Wicked: For Good (2025)
Directed by Jon M. Chu
As an angry mob rises against the Wicked Witch, Glinda and Elphaba must unite one last time with honesty and empathy to fulfill their shared destiny and change the fate of Oz forever.
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84 films that influenced Wicked: For Good
What critics say influenced Wicked: For Good
As Elphaba casts a spell to save Fiyero, For Good pays homage to the color schemes of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz, intercutting black-and-white shots of Fiyero’s torture in a cornfield.
Because the narrative of The Wizard of Oz is a part of Wicked’s overall story, those events have to be wedged in as part of Elphaba’s story…
More than anything, "Wicked For Good" carries the cinematic spirit of "The Wizard of Oz," proving more than 85 years later that the magic of Oz still works.
…with all the Wizard of Oz loose ends to square away…
…sludgy CGI that, for all its millions of dollars, looks far chintzier than the 1939 original’s painted backdrops…
Stephen Schwartz introduces two new songs, “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble”…
…several scenes in which he directly echoes the “disappearing Batman act” on the rooftops and terraces of the Emerald City…
Which introduces an interesting theme that harks back to Batman movie The Dark Knight, concerning whether Oz needs a villainous symbol for the kingdom to unite against…
Fans of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities or Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight will anticipate Elphaba’s destiny.
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…
Follow-ups like The Godfather Part II, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back and numerous others all build upon the characters and world-building established in their predecessors…
They eventually team up for a resolution that recalls The Dark Knight (2008)—or rather, since the 1995 book and 2003 Broadway musical came first, Wicked may have influenced Christopher Nolan. Just as Batman arranged things so Gotham would lionize Harvey Dent as a hero and demonize Batman himself as a murderous vigilante, Elphaba volunteers to become the villain, staging her death so Glinda can thrive as the Good Witch they believe Oz needs…
…the underwhelming songs prevent the audio track from reaching the musical highs of the original Wicked.
The story picks up where the “Wicked” left off.
It picks up years after the events of "Wicked," where outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) - now labeled "The Wicked Witch of the West" by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) - is on the run.
In the opening scene, Elphaba Thropp (a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West) swoops out of the sky to attack the human overseers of an animal work gang that is being forced by the Wizard to build the yellow brick road.
Once again directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked: For Good picks up a few years after the events of the previous film…
Wicked: For Good, in theaters Friday, covers the second act of the stage musical Wicked, but it feels like a true sequel to the first film released last year.
‘Wicked’ era clasicismo en estado puro aunque su mecanismo interior nos llevaba a ‘Cabaret’, de Bob Fosse. Fosse, nombre capital en el musical como coreógrafo, bailarín y actor, rompió con las reglas del género en ‘Cabaret': la coreografía se lograba con el montaje en la moviola de las imágenes.
No es Cabaret, cuidado, pero como si lo fuese. Si se mira desde un poco de distancia, la película de Bob Fosse llegó a la cartelera el mismo año que fueron detenidos unos sujetos por entrar sin permiso en el complejo Watergate del Partido Demócrata y que sería el desencadenante del escándalo que acabaría con el mentiroso Richard Nixon.
…and “Cabaret’s” Joel Grey (who coincidentally played the Wizard role on Broadway)…
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Sidney Lumet's "The Wiz" makes considerable use of costumes and production design that turns Frank L. Baum's world into a fantastical reinterpretation of New York City.
“There’s No Place Like Home,” for Erivo, which just makes you wish you were listening to “Home” from “The Wiz” instead.
If you like this, try: “Wicked” and “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Wiz,” and the books by L. Frank Baum, and join the Oz Club!
Erivo’s new number “No Place Like Home,” meanwhile, gains its power from how much it functions as a somber counterbalance to “Home” from The Wiz…
That’s as fantastical of a demand as Sidney Lumet’s 1978 “The Wiz” insisting that the great diva Diana Ross’ Dorothy was a nervous nelly who’d never been south of Harlem’s 125th Street.
In 1989, Back to the Future Part II ended with a cliffhanger and the words “to be continued…” on the screen. I vividly recall the audience at my theater loudly groaning in frustration.
So, in a very Back to the Future Part II way, it’s incredibly rewarding to discover how both Glinda and especially Elphaba impact that story, even when it doesn’t all quite fit together.
Like The Empire Strikes Back or Back to the Future Part II, the new movie develops and complicates the story's lore and characters.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy felt like the perfect length, while The Hobbit movies felt stretched out and mostly unnecessary, and that’s what we have here with Wicked: For Good.
And if we really want to take it back in time, perhaps to a film more “Wicked”-adjacent, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” clocked in well past three hours, and that is to say nothing of the popularity of its extended versions.
Like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Wicked” should be considered as one sweeping, five-hour canvas.
Even Walter Murch's "Return to Oz," one of the greatest examples of '80s kindertrauma, is able to make sharp contrasts between Oz as both a place of wonder and a ravaged nightmare landscape.
Look, they already tried to do “grimdark Wizard of Oz” with the childhood trauma-inducing Return to Oz…
Those flying monkeys are almost as terrifying as the Wheelers of the 1985 Return to Oz that haunted many a child’s nightmares.
…embracing the edge of its revisionist ancestor (Return to Oz)…
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It’s like serving up “The Empire Strikes Back” after “Star Wars,” but with a chorus line instead of carbonite.
Like The Empire Strikes Back or Back to the Future Part II, the new movie develops and complicates the story's lore and characters.
Follow-ups like The Godfather Part II, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back and numerous others all build upon the characters and world-building established in their predecessors…
That mention of fans of Wicked is where the other issues lie. As with Dune, another film of complex adaptation, there are those who follow the book, the picture, and those who take a less consistent path.
Sure, it did work for Dune, but didn’t do much for The Hunger Games,Twilight or others, which offered up limp, overstretched fan-only finales that simply don’t work in any sense as stand-alone movies.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, The Hobbit, Dune… all of these things could have, with more judicious editing, made for a perfectly enjoyable single film.