REVIEW:
Wicked For Good was actually really good. The actually part comes from the fact that it was so much better than the first movie, Wicked. Now, this is not a popular opinion. In fact, just about everyone loves the first movie more, with its cutesy humor and fun little college days routines. But it’s also very very long and feels very very long, and there’s not all that much excitement happening until the last thirty minutes or so. The sequel, on the other hand, is exciting right from the very start.
The best thing about the movie are all of the Easter Eggs and connections and explanations of things in the Wizard of Oz. And we’ll get to that soon, but first let’s talk about the excitement. The last movie ended on a cliffhanger of sorts with Elfaba being branded a villain by the Wizard and the whole city of Oz turning against her. That means that this movie pretty much opens with her more or less being chased around. It opens with tension already in the air. The way that it actually opens is with us watching the yellow brick road being built. So right away, it begins with one of those Easter Eggs / explanations, showing us something we’ve seen and loved for years, from a different angle. This is what’s so great about prequels. You get to find out about things you never really knew you were curious about.
And that opening scene, where the workers are building the yellow brick road, turns into an attack as Elfaba swoops down on her broom and destroys what they are doing. And right away, we are in it. There is conflict around every corner here. Much of it has to do with the wizard, but the movie cleverly shows that he’s not pure evil or a cartoonish villain, but more like a guy we can sympathize with. He doesn’t want to hate Elfaba or be on opposite sides of her, but she’s just against what he’s trying to do. What he’s trying to do, of course, is persecute and imprison animals.
The movie goes on to tell the story of characters who are in love with others. There are two different love triangles here. Boq, a munchkin, has been in love with Elfaba’s sister, Nessa, and now turns his attention elsewhere. And Fiero starts to have doubts of his relationship with Glinda, in favor of Elfaba. It sounds more chaotic than it is. Each of these live triangles leads to some very serious consequences. Let’s leave it at that.
And then we get the story of the house dropping on Nessa. Now here is something amazing. The Wizard of Oz was written in 1899. Then the movie was in 1937. And from the very moment Dorothy lands in Oz, we see and learn that she has “dropped,” her house on the Wicked Witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. But we never see this character or learn much about her. Well, all these years later, this movie (and the play it is based on and book that the play is based on,) finally gives us those answers. We finally see the Wicked Witch of the East and the house dropping on her. We learn what led to this, and why there was a tornado. Basically, the Wizard of Oz was completely ripe for a prequel, with the story of the two Witch sisters, and this movie delivers on that.
Now, in doing that and taking on such an ambitious feat, there are definitely some mistakes and missteps here. For example, there is not enough here about the names Wicked Witch of the West and Wicked Witch of the East. How did they get these names, and why these specific names? Is one of them from the west and one from the east? Is that where each of them lives? Another misstep is The scene where Elfaba comes down to munchkin land and threatens Dorothy after Dorothy has landed on her sister. Now, having the scene in the movie is wonderful. Any scene that was in the Wizard of Oz that we can now see “again,” from a new angle, is terrific. And I wish the movie did this a little more. So what is the misstep about it? When Glinda comforts Elfaba about her dead sister, it’s her approaching Elfaba for the first time in this location. But we know from the Wizard of Oz that really she was there with Dorothy when Elfaba threatened the girl, and even had some harsh words for Elfaba then.
I suppose the logic is that the events from the Wizard of Oz as we have seen them before were heresay and proaganda, meaning they are not what really happened, but instead what people have come to believe over time. And this here, in the Wicked movies, is the real story. So we have been told over the years that Glinda was side by side with Dorothy when Elfaba threatened the girl, but really Glinda sent Dorothy on her way to see the Wizard even before Elfaba arrived on the scene. I guess then, that the movie made that a little more clear. Like show the rumor and the heresay with characters changing the story of what really happened and telling each other the wrong story of what we just saw.
Another misstep is the Cowardly Lion. Again, I suppose the idea is that in the Wizard of Oz we were just seeing what people said about him over time, and that’s why the creature looked like a Lion Man, whereas in this movie he looks like an actual lion, down on all fours the whole time. And that’s fine, as this situation is certainly more realistic. But wouldn’t it have been cool to give us more of what we actually saw in the Wizard of Oz, for nostalgia purposes if nothing else?
While these are indeed complaints and things that could have been done better, the fact is that this movie gets a whole lot right. I absolutely love that it doesn’t just tell a prequel and end with Dorothy arriving in Oz or with her house dropping, but then has pretty much a whole other half or third left to tell, where we see the events of the Wizard of Oz. They are mostly in the background, but still, whatever we see, from the poppy seed fields to Elfaba being melted by water, it’s all from a new perspective, which is really cool.
In the end, Wicked: For Good is the prequel we never knew we needed. It’s a prequel that comes so many decades later and really fleshes out the whole story. Why was there a tornado? Why did it land of the Wicked Witch of the East? It’s not only questions like those that are answered here, but also whole storylines about why certain characters exist at all. It’s pretty fantastic, and unlike the first movie, this one moves rather quickly. Yes, it’s still too long, but that’s because it’s got tons of stories to tell and questions to answer, and its a musical on top of that, so you need time for the songs. The movie works. It is better than the first one, and really delivers the way a prequel should.