"Wicked: For Good" Confused and Fine

    I don't know how to rate this film. It just kind of confuses me. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad film. I didn't hate it, but it feels conflicted and confused. There are just a lot of things happening at once, and I'm just not quire sure if this film knows what it wants to be or how to do a proper balancing act. Because what viewers are left with is an entertaining film no doubt, but one that feels less focused in general as it tried to wrap things up. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the concept, I think it's entertaining to have a fresher take on what seems like a story ingrained within western culture, but does this musical go about it the right way? Let's talk about it.

    I cannot talk about this film any further without talking about the weird tonal shifts that are constantly happening in this film. Part of the fact is that this film is a musical, and for a good musical you want a healthy dose of dancing and singing to make it more lively and upbeat, it's part of the genre. The only issue is, it's hard to take it seriously when you're doing it all under the backdrop of what could basically just be described as the incarceration of a whole "kind" of "person," and by that I mean the animals are prisoners (?) or slaves (?). Either way, it's kind of odd to see people like Glinda feel conflicted about the whole matter when it's not a secret that the entire country of Oz has basically been rounding up and imprisoning a race of intelligent speaking animals, even using some to help build their yellow brick road. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the songs and the dancing, I'm a fan of musicals, but the juxtaposition is hard to ignore.

    I mean seriously, they literally crucify Fiyero when like five minutes earlier Glinda and Elphaba are laughing and like play fighting with each other. It was a funny scene no doubt, but I just didn't expect they'd do that to him. Which brings me to my second point, this film seems to struggle a lot with deciding whether or not it wants characters to be good or not. Like Basically every character does something bad, and it's just hard to ignore. Pretty much every time Elphaba even touches the Grimoire it like ruins the life of someone so I don't know why she gives it to Glinda at the end or continued to use it. Glinda basically kills Nessa, who also helps enable segregation so you don't feel very bad for her, and they decide to make the wizard some sort of reluctant villain? Like I don't think you need to root for someone in this film, but it's also just like, everyone is kind of bad?

    And that reason is why I feel like this film was almost too constrained by the fact that The Wizard of Oz story plays out the way it does. Like they need Elphaba to be the catalyst to set the story of The Wizard of Oz into motion yet while also trying to recast her into a tragic hero whose just trying to do good in a world that shuns her at every opportunity. It kind of works it does, but honestly I wouldn't mind if they were willing to to change the story itself. It would have made for something much more interesting in my opinion. I don't mind the ending. They did make a good point that the people were simply too indoctrinated to let go of the idea that the Wizard is good and Elphaba is bad. I don't mind the ending, just the way they got to the end is a little messy, and full of idea's that could probably use more cohesion.

Final Score: 60/100

    It's fine. I didn't speak too much on the film visually because as usual it's just the same naturalistic writing. At least they attempted to make this film feel more colourful but I still think they could have done more. In terms of music I thought it was fine. I thought there was more dialogue than I thought. I would have preferred more music, though I think the songs in the first film were better in terms of variety and quality. Certainly not my favourite musical though, I'd probably rate them both as a solid 60 too. I think if the music was better I would have been able to wave away more of these issues but ultimately most of my favourite songs are in the first half. It's not terrible, but I also don't think it was that good.