Wicked For Good brings last year’s first instalment to its bittersweet conclusion in John M. Chu’s stunning cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical. With darker, more serious themes and less opportunity for comedy than part one, we are brought deeper into the web of secrets, lies and injustice created in Oz by Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard and Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible.
Caught between standing up for her friend and keeping the tenacious hold on fragile peace in the city, Ariana Grande’s sensitively portrayed Glinda the Good Witch shines. As the “face of all things Good”, she is forced to publicly decry Elphaba (the beautiful Cynthia Erivo) as the Wicked Witch of the West.
Exiled from Oz and working hard from the sidelines to restore the power imbalance created by the 2 villains, our green martyr tries to save the animals from being systematically oppressed and stripped of all their rights. Elphaba’s resentful wheelchair-bound sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode) is also back with Ethan Slater’s Boq, the munchkin love interest.
When Morrible creates the tornado that threatens Nessarose in order to bring Elphaba to heed, it accidentally brings Dorothy to Oz.
This opens the path for the characters of the Tin-Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow to be explained. However, I feel that how the Scarecrow came to be, during Elphaba’s epic anthemic number, No Good Deed, could have been more visually explicit.
I also rue Chu’s choice to turn the iconic ruby slippers into diamond ones. While gorgeous aesthetically, I found it an unnecessary change.
In bringing the fourth longest running Broadway musical to the big screen, us Wicked die-hards admittedly had our doubts.
How would pop star Grande and Erivo possibly contend with the strong vocals of the OGs, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth?
The truth is, it is not a competition at all. To me, retelling this classic in a different genre entirely, helps. Employing stunning visuals, the film departs from the musical’s steampunk aesthetic and brings it to a more current, ethereal vibe.
Chu also cleverly brings details onscreen that would be difficult to translate to the stage. In doing so, he weaves us even further into the storyline. We see greater depth into the relationship between Elphaba and Fiyero in the movie than onstage for this reason.
And it would be absolutely criminal of me not to mention the amazing talent of Grande and Erivo. The two major emotional ballads, No Good Deed and For Good, brought many to tears in the second half of the movie. In fact, at one point there was applause in the movie theatre (and I am not ashamed to say I joined in.)
This one is definitely for the unsung heroes that fight the good fight behind the scenes.
However, the main take home message of the whole franchise is that in the fight of good against evil, sisterhood always wins. I, for one, couldn’t be happier.
Wicked For Good opens in cinemas on 20th November.