Wicked: For Good (2025)

PG, which may be pushing the limit a bit.  Listen, it's right on that fence.  But if I was on the anti-PG rating for this one, I can immediately cite the premarital sex in the movie.  It's tame, compared to what could happen in a movie like this.  It's on that level as Superman II, but it doesn't change the fact that it is in there.  Also, it's a bleak movie.  Golly, it's a bleak movie.  Sure, in the best way possible.  But there are depressing parts and then there are upsetting parts and then there's the straight up Tin Man element of the story.  I have a hard time really supporting PG on this one, but I'm always happy to see that PG still exists as a rating.

DIRECTOR: Jon M. Chu

You ready for some straight up controversy?   This is better than the first half.  What?  I know that all of the bangers are in the first half of the story.  I get that everyone who started crying at Wicked probably didn't have as much of a good time as the second one.  I'm reading those reviews.  I heard what my wife said.  I don't care.  Wicked: For Good is that movie that's going to stick to the ribs for a while.

I have been preaching for a while now that art needs to be political.  (And as I always state, all art is political, even if it tries not to be.  I just prefer politics with an active voice.)  Little story here because I don't think that I've ever documented this formative moment before.  In college, I took a playwriting class.  I went to an incredibly conservative college because I didn't believe my progressive friends that conservatives were dangerous.  A lot has happened since then and I am struggling to make it through the day sometimes.  Thanks for asking.  Anyway, I wrote this piece of garbage script that swore a lot.  It wasn't exactly embraced, but I did get points for trying something that none of the other conservative students in the room had done.  The big thing I learned is that swearing should be used sparingly to give the word meaning when used.  But in that same workshop, someone had written a conservative piece that everyone loved.  The professor went on a diatribe about how arts should be used to challenge people and he applauded this work.  Ironically, I thought then what I think now.  I thought that the piece was incredibly safe because it didn't push anyone in that room. But the moment that changed me was the notion that art needs to be challenging as heck.  It should be entertaining, sure.  But more than that, it needs to address the problems that we have in society.

I'm about to write something incredibly embarrassing right now.  I'm ashamed to write this.  There's a viral trend where people match the poses of people that they consider their philosophical idols.  Yeah, I want to do that with Elphaba in this movie.  Oh my goodness, I seem to model everything off of Elphaba in this movie.  This isn't something that I should be writing with pride.  I want to hide myself from myself by saying something so basic and awful.  But I don't think that I've identified with a character harder than Elphaba, specifically the Elphaba from this movie.  I really need to point out that Wicked: For Good was filmed a while ago.  We're now about 10 plus months into Trump's second term and Wicked: For Good is a straight up condemnation of what Donald Trump is doing to America right now.  

I have heard that there's a contingency of MAGA that says that For Good is a pro-Trump movie and that takes a level of delusion that is painful.  Before I go into a long spiel about how much I applaud the filmmakers of Wicked: For Good for leaning in hard into the political stuff (stuff that the stage production also championed years before Donald Trump was a blip on the political spectrum), I know that a bunch of people out there are probably dismissing Wicked: For Good as typical liberal claptrap.  I know.  The voice of celebrities against a wave of hatred isn't going to change a ton of people.  But I have to let you know, what I love about Wicked: For Good is that allegory does amazing things into giving insight into what people are going through.  I am a blue dot in a red state.  I live in suburban Cincinnati.  It didn't matter what Donald Trump had done up to this point.  Donald Trump did insanely evil things in public and it didn't matter.  It seemed like everyone I knew didn't care.  It was cultural to vote for Donald Trump because that's what the Christians around me did.  Christian Nationalism has pervaded the world around me and that's something that I fight against every day.  Honestly.  I'm not exaggerating.  Every day I wake up, look at the world around me, and am reminded that the environment around me is in direct oppositions to the teachings of Jesus Christ --and the people who are violating Christ's teachings are the ones who call themselves "Christian." 

So, the movie?  The movie perfectly encapsulates the same sense of loneliness that I feel.  Sure, I'm hyperbolizing around me.  I'm not a literal criminal. I may be one day, but let's save the drama for if that bridge is crossed.  I have made friends with people eight years removed from Trump's first presidency that have kept me sane.  But from any real perspective, I often feel like I'm in this fight alone.  Elphaba starts the film writing the phrase across the sky "Our Wizard Lies."   If I haven't got a one-for-one about posting and how people ignore information in front of them than Madame Morrible switching it to "Oz Dies", a willful misinterpretation of what is present.  I know that I'm feeling incredibly vulnerable about this, but I couldn't help but think about the message given by Democrats to military servicemen and women about refusing illegal orders. The message that was put out there was legal and verifiably true.  However, Donald Trump called for these people to be executed for seditious behavior.  I repeat, this movie was filmed a long time ago.  The play was up even longer than that.

By the way, if I was getting paid to do this blog and/or took pride in how well or poorly written it was, I would have tossed the entire first part.  This blog is going to be mostly me going on diatribes about what is going on in the world and the fact that so many people are cool with the most evil crap happening.

Again, back to Elphaba's loneliness!  The first movie is great, don't get me wrong.  But a lot of the first movie is about the fragile friendship between Elphaba and Galinda. The political stuff is in there and I liked it, but it's in the background.  What's great about For Good is that the character stuff is already there and we're allowed to be full on mad at Glinda.  (I will be switching between both names because I'm not sure which name is the more appropriate.)  I feel a lot of people around me are Glinda.  Glinda is not evil.  Heck, the Glinda the Good moniker actually really works for her because she honestly thinks that she's doing good.  But from any outside perspective, there is something incredibly complicit about Glinda.  There is a logic that says that you can do more good by changing people from within.  Yes, the story ends with Glinda taking on the mantle of Elphaba, but it's a little more complicated than what it seems.  Glinda's behavior in this movie isn't excused.  She is the face of a New Oz underneath the Wizard.  One of the things that an authoritarian government needs is someone to hate.  Just for the people who didn't get it, the animals are immigrants.  (I mean, they're lots of things, but the easiest one-to-one is immigrants.)  In the universe of Wicked, animals have sentience.  They are citizens within the empire.  But as the story progresses, the animals are used as (pun intended, probably by the Stephen Schwartz himself) scapegoats.  For an authoritarian to divert attention away from faults, a leader needs to have a common person to hate.  Immigrants throughout history have been the brunt of hatredfor the sake of giving monsters power.  With the case of the animals, because they are treated as less-than-human, they start acting like animals in our world.  I know that some people only view the animals as literal animals, so I feel the need to spell this out. 

Back to Glinda!  Glinda lives in a world where she is feeling like she is bringing peace to the people of Oz as a public figurehead.  But what I find interesting about Glinda is that she's confusing "good" for "nice."  Glinda's final goal is that everyone is happy and nice to each other. I do kind of love that Fiero is the one who sees Glinda for who she really is, often calling her on her malarky throughout the piece.  Again, Glinda isn't evil.  What Glinda is, however, is someone who is so blinded by privilege that she can't even see the damage that she is doing to the people of Oz.  When Elphaba hands over the reins to the resistence to Glinda, it is because Glinda has finally come to terms with the fact that she was only helping the regime and that Glinda can use her platform to kill off the nature of an enemy.  There's this great speech that the Wizard gives, mirroring Trump's "I could shoot someone in Times Square" speech that stresses that people want to have a villain to hate.  Elphaba knows that, like with The Dark Knight, that people need to have a villain to hate.  If she can be the villain instead of the animals, it's something that people can move past because a single person is defeatable.  Again, most of the people that I know, who are absolutely great people, are more Glindas than Elphabas.  They so want the world to be the way it was that they act that way, ignoring the clear evils just out of sight.  Like Elphaba, I want to live that way so badly.  I'd love to pretend that things are going fine.  I just know that they aren't and it horrifies me that there are people in cages.

Oh, you know that there are immigrants in inhumane cages right now, right?  Just a reminder because we've been through so much in 10 months. 

Okay, all of what I said above is why this movie is personal to me.  But I do want to talk about it as a movie.  I think this movie is incredible.  I'm a guy who likes musicals because I'm a guy who likes movies.  I would like to think that I'm not a "Musical Kid Turned Musical Adult."   I probably know more showtunes than most of my peers.  I don't deny that.  But I also know that I'm not instantly swayed by a toetapping number.  Honestly, I'd sooner see Death of a Salesman or To Kill a Mockingbird than Dear Evan Hansen, but it doesn't change that I like musicals (and still want to see Dear Evan Hansen).  But I can see how the musical kids might like Wicked better than Wicked: For Good.  All of the good numbers are in the first half of the musical.  But my point is that the story is better in the second half.  And, if I'm going to be honest, if you don't have a rigid alliance to the score or the songs, I kind of dig the new songs.  I know!  Blasphemy!  I'll tell you what.  If you are incredibly political, like I am becoming more and more every day, "No Place Like Home" makes you want to cry.  Like, I get that it might not be the most vocally impressive song in the world.  But those lyrics?  It's the message of someone who is also struggling out there.  Golly, so perfect.

But I do have to be critical, don't I?  Can I tell you one thing that didn't move me as much as I think the storytellers wanted it to?  I don't care that the Wizard is Elphaba's father.  It really has no bearing on how the story plays out.  Call me a Rian Johnson sympathizer, but I don't think that every character needs to have some kind of secret villain lineage.  It's a bit of a hat-on-a-hat for the movie because all of the emotional beats are done from that point on.  I don't believe that the Wizard would be so moved by discovering that he caused the death of his daughter because I don't think that his daughter ever mattered to him.  I don't see a throughline of a character wishing that he had time to raise a child.  Nope.  I see a guy, very much like Donald Trump, who puts his own quest for power and worship over the people around him.  It's fine.  Like, it doesn't detract that much.  But I also don't have the jawdropping moment that the film wanted me to have.

There's so many beats that I want to explore.  I want to talk about Nessarose and her moniker as the Wicked Witch of the East.  I want to talk about the Tin Woodsman and how scary Boq gets without a heart.  I also am also trying to unpack Fiero as the Scarecrow, simply becuase the movie downplays the "lacking a brain" issue coupled with why he would befriend Dorothy.  (I mean, the first movie has him kicking books around and Fiero's entire profession as spy is set up before that, but it's not quite explicit what Fiero was doing during the Dorothy sequences."  And, oh my gosh!, the Cowadly Lion as a race traitor?  Golly, I'd love to explore that.  But do you know what?

The movie does an incredible job already exploring that.  It's such a good movie, guys.  Like, between this and Andor, I have a lot of genre allegories about the Trump administration that moved me beyond what I thought was possible.  I know that people were moved by the first one, but this is the one that got me on board.  I know.  No one is going to be excited for replaying For Good.  But I loved this movie, bleakness and all, that it might be one of my favorite movies of the year, even potentially giving Superman a run for its money.  (I'd like to stress that I adored Superman and that's incredibly high praise.)