Wicked: For Good Would Have Worked Better With One Major Change

Stow away your magic wands and broomsticks if you haven't seen "Wicked: For Good" yet ... there are spoilers ahead!

After really enjoying "Wicked: Part One" in theaters last November — which came as a surprise to me, a reformed theater kid who views "Wicked" and "Rent" as "starter pack musicals" — I was genuinely excited to see the second part, "Wicked: For Good." I even set aside my own personal misgivings about splitting the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba Thropp, a young and verdant witch played by Cynthia Erivo in both films) into two parts that released a year apart, admitting that the first movie ending with "Defying Gravity" was pretty perfect. I settled in. I got popcorn. I hummed a few notes of the friendship ballad that gives the movie its title.

Then I sat there for two hours and 17 minutes, plus previews.

Here's some really, really important context: the Broadway show "Wicked," which is obviously the source material for Jon M. Chu's on-screen adaptation, has a run time of two hours and 45 minutes. That includes both acts and a 15-minute intermission, and it's a truth universally acknowledged that Broadway shows have longer first acts and shorter second ones. (This is true of "Wicked" onstage; the first act is around 90 minutes, and the second is roughly an hour.) Honestly, I do believe splitting "Wicked" into two distinct movies was a good idea, both for the story and for the box office; Chu's bet on this clearly paid off financially. That brings me to an important question, though: why is "Wicked: For Good" so long? Chu and Universal Studios didn't make more money thanks to its padded run-time, and this movie should have been, at most, 90 minutes long.

Something that's going to eventually turn me into the Joker is when movie adaptations of existing intellectual property add new things to the narrative; in the case of "Wicked: For Good," the two new songs are a pretty transparent attempt to snag a nomination at the 98th Academy Awards for best original song. (None of the songs from "Wicked" would qualify, you see, and after the first movie picked up ten nominations and two awards, it is unbelievably easy to figure out why they did this.) Even with Stephen Schwartz penning both songs — "No Place Like Home," an attempt at a rousing and rallying song sung by Elphaba, and "The Girl in the Bubble," a plaintive and introspective ballad performed by Ariana Grande-Butera's Glinda — they add nothing to the proceedings. "No Place Like Home," which Elphaba sings to oppressed speaking animals who are fleeing Oz in terror, is a great time to go to the bathroom. As for "The Girl in the Bubble," it happens so late in the narrative that you've probably already peed, so you're just stuck watching it.

Both Erivo and Grande-Butera are, obviously, giving it their all; there's a reason that these two unbelievably talented performers earned Oscar nods of their own last year. It's still not enough, and with a runtime this bloated, these additions feel egregious. It's not even just these songs. "For Good" is viewed by many as "Glinda's movie." That absolutely does not mean, though, that we needed a flashback to Glinda's childhood to prove that she might not have innate magical powers, but do we get one? Yes! We sure do! It takes up almost ten minutes of the movie's run time!

Thanks to all of this padding and dilly-dallying, the pacing of "Wicked: For Good" is the most obviously weak thing about this second installment, and the first hour or so drags somewhat interminably. (There are, as always, a few bright spots; I actually loved Ariana Grande-Butera's performance of the act 2 opener "Thank Goodness," even if the song is a total word salad lyrically.) By the time we get to the powerhouse song "No Good Deed" and hear Cynthia Erivo's take on this passionate number, the momentum finally picks up. We get to see Glinda and Elphaba reunite, sing "For Good," and part ways forever, with Elphaba faking her death so that she can run away with the Winkie prince Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey), whom she transformed into a scarecrow to help him survive brutal physical attacks from the Wizard's mobs. (Yes, he's supposed to be the Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz" played by Ray Bolger. Don't think about it too much, okay?) In the film's very last moments, Glinda stumbles upon Elphaba's magical book, the Grimmerie, and it opens for her for the very first time, strongly suggesting that her bond with Elphaba and her promise to be "good" helped her find a magical ability. 

This is all well and good, but the fact that it took well over two hours to get there is crazy. I said it earlier, and I'll say it again: unless I'm radically misunderstanding how box office sales work, "Wicked: For Good" would have made the exact same fortune if it was 90 minutes or 137 minutes, so the fact that the latter won out over the former is maddening.