Wicked: For Good

The undisputed movie musical event of the decade concludes with this week’s theatrical release of Wicked: For Good.

Some twenty years after Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman turned Gregory Maguire’s Wizard of Oz revisionism novel into an award-winning, era-defining Broadway musical, Jon M. Chu turned the first act of that musical into last year’s widely loved and wildly profitable film Wicked. A year later, the holiday season brings the second act to the screen.

Splitting movies into two parts became fashionable at the start of the 2010s when the Harry Potter franchise took that approach to adapt J.K. Rowling’s epic final novel into two digestible films of fairly ordinary lengths. The era’s subsequent YA phenoms, Twilight and The Hunger Games, ran with the same math (“double the movies, double the profits”) and while the economics mostly worked out, many fans would argue both of those series ended with more of a whimper than a bang, a sentiment linked to that creative split.

People were just so excited for Wicked to finally make it to the big screen last year that they more or less took that Universal’s two-movie plan in stride. After all, why lose any of what stands as many people’s favorite stage musical in translating it to feature film? With two movies shot back-to-back, Universal could give the fans everything they love from the stage show and more, while ensuring repeat business as long as the first movie was good. And for the most part, only people with an irrational hatred of musical theatre would hesitate to call Wicked good.

As for this sequel, it’s good too. You didn’t need that silly subtitle to tell you that. Chu, his enthusiastic cast, and the proven crafts teams keep on keeping on and the quality of this production stays right around where the first one landed.

For Good misses the compelling world building that contributed extensively to the original film’s epic 160-minute runtime. Obviously, there’s no reason to rebuild the world since few will be watching this without seeing the first movie and why would they? But introducing the characters, themes, and locations was a huge part of the first movie’s appeal. With all that out of the way, For Good jumps right back into the story, exactly like you’d expect a stage musical’s Act II to do.

Our two leads, green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and the effervescent Glinda (Ariana Grande), the Shiz University roommates who went from enemies to friends are being pulled apart by circumstances and their contrasting priorities. Elphaba’s reputation as an evil and dangerous outlaw grows at the underhanded manipulation of Shiz dean Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). And Elphaba is greatly upset to find the wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) proving to be less than wonderful.

The narrative tensions build with more Schwartz and Holzman songs as well as some flashbacks and subplots. The latter include catching up with the Munchkin Boq (Ethan Woodsman), who’s smitten with Glinda, looking to move on from Elphaba’s paraplegic half-sister Nessa (Marissa Bode). Meanwhile, Glinda and her love interest Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) plan to take their fundamentally flawed romance down the proverbial aisle. What could go wrong?

For Good runs noticeably shorter than its predecessor, starting its end credits a bit past the two-hour mark. It never fully shakes the feel that we’re getting half a movie. Or a full movie but one which only tells half a story. This second installment skews more to drama than musical and at times it seems to take all of this a bit too seriously. But this is, after all, a $150 million movie with talented performers singing and acting their hearts out. And as breezy and light as a lot of the previous film’s material was, one gets the sense this is no laughing matter to the theatre kids who grew up loving the musical and have not grown out of it.

Chu proves to be competent at the helm, something I never foresaw from his inauspicious debut as the director of Step Up sequels. He really seemed to find his footing on Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, figuring out how to faithfully and respectfully adapt works that mean a lot to a lot of people. His two Wicked movies are not significantly better than those two prior directing gigs. They’ve just got a bigger audience and belong more explicitly to a tradition that has long been a lightning rod for awards recognition: spectacle musical cinema adapted from the world’s most prestigious stages.

The first Wicked pulled in ten Oscar nominations, from which it won Best Costume Design and Production Design. The prevalent wisdom is that this second installment could more or less repeat that feat, with the various crafts teams again flourishing and repeat above-the-line nominations coming for Erivo, Grande, and producer Marc Platt in Best Picture. I haven’t seen enough of 2025’s presumed contenders to make an educated prediction on that just yet. It is worth noting that few sequels have elicited top-tier attention from the Academy Awards and that this most likely will not warrant the same sense of delayed, across-the-board accolades that the final chapter of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy earned.

Honestly, the one cast member I’d most love to see recognized on the January morning when nominations are announced is Jeff Goldblum, who gets the lion’s share of laughs this time out (seizing the honor that Grande held last time) in his limited but showy role as the villainous Oz. I don’t necessarily believe in lifetime achievement-style recognition, but having caught two-thirds of a resume that extends more than fifty years and is chock-full of offbeat energy, charismatic charm and high-quality cinema, I wouldn’t hesitate to include Goldblum in a short list of the best movie actors never nominated for an Oscar. I doubt it happens, as he’s still off pundits’ radars, but he’s definitely on my own personal short list for my own critics group’s annual awards.

Laboring over a review of Wicked: For Good seems a little pointless in that nothing I can say will sway you to see or skip this movie. The first Wicked movie made that decision for you. It is not like there are a ton of big budget movie musicals for you to choose from this holiday season. For Good won’t deserve either the 5-star and 1/10 scores it gets disproportionately, but it is an enjoyable movie that is made with love for the material and respect for the fans.