“Wicked: For Good” is For the Worse, Actually (Movie Review)

Nearly a decade ago, I saw the on-stage version of Wicked for the first time. Beyond my wife having played a few select cuts from the soundtrack hundreds of times in the car, this was my first real exposure to the musical—and I was largely impressed. Stephen Schwartz’s songwriting was as extraordinary as ever, the production immersive and grand, and I appreciated the recontextualization it attempted. Subverting The Wizard of Oz while exploring modern themes of persecution and surveillance? I was all in. That said, I distinctly remember feeling like I’d suffered a stroke during intermission, because the narrative of Act Two felt utterly deranged and malnourished.

Still, it closed with the iconic moment of Elphaba’s happy ending, the lights came up, and my overall takeaway was positive enough. Over the years, though, I’ve struggled to recall much of Act Two beyond the fever-dream, fight-or-flight chaos it induced. When most people think of Wicked on stage, it’s the defining first-act moments—“Popular,” “Dancing Through Life,” and of course, “Defying Gravity.” Act Two barely sticks in memory, so I was eager to see Wicked: For Good: Could the story be salvaged? Could it deliver that same primal shock of “oh god, what is this?”

After seeing the film and revisiting the source material, I have some very unfortunate news: there’s very little to celebrate here. Wicked: For Good is worse than expected—much worse.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “WICKED: FOR GOOD”

5. Keeping the Bathwater But Not the Baby

To give you the quickest overview possible: Act Two of Wicked on-stage has always felt like someone spent years meticulously crafting a rich, articulate first act for Glinda and Elphaba—only to realize they had a few days and forty minutes of stage time left to wrap everything up. But surely, since the filmmakers chose to split the musical into two separate movies, Jon M. Chu and his team would have a plan, right? With a full two-and-a-half-hour runtime dedicated solely to Act Two, expanding the story’s wildest beats and adding emotional depth should’ve been a gift. There’s no way they’d just adapt Act Two verbatim—with all its baffling issues still intact—after carving out everything good from Act One and turning it into a standalone movie a year ago… right?

Wrong. Wicked: For Good somehow preserves all the worst elements of Act Two and manages to make them even worse. New songs grind the story to a halt, CGI-heavy musical and action sequences replace the impressive stagecraft, and the few redeeming aspects of the original act are discarded entirely. What remains is a bizarre, reverent recreation of the act’s most head-scratching story beats. I genuinely cannot believe this is what made it to the screen—after all these years, all this planning, and all the opportunities to do literally anything else. But alas, here we are.

4. The Leads Are Giving It Their All

If there’s one thing Wicked: For Good absolutely gets right, it’s the cast—they remain genuinely terrific across the board. Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande-Butera, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, and the rest of the returning ensemble continue to deliver top-tier performances, even as the writing and visuals around them often feel wildly misguided.

Grande-Butera, in particular, benefits from significantly more screentime, giving Glinda a deeper emotional arc that she nails with ease. In many ways, she becomes the true protagonist of this film, and it’s a testament to her performance that—even after the film drags itself through an excruciatingly long final stretch—the last few shots still manage to land. Erivo, meanwhile, quite literally soars in the midsection, and Bailey remains a blazing supernova of charisma, sparking chemistry with everyone who crosses his path.

And one quick aside—indulge me: take a shot every time Bailey points his ridiculous green pistol at someone, and you’ll be hammered by the midpoint. Add another shot every time someone screams “Fiyero!” and you’ll need to be carried out of the theater on a stretcher.

3. That “Wonderful” Sequence is Indeed, Wonderful

From the very start, Wicked: For Good just didn’t work for me. The film opens with a limp, weightless action sequence—Elphaba freeing enslaved animals and briefly halting construction on the yellow brick road—that’s clearly trying to thrust audiences back into Oz with emotion and high energy. Instead, it lands with a thud: no impact, no stakes, and a whole lot of dull, miscalculated noise. The entire first act trudged along like that for me; I simply couldn’t find a way into this movie.

And then, miraculously, something wonderful happened. For one brief, shining moment, Wicked: For Good became… good? In one of the biggest deviations from the stage musical, the film takes “Wonderful”—originally a glorified filler number for the Wizard—and transforms it into the most classical, tactile, and genuinely magical musical setpiece in the entire movie. It’s bursting with awe, whimsy, and joy, anchored by a fantastic performance from Jeff Goldblum. I even appreciated the change of bringing Glinda into the number, letting her attempt to broker peace between Elphaba and the Wizard through song.

Was it narratively repetitive, essentially rehashing the climax of the first film? Yes. Was it also one of the only moments that delivered actual enjoyment? Absolutely—and at this point, I’ll take what I can get.

2. What Happened to Jon M. Chu?

Full disclosure: when it was first announced that Jon M. Chu would be directing the Wicked adaptation—long before anyone knew it would be split into two films—I wasn’t exactly excited.

Jon seems like a genuinely kind, intelligent, and capable filmmaker, but I really didn’t respond to his take on In the Heights. Then, to my surprise, I found myself really enjoying his work on the first Wicked film. Sure, I had some quibbles about the lighting and color saturation, but the direction itself—the way the camera moved in sync with the performers and captured the electricity of the musical setpieces—was terrific.

So it is with a heavy heart that I now have to ask: what in Oz happened between then and now? Because the visual choices in Wicked: For Good are, at best, baffling and, at worst, downright garish. And the wildest part? Both films were shot simultaneously. There is no logical explanation for this kind of drastic drop-off other than pure exhaustion, I guess. Where the first film offered articulate, thoughtful cinematic interpretations of the musical’s biggest moments, For Good settles for visual language that feels blunt, unmotivated, and wildly questionable.

1. The Witches Fight is an Atonal Disaster

And that’s really the heart of the issue: Wicked: For Good has no idea how to balance its emotional stakes with its tonal choices, and the result is a film that constantly undercuts itself. Scenes that should be operatic, devastating, or at the very least narratively meaningful are instead framed with a strange impulse toward slapstick or camp—and not the intentional, self-aware kind that could have actually worked. It’s as if the movie is terrified of sincerity, so it keeps dodging behind quirky blocking and bewildering creative decisions that sap every moment of its weight.

The Elphaba–Glinda confrontation is simply the most glaring example of this tonal mismanagement. But it’s also emblematic of how the film repeatedly sacrifices character logic and emotional continuity in favor of spectacle or easy comedy. These women aren’t behaving like the complicated, wounded, deeply intertwined characters Gregory Maguire wrote or the stage musical elevated—they’re acting like caricatures in a YA parody of Wicked, all while the film insists it’s saying something profound about morality, propaganda, and power.

The tragedy here isn’t just narrative—it’s cinematic. Because when Wicked: For Good overplays its hand, ignoring its own buildup and rushing through beats that should land with force, it exposes how fragile its emotional architecture really is. You can feel the seams. You can feel the strain. And you can absolutely feel the disconnect between the film this wanted to be and the film it ended up becoming.

What’s most frustrating is that there is a version of this story that could have justified a second film—one that deepens character arcs, expands the political machinations of Oz, and gives the Elphaba–Glinda relationship the operatic tragedy it deserves. But this isn’t that film. Instead, it’s a messy collage of half-formed ideas, jarring tonal pivots, and baffling priorities, stitched together with a glossy but inconsistent sheen.

For a story that hinges so much on perception—on who gets to define “wicked” and why—it’s remarkable how little Wicked: For Good seems to understand how it’s presenting itself.

RGM GRADE

(D+)

There are flashes—brief, glimmering moments—when Wicked: For Good finally stirs to life, reminding you of the magic this world can conjure. But those moments are few, fleeting, and ultimately overshadowed by a film that is, in nearly every respect, a staggering disappointment. It’s a precipitous drop in quality from the first installment, one that unintentionally highlights the very worst instincts of the stage production while tarnishing the reputation of this entire cinematic experiment in the process.

At one point, Elphaba mourns the loss of innocence that came with realizing “the Wizard has no clothes”—the moment her illusions shattered and the truth became impossible to ignore. Leaving Wicked: For Good, I found myself wishing for my own version of that earlier innocence. A time before I realized that the promise and emotional richness of the first film were, apparently, all leading to this: a clumsy, chaotic, deeply unsatisfying finale that squanders the goodwill its predecessor so carefully built.

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