Jon M. Chu has done it again with Wicked: For Good, creating an epic piece of cinema that blends the battle of lonely good and banal evil with delightful musical numbers. No mean feat considering the second act is a far more convoluted and grim affair, with all the Wizard of Oz loose ends to square away and no tentpole number of Defying Gravity fame.
Ariana Grande has made Glinda someone entirely her own, a remarkably sympathetic young woman trapped by maladaptive people-pleasing developed as cover for her devastating lack of magic. We even get a cute flashback to show how her facade of dimpled smiles was encouraged from childhood as a mask of ‘goodness’.
Yes, she’s unwittingly become the figurehead of a candy-coloured fascist regime bent on demonising wildlife, but she’s also in a cage, albeit gilded. Her capacity for growth is taken seriously as its own hero’s journey, demonstrating the important point that everyone can be good if they drop the pretence and put in hard graft.
It’s Cynthia Erivo’s movie, however. Her Elphaba is a gentle powerhouse, radiant and vulnerable as she fully inhabits her moss-green skin. She is unwaveringly firm in her convictions, even if her commitment to freedom fighting on behalf of the animals sees her denigrated as a pointy-hatted terrorist. Like the air she flies through, she rises with the magnificence of a Maya Angelou poem.
Her villain arc is as frustratingly brief as the original play, but Erivo makes No Good Deed entirely her own sonically and thematically. She’s not giving up on goodness so much as taking on the heavy cloak of wickedness to further her self-sacrificing goals. Paul Tazewell’s genius costuming for the heroines is a triumph of storytelling.
The love story between Elphaba and Glinda (ostensibly platonic, although there’s a whole corner of the fandom that will fight you on the internet over this) is the beating heart of Wicked: For Good. Erivo and Grande’s chemistry has been off the charts since they were cast, and sizzles whenever they share the screen here. Their final parting is given space to breathe, with their titular duet For Good stripped of the action gimmicks that derailed Defying Gravity in its predecessor.
Chu wisely opts to focus on the emotional arcs of each character, rather than the plot twists (if beats from a 20-year-old musical can be considered secrets) that see certain figures re-constituted to fit the Dorothy and Toto B-plot.
Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero gets his Rubicon moment, realising he can’t go through with a thoughtless marriage now Elphaba has opened his eyes and awoken his mind. His yearning face, perfected in Bridgerton, gets a satisfying resolution in a surprisingly sexy rendition of As Long As Your Mine. Ethan Slater’s Boq appears to have aged 100 years since the last film, while Marissa Bode’s Nessarose is heartbreaking even as her obsession with her munchkin boy imperils his literal heart. Thankfully, Chu eschews the original staging to have Nessarose walk again, giving his disabled actor the dignity of flight instead.
This is a much darker movie thematically — if not visually — than its predecessor. There are no boarding school japes and discos. The pre-credit scene of mythical animals being press-ganged into building the Yellow Brick Road is gut-wrenching. Those flying monkeys are almost as terrifying as the Wheelers of the 1985 Return to Oz that haunted many a child’s nightmares. Even Glinda’s enviable walk-in wardrobe of pink frou-frou has become a twisted hall of mirrors.
Without being heavy-handed, Chu has transformed a fable about accepting difference into a call to action to protect one’s neighbours from cages and deportation. The new songs blend almost seamlessly, in part due to No Place Like Home hammering that theme home. Everything is stitched together beautifully to create an exhilarating piece of movie musical magic that re-invents the Golden Age. If it doesn’t get more Oscars I’ll eat my witch’s hat.
Wicked is in cinemas from November 21
