“Wicked: For Good” provides a satisfying and captivating conclusion to the film duology.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande returned to the big screen as the complicated duo of Elphaba Thropp and Glinda, respectively, with stellar performances of both their characters and musical numbers.
“Despite its unsettling political resonance, ‘Wicked’ is finally most convincing as a story of an intense, soulfully nurturing female friendship,” Manohla Dargis, a film critic for The New York Times, said.
The movie revisits the same themes of good and evil, prejudice and incorrect judgments established in its precursor, “Wicked,” but hones in on additional themes of propaganda, unrequited love, living with the past and the consequences of relying on a false identity.
Propaganda, in particular, plays a significant role throughout the film in that it serves as both a plot device and a pillar of dramatic irony.
Throughout the movie, flyers, posters, speeches, rumors and other means of spreading propaganda messages incite action to move the story along.
“Giant banners warn about the terror she’s allegedly spreading; she leads acts of resistance in heroic silhouette; stores sell special ‘Wicked Witch’ editions of products,” Bilge Ebiri, a film critic for “New York” and “Vulture,” said.
Perhaps more importantly, though, is the propaganda’s establishment of dramatic irony throughout the film. While the audience knows the truth of Elphaba’s actions, many of the other characters are deceived by propaganda saying her actions are driven by wickedness.
The dramatic irony established builds tension as the audience is on the edge of their seats, waiting to discover if the truth is revealed or not.
Glinda herself even acts as a vessel of propaganda throughout the movie when she acts as a pawn for the Wizard of Oz, played by Jeff Goldblum, and Madame Morrible, played by Michelle Yeoh. Rather than defending Elphaba and her actions, Glinda chooses to perpetuate the lie that Elphaba is wicked.
However, she eventually realizes the truth of her situation.
“Glinda begins to understand the truth about Oz and her own complicity in its oppressiveness, a transformation that Grande puts across with gestural delicacy and touching vulnerability,” Dargis said.
Unrequited love also plays a large role throughout the film as various characters grapple with how to react when their love is not reciprocated.
Then, when characters’ reactions result in unintended consequences, which serve as interesting and relatively unpredictable plot twists for the audience, the characters are forced to make another decision: How to move forward in light of the past.
How the characters react to their own choices and their consequences creates new past choices and new consequences to react to, which then produces new past choices and consequences, and so on until a pattern is established in one’s choices.
The cyclical nature of decision-making that reveals the characters’ underlying natures throughout the film can perhaps be explained by Iris Murdoch, a philosopher, graduate from Oxford and fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, who was experienced in writing gripping characters based on philosophical concepts for novels.
“By the time the moment of choice has arrived, the quality of attention has probably determined the nature of the act,” she said.
For some characters, living with the past meant repeating it. For others, it meant facing the consequences of building a fraudulent identity.
“Wicked” showed the process by which Elphaba acquired the false identity of wickedness and Glinda constructed her facade of perfection and unending happiness around herself. “Wicked: For Good” handles the consequences of living a false identity for too long.
Elphaba grappled with doubts about her own choices to remain good in spite of others condemning her as wicked. Glinda is forced to realize that her life is not perfect and that she cannot always be happy.
These false identities and the decisions surrounding living in them both push Elphaba and Glinda apart and draw them together.
“How Glinda and Elphaba strive to salvage their friendship while also being pulled apart by society’s expectations provides the film’s tension and spine,” Christy Lemire, a film critic who has worked for the Associated Press, said. “Elphaba figures if everyone assumes she’s wicked, she may as well lean into that … Erivo and Grande find just the right amount of tenderness and sadness with ‘For Good,’ and that bond between them shines bright once more.”
