Wickedthere is a problem in the second act, and in Jon M. Chu's film version, Evil: For goodcontains small but important fixes. It's not a box office problem: the second installment of Chu's adaptation of one of Broadway's biggest hits has arrived. has already broken one box office recordand will likely break many more, just like its 2024 predecessor. Wicked. This is not a fandom problem: at my show Evil: For goodcostumes and themed clothing abounded, with fans dressed in green or pink to match the main characters; the first viewers are already I rave about the film on social networks. (Critics are positive, but a little more reserved.) It's not even the much-discussed issue that all the biggest and best songs in a musical are in the first act.
The real problem with the film is that it affects all forms Wicked starting with the original novel that started the franchise: as a story, it's too tied to the original The Wizard of Oz.
Gregory Maguire1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West rotates The Wizard of Oz into a politically complex dark fantasy that gives the characters and the world they live in much more depth and dimension – until the end of the novel, when Elphaba abruptly ends her rich, intellectual, morally driven career as a rebel and revolutionary to become fixated on Dorothy's stolen shoes.
It's possible to justify her teenage terror by noting that she's mourning her sister and losing her mind while fighting an unwinnable battle against the Wizard of Oz and his minions—but Maguire's book makes an abrupt shift from the original material to re-enacting familiar scenes from the 1939 film version The Wizard of Oz never feels compelling or properly motivated.
The stage musical and now the film version follow suit to some extent: matching the action of the original. The Wizard of Oz requires Elphaba to lose much of her nuance as a character, and her transformation from a proud, noble victim of bigotry, betrayal, and a cruel propaganda campaign into a cackling villain who threatens to kill Dorothy for her shoes is hard to swallow. It doesn't help that in the Broadway musical this transition mostly occurs during the course of one song, “No Good Deed”, where Elphaba, in a frenzy of grief and worry for her lover Fiyero, tries to save him with magic, decides it doesn't work (though it's unclear why), decides he's dead (though she has no proof of this), and renounces righteous causes forever.
Nose Evil: For goodCynthia Erivo's performance as Elphaba, as well as Vinnie Holtzman and Dana Fox's script, offer some correctives to the story's biggest weakness. The film has several nuances of meaning that the Broadway musical doesn't: While Erivo still says she wants Dorothy's ruby slippers because they're “all she has” to remember her sister Nessa (obviously not true, but we can let that go), the film portrays this impulse as comparatively temporary.
As for the performance of “No Good Deed,” it feels like Elphaba has already decided that she can’t win the war in Oz and that it’s time to move on to the life she defines for herself. Even by the time she catches Dorothy, according to L. Frank Baum's original book and the 1939 film, she already has plans for what comes next—and that plan doesn't consider the slippers or Dorothy herself particularly important.
What's important in Evil: For goodEven more so than in the Broadway musical, it's the relationship between Elphaba and her best frenemy, Glinda. Chu and the writers lean further into this relationship throughout the second half of the film. The Elphaba-Glinda connection is greatly expanded in Evil: For goodwhich adds more encounters between them in the second act, more repetitions of the first act's songs as they remember each other, and more chances for them to redefine and change their relationship.
After all, Dorothy, her shoes, and her mission to kill Elphaba are pushed back even further here than in the Broadway version of the story. They are what they were always meant to be – a subplot that Elphaba has little time for amid everything else she's juggling, and nothing more than a joke for viewers who are already familiar with what Dorothy's story looked like from her own point of view.
Anyway, Evil: For good In retrospect, Dorothy's story seems a little hilarious. Of course, this naive, easily overwhelmed girl from Kansas saw herself as the protagonist of a fairy tale. Rewatch the original 1939 film; Almost every moment of the film Dorothy is in a difficult situation, and although she is kind to other people, she is manic about getting home to Aunt Em. Of course, she had no idea that there were much bigger, more emotional, and much more important stories going on around her little journey home.
But Evil: For good marks first version Wicked a story that really doesn't feel like Dorothy takes up too much of a role in Elphaba's ending. In this film the action The Wizard of Oz completely and properly sidelined to make room for the original material. Elphaba's desire to give up the Battle of Oz will always be a little disappointing, given her big dreams and big heart. But at least here the decision finally seems fully motivated, rather than as if it was driven by the need to slavishly follow the plot of Baum's book that started the story. Wicked history 125 years ago.
