“Wicked: For Good” sinks under its greed

In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final film adaptation in the world-dominating “Harry Potter” franchise, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” would be split into two separate movies, released eight months apart. “We feel that the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice is to expand the screen adaptation . . . and release the film in two parts,” Jeff Robinov, former president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said at the time. The decision elicited a two-pronged reaction from fans. Those eager to see the franchise’s epic conclusion come to life on the big screen as soon as possible were disappointed. But the majority — those who craved as much “Harry Potter” as possible before the series’ inevitable end; those who would blindly spend their money on anything “Potter”  — were elated. Two parts meant fewer details from the 784-page novel would be spared, and more time with their favorite characters. But for Warner Bros. executives and investors, two individual films meant that the “Harry Potter” bankroll could continue even longer.

Last year’s inescapable “Wicked” and its new follow-up finale, “Wicked: For Good,” present an entirely different, far more frustrating predicament than the one Warner Bros. faced in the late aughts. The sequel, which expands the second act of the hit musical the films are based on, is, to put it kindly, one of the most astonishingly muddled, poorly paced, wrecks of a blockbuster in recent memory. Fans of the source material can’t be shocked: Act 2 of the musical is notoriously messy, burdened by the necessary “Wizard of Oz” tie-ins and songs that never soar as high as the stirring knockouts in Act 1. Some disarray was to be expected, even inevitable, in the story’s latter half.

But then there’s the fact that, since the two-part release was announced in 2022, director Jon M. Chu has repeatedly stated that the split was necessary to avoid “doing real damage” to the story. “As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises,” Chu wrote in an initial statement. “With more space, we can tell the story of ‘Wicked’ as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise journeys for these beloved characters.”

If there’s one thing “Wicked: For Good” is lacking, it’s depth — of color, of emotion, of writing and of those beloved characters. The film has so little to say about its story’s themes of power and othering that it retroactively dulls the admirable shine of the first movie, reducing last year’s “Wicked” to a spectacle of glittery pulleys and levers distracting audiences from the doom that is “For Good.” If Chu’s first film was a fantastical yet mainstream meditation on control and who has it, “Wicked: For Good” is its shadow, the nadir symbol of franchise filmmaking greed and an ironic tale of how quickly avaricious capitalism corrupts a good thing.

This is not to say that “Wicked” was some noble emblem of blockbuster benevolence. The first film was designed to make money, just like its sequel. There were, of course, legions of fans who had been eagerly awaiting the film adaptation for decades, guaranteed to spend as much of their hard-earned cash as possible on memorabilia and movie tickets. But then there were the innumerable brand tie-ins, promotional stops, products and advertisements, intent on keeping the hype train on its tracks through the lucrative holiday season. “Wicked” wasn’t just marketed; this was an all-out, pink and green tactical assault. And as obnoxious as it was to hear Cynthia Erivo belting “dooooooooooOOooOOOoowwn!” during every Thanksgiving day commercial break, the film itself was an undeniable delight. For all of its faults, Chu made a mesmerizing and invigorating movie that placed a marginalized character front and center, letting viewers watch Elphaba Thropp defy her oppression and triumph by following her heart’s good nature. Released just two weeks after Donald Trump’s re-election, “Wicked” was an amiable call to stand up for yourself that the world desperately needed to see in the face of a dismal political landscape.

(Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures) Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in “Wicked: For Good”

But a lot can change in a year. With the goodwill from the first film waning and New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s exhilarating campaign capturing the world’s attention by decrying wealth hoarding, “Wicked: For Good” is being released into an entirely new climate. Chu’s sequel is rotten with the stench of voracious greed, as much of a pre-packaged, ready-to-sell commodity as the “Angry Birds” or “Super Mario Bros.” movies.

What’s worse is that Erivo and her co-star, Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda the Good, both turn in respectable performances, with Grande using the Glinda-heavy second act as her moment to shine. But the two leads are constantly undone by the messy film swirling around them. “Wicked: For Good” is a horribly lit, glacially paced slog that lacks the dynamism of the first film. Songs like “No Good Deed” and “March of the Witch Hunters” are chopped up and rearranged to allow for more dialogue and less emoting, distending the film into a bloated heap. The film’s two new songs, “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble,” fail to make an impression. With head-scratching lyrics like, “Why should a land have so much meaning when dark times befall it? It’s just a land made of dirt and rock,” they confuse far more than they entertain.

Most baffling is the fact that “Wicked: For Good” exists in this state at all. Splitting franchise films into two parts made sense for young adult books like “Harry Potter,” “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” given that each series boasted thicker tomes with each subsequent release. Fans wanted those stories preserved as closely to the ways they imagined them while reading the novels; those adaptations were the single shot at bringing the story to life. (At least before the upcoming “Harry Potter” television series loomed large.) But this is “Wicked,” the musical based on Gregory Maguire’s book, which is in turn based on L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and its 1939 film adaptation. Practically everyone on Earth knows some version of this story already, and there would be nothing lost trimming the fat of the second act to fit this tale into a single film.

(Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures) Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard of Oz in “Wicked: For Good”

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Think about it: As a stage production, “Wicked” already pushes three hours. And not only has the musical grossed billions of dollars during its run, but film runtimes are getting longer. Last year, “The Brutalist” — a completely original film with no built-in audience — and its three-and-a-half-hour runtime drew enough paying viewers to make its budget back five times over. “Oppenheimer” cleaned up at the box office on a three-hour length, too. 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. To make matters even more bewildering, “Wicked” was just shy of three hours itself, meaning that there was already space to condense the musical’s choppy second act, removing weaker moments and bringing the remaining, better elements into the fold for an extended “Wicked” movie that would undoubtedly attract moviegoers regardless of the runtime. That would, however, mean that the millions of dollars that “Wicked: For Good” will inevitably make would be sacrificed in favor of a genuinely good, solid product that could only dominate the box office for a single holiday season, instead of two consecutive ones. And when have studios ever wanted that?

Had “Wicked” trimmed up the second act to fit the entire story into one film, the effect may have been hampered, but Elphaba and Glinda’s tale would at least retain the first film’s extremely high highs and spectacle, making the duds in Act 2 look a bit more polished in comparison. Now, separated by a year, the momentum of “Wicked” comes crashing down with “Wicked: For Good.” Chu is beholden to those pesky “Wizard of Oz” tie-ins at every turn, and Erivo and Grande get few chances to utilize their lovely chemistry. Everyone’s still angry as Oz falls apart, sure. But by stretching this story to its absolute limits and removing its darkest components, there is no rousing plume of rage to compel the viewer. There is only emptiness: a hollow space where a heart should be, ready to be filled with cold, hard cash.