore, and too sloppily made to be persuasive. For instance, you can never really tell what’s meant to be the big, heroic introduction shot for Jonathan Bailey’s royal guard Fiyero, since he first appears with the brim of his hat tipped slightly over his brow—not enough to obscure him, but also not enough to reveal him either. Faces constantly fall into shadow—characters are back-lit, but without bounce to make them remotely visible—preventing us from seeing them emote. There are a handful of exceptions, like the tightest of close ups, but these also serve as reminders that any shot wider than this reveals Chu as a downright slapdash visual storyteller. A director, among their many other duties, ultimately directs the audience, but Chu’s compositions seldom have a legible point of focus. The eye is always pulled to the brightest part of the frame, which is usually sunlight (rather than a human face), and the lack of contrast in the colors makes one character blur into the next, and makes people and their costumes meld with the backdrops.

Using a 1930s Technicolor masterpiece as a reference point should be the easiest thing in the world, especially with the modern tools at one’s disposal. Instead, Wicked: For Good is visual soup, exemplified by the fact that its brief glimpse of a fabled land “beyond” Oz, a place of misery, is exactly as glum as Oz itself, despite both its joyful front, and the actual moments of joy that emerge through the music. The whole thing is ghoulishly drab. And yet, it’s not even the worst offense committed by the film. That would be in the performance department, i.e. where the first movie most excelled. In the second, moments of tragedy are swept under the rug with stunning efficiency, and the characters move on like nothing happened.

As Glinda “The Good Witch” Upland, Grande loses the operatic spark that made her such a treat to watch in Part One, the upbeat, “it girl” cadence from beneath which she played the captivating downer notes. In a story all about this façade, she doesn’t carry forward the same performance methodology that splits the difference between the showiness of the stage and subtlety of the screen. Rather than modulating these broad dimensions, she flattens them into a performance of practically nothing. There are a handful of moments when Glinda verges on tears, a state Grande is adept at portraying, but apart from these peaks in emotional energy, the role ends up offering her little of note.

Just as disappointing is the fact that Erivo is similarly plain, as though Chu—in an effort to tap into some bizarre, restrained version of po-faced seriousness—forgot he was making a musical. Even the square-jawed, Disney-prince-made-human Bailey plays the lovelorn Fiyero with little range, despite oozing charisma last time around. Add to this the utter dearth of energy with which their romance is filmed (in musical moments and otherwise), and you can see the actors being let down in real time.

There are moments when Wicked for Good nominally succeeds as a specifically cinematic translation, employing tools like flashbacks (do ignore a de-aged Goldblum resembling Eric Andre) and cross-cutting between simultaneous scenes, which you can’t always do on stage. However, it further drops the ball when crafting its action—both its fight scenes, and the broad concept of movement altogether. The screen doesn’t have the physical limits of the stage, and yet, not a single scene takes advantage of the infinitude at its disposal. Characters usually stand around in constrained spaces, and only move enough for the camera to follow them laterally a few feet at a time. If you didn’t know the films were based on a stage show, you’ll definitely have an inkling after watching Wicked: For Good. Between its fealty to past versions of the story, and its unwillingness to break free from even the most rigid emotional and formal modes, the sequel refuses to even attempt to defy gravity, making it sink like a stone.