Speaker 1: One year later, and we are back in the Land
Speaker 1: of Oz with our two beloved protagonists, Alphaba and Glinda,
Speaker 1: played by Cynthia Rivo and Ariana Grande. To conclude the
Speaker 1: story of friendship gone astray, It's Wicked for Good. I'm
Speaker 1: Ronald Young Junior, and I'm leaving the theater. All right.
Speaker 1: This is Ronald, and I'm leaving the theater after seeing
Speaker 1: Wicked for Good. Wicked for Good written by Winnie Holzman
Speaker 1: and Dana Fox, directed by John M. Chu starring Cynthia Rivo,
Speaker 1: Ariana Grande, Jonathan Daily, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Body,
Speaker 1: Coleman Domingo, Michelle Yo, and Jeff Goldbloom. And for a
Speaker 1: complete cast listing, you could go to the link in
Speaker 1: our show notes. It is just me today. Wicked for
Speaker 1: Good is the sequel to twenty twenty four's Wicked, which
Speaker 1: came out last November. And it got one oscar. It
Speaker 1: actually got one of the words oscars. It got achievement
Speaker 1: in popular cinema, basically the a you did real good
Speaker 1: in the box office oscar, which is not an oscar.
Speaker 1: Most serious movies want to be receiving. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: so it got that Oscar. So I don't want anyone
Speaker 1: that is in a time machine listening to leaving a
Speaker 1: theater coming back at me and like, well it was
Speaker 1: an Oscar winner, and it's like, yeah, that's barely an Oscar.
Speaker 1: No one counts. It's it's just different. If you listen
Speaker 1: to the original review of Wicked, I believe in that
Speaker 1: episode I tell you the whole story about how I
Speaker 1: came to know Wicked, how I came to interact with it,
Speaker 1: how I almost read a book that I did not
Speaker 1: read as a child, et cetera, et cetera. Since I
Speaker 1: have seen Wicked, I have gone to Broadway and seen
Speaker 1: the Broadway Musical parts one, I mean the entire Broadway musical,
Speaker 1: and now I have seen both movies, the first and
Speaker 1: the second. I thought the first one was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what my rating was. It was probably
Speaker 1: somewhere around a three three and a half. If it's
Speaker 1: lower than that, I'd be surprised, But yeah, it's somewhere
Speaker 1: probably around hovering around a three. I don't think it
Speaker 1: was quite a four or maybe this is being taketed
Speaker 1: by this movie. This is the sequel, though we're following
Speaker 1: Alphaba and Glinda and the Wizard and Madam whatever her
Speaker 1: name is, and on their adventures in Oz. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do something a little different today. I'm gonna talk. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say I'm going to talk about the movie and
Speaker 1: the construction of the movie and the acting, and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the story. Visually, stunning, great costumes,
Speaker 1: good acting from as far as I could see, from
Speaker 1: Cynthia Arrivo, Jeff Goldbloom, Ariana Grande, it was fine acting
Speaker 1: from them. Set design is good. The monkeys like flying monkeys.
Speaker 1: Everything those boxes are checked. The direction is fine. I
Speaker 1: feel like the actors all clocked in and did what
Speaker 1: they were asked to do, what they believed in doing.
Speaker 1: And the script is fine. Because the truth is last
Speaker 1: year when I went to go see Wicked the musical,
Speaker 1: I went to go see it with my friends Meredith
Speaker 1: and Will, and I remember leaving and being excited. I
Speaker 1: was excited to be in New York. I was excited
Speaker 1: to see the musical. I was excited to have seen
Speaker 1: the musical, to be a part of it, all of that.
Speaker 1: But I remember leaving and being like, man, that is
Speaker 1: really dumb. The storyline is really stupid. It is a
Speaker 1: stupid story, and I'm sure there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are like, well, Wick, it's a classic, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've seen it, and there's good songs in the second one.
Speaker 1: All of that. No song in this second movie is
Speaker 1: as good as the movie. The songs in the first
Speaker 1: half of the musicals. So I'm gonna say first half
Speaker 1: and first movie. Just know that I'm using those interchangeably,
Speaker 1: because the first half of the Broadway production is the
Speaker 1: first film. So all of the songs in the first
Speaker 1: act now I'm throwing in another word, just a CONFUSI y'all,
Speaker 1: all of the songs in the first movie are most
Speaker 1: of them are good songs. The second one, for good,
Speaker 1: is a good song. Other than that, I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you a song that was in the second movie. It's
Speaker 1: kind of how I feel about In the Heights, where
Speaker 1: outside of In the Heights, I couldn't tell you a
Speaker 1: song from that movie. And the and again, I think
Speaker 1: the plot is written in between a fixed point, so
Speaker 1: Wicked does not look to change any of the original
Speaker 1: story of the Wizard of Oz. It only seeks to
Speaker 1: give backstory, and the backstory is subversive about the characters
Speaker 1: we've known. For whatever reason, someone came along and said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write a different backstory. That's where the original
Speaker 1: novel Wicked comes from. For me, it was difficult to
Speaker 1: sit here and watch this movie in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: when it is a film about the government overtly lying
Speaker 1: to the people, and a black woman, a black woman
Speaker 1: who has been falsely accused and essentially deemed a terrorist,
Speaker 1: is now fighting against that. She's fighting against that oppression,
Speaker 1: and in fighting against that oppression, she's discovering that she
Speaker 1: has no allies and that all of the people who
Speaker 1: know her and understand where she's coming from have all
Speaker 1: decided JK. I'm just gonna, you know, keep my head
Speaker 1: down and keep working for the oppressive government, which makes
Speaker 1: it for a strange film as it continues, because I
Speaker 1: don't understand the relationship between Glinda and Alphaba, how it
Speaker 1: evolves the way it does, why Alphaba would feel fierce
Speaker 1: loyalty to Glinda except for that they went to college together.
Speaker 1: I don't understand the motivation behind the wizard hating animals.
Speaker 1: I really don't. I don't know if I miss something,
Speaker 1: And it's really frustrating because I'm sure it's important to
Speaker 1: understand why he wants to kill or exile all the animals, kill,
Speaker 1: capture or exile all the animals, and doesn't want I'm talking,
Speaker 1: and why they need a bad person. It's very, very
Speaker 1: confusing the motivation of these characters. At some point, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at Madam what's her name played by Michelle Yeo
Speaker 1: who cannot sing. She cannot sing. They should not have
Speaker 1: her singing one line. It was bad. I remember, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: how are you flat? And like, stop doing you got
Speaker 1: to go to some lessons. You only had to sing
Speaker 1: like two lines, and they both sounded awful, and they
Speaker 1: put that in the final movie. And I love Michelle Yo,
Speaker 1: but I hate her in this film. And maybe that's
Speaker 1: the characterization. But I also was like, but the writing
Speaker 1: is also stupid because everyone just keeps they keep harping
Speaker 1: on the fact that the Witch is evil, she's wicked.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, she's wicked. But there's no real motivation.
Speaker 1: They're not like getting a bunch of gold from Oz
Speaker 1: and reveling in their wealth. It just feels like they're
Speaker 1: doing all of this to protect the Wizard from being
Speaker 1: denounced as a fraud, which I don't know that him
Speaker 1: being denounced as a fraud is that bad, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, I don't think that the consequences
Speaker 1: for that are They're just gonna run you out of town. Man,
Speaker 1: You're just gonna end up going back to Kansas or
Speaker 1: wherever you're from. You know, it's very If you think
Speaker 1: too much about this plot, it's not enjoyable. And honestly,
Speaker 1: because they made a whole movie about the second half
Speaker 1: of the musical, it's easy to be like, oh, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: this bad. This don't make no sense, and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't, and also I don't In twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: after being forced to have watched The Running Man and
Speaker 1: the Long Walk, it's a really frustrating film because it
Speaker 1: requires me to tolerate foolishness from characters that you should
Speaker 1: know better. I feel like the way we tell stories
Speaker 1: should be changing. Now. We have to start talking about
Speaker 1: why folks embrace lies and what's comforting about the lies.
Speaker 1: If multiple characters in the movie embracing lies, I need
Speaker 1: you to dig into why. But of course it's not
Speaker 1: going to do that because this musical was written twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, and I guess the only purpose in
Speaker 1: me saying that is nothing's changed in twenty five years.
Speaker 1: The lies have gotten more overt. So if you're gonna
Speaker 1: make a movie like this at twenty twenty five about
Speaker 1: government oppression and a fraud of a wizard, it seems
Speaker 1: like you could say it with your chest, but you're
Speaker 1: not gonna do that because you got a full budget.
Speaker 1: You have a full budget, and it's gonna be everywhere
Speaker 1: and you have to dance around it a bit, which
Speaker 1: makes the whole movie just feel even dumber. So it
Speaker 1: was dumb when it was written, and now it's even
Speaker 1: dumber for me to watch today because now I gotta
Speaker 1: watch y'all play in my face about oppression, and I
Speaker 1: just I just shouldn't have to do that. We're watching
Speaker 1: a bunch of folks be complicit in the government propaganda machine,
Speaker 1: and that's exhausting. That's an exhausting plot. I think it's
Speaker 1: truly a terrible story. And also Neessa Rose really sucks.
Speaker 1: The Wicked Witch of the East, which is Alphaba Cynthia Rivo,
Speaker 1: her sister in the film, she sucks. So if you're
Speaker 1: gonna make these people black again, as I always say,
Speaker 1: I need to be informed as to what race means
Speaker 1: in the universe that I'm seeing it in now. I
Speaker 1: will say Alphaba being black does make sense in terms
Speaker 1: of how she's interacting with the government immediately. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Neessa Rose makes less sense. I don't know. Maybe her
Speaker 1: being more visibly biracial or lighter skinned could play into it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that that's something that's sought intentionally,
Speaker 1: if you will so, I don't. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's several instances in which I realized that Alphaba is
Speaker 1: just bad at spells. I eat, like the spells she's
Speaker 1: reciting are they're kind of like those cursed jokes where
Speaker 1: you make a wish from a genie and it's like
Speaker 1: it's like I wish I was I wish I was
Speaker 1: super rich, and you're super rich, but like you're also
Speaker 1: an idiot or something like, I don't know, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like they never worked the way
Speaker 1: that they should. I enjoy that. I just I really
Speaker 1: didn't enjoy it. I think I think it's a dumb story.
Speaker 1: I think Wicked is a dumb story, and I think
Speaker 1: this closes the book on Wicked, as I hope this
Speaker 1: is it. I hope they don't remake this. I hope
Speaker 1: they don't shoot it to Broadway. I hope like there's
Speaker 1: no gritty revisiting of it, just like, let's just be
Speaker 1: done with it. Let's let this be over. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be a fair critic and I'm gonna give it three
Speaker 1: out of five stars, because to score it any lower
Speaker 1: would mean that I was penalizing it for something that
Speaker 1: was done again twenty five years ago. So maybe, and
Speaker 1: maybe I would be benefiting from being burdened by nostalgia,
Speaker 1: because all the folks who like Wicked, who listen to
Speaker 1: this are going to be arguing with me for some reason.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm not burdened by nostalgia. And I could
Speaker 1: just tell you this isn't a good story. Tho's connections
Speaker 1: that are really stupid. I just I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: But to score it lower would be a commentary on
Speaker 1: the story itself and not on the movie that I
Speaker 1: just watched. And I think it's a three star movie.
Speaker 1: I think people are gonna want to watch it again.
Speaker 1: I think people are gonna enjoy it. I will say
Speaker 1: it's not as good as the first one. There's ways
Speaker 1: in which someone could have just showed me the first
Speaker 1: one and told me what happened in the second one.
Speaker 1: Or if this was a bedtime story and I was
Speaker 1: a child, I'd watch the first one and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: good night, I don't and wake up the next day
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, why don't you run that first
Speaker 1: one back? Don't you don't need to run that second one.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I don't need to know what happens to
Speaker 1: them after this. If you just said that Elfhabe flew
Speaker 1: off and fought for the liberty of Oz, and Glinda
Speaker 1: lived in conflict the rest of her life, and that's
Speaker 1: how the rest of this story goes, I'm fine, fine,
Speaker 1: I don't need to know what happened to Dorothy and
Speaker 1: the Lion and the origin of the Iron Iron Giant Man,
Speaker 1: the Iron Man, the ten Man, the ten Man, the
Speaker 1: ten Iron Giant Man, Iron Man. I don't need to
Speaker 1: know the origin of him or the Scarecrow. It's not
Speaker 1: important to me. So three of five stars and with
Speaker 1: that leaving the theater is a production of Oh It's
Speaker 1: Big Ron Studios. I mixed this episode and you should
Speaker 1: be getting this episode on time unless you're in Patreon
Speaker 1: when you are getting it on Sunday. Everyone else should
Speaker 1: be getting this on Monday, as actually planned because for
Speaker 1: once I am not traveling, I am mostly free from obligation.
Speaker 1: I have nowhere to be. I feel pretty good. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot to do this show, and I have
Speaker 1: a lot of plans in the future. I'm actually thinking
Speaker 1: about combining the patreons of Leaving the Theater and Wait
Speaker 1: for It. I'm thinking about revisiting going back to Owits
Speaker 1: Big Ron Studios as a Patreon itself, because I want
Speaker 1: to keep moving forward career wise, and a lot of
Speaker 1: my work is intersecting in a way that makes it
Speaker 1: useful to be listener supported, useful to be working with
Speaker 1: folks that like the content. And I know there's leaving
Speaker 1: the theater, folks that listen to other Owis Big Ron
Speaker 1: Studios shows and they appreciate those as well. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, why not just put everybody in one basket
Speaker 1: where the money that you're contributing that's helping with Leaving
Speaker 1: the Theater is also helping with Wait for It's also
Speaker 1: helping with the next few projects that I have planned,
Speaker 1: like thinking about I don't like that or on the
Speaker 1: couch all of the things that are coming through Patreon
Speaker 1: and things that will come outside of Patreon as well.
Speaker 1: This could be the engine that powers all of them.
Speaker 1: This is all the type of thinking that I'm doing
Speaker 1: right now, and it's tough to do all of that
Speaker 1: while also manage an always on review show, plan the schedule,
Speaker 1: and keep all of it moving forward. It's a labor
Speaker 1: of love, but it is labor. Nothing's changing right now,
Speaker 1: So anyone that's in the Patreon, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: you won't even hear this because I cut this for
Speaker 1: Patreon members. But for anyone thinking about joining the Patreon,
Speaker 1: go ahead and join it. But there may be a
Speaker 1: change in the future that means that the money that
Speaker 1: you're contributing goes even further, which I think is good.
Speaker 1: So while you're contemplating, if you're thinking about it, this
Speaker 1: means anything. So if any of that means anything to you,
Speaker 1: if my labor means anything to you, this labor of love,
Speaker 1: but it is labor that means anything to you, go
Speaker 1: to patreon dot com, slash leave in the theater, or
Speaker 1: go to the link in our show notes. Show art
Speaker 1: from Heather Wilder. Theme music by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
Speaker 1: For more information about Wicked for Good, check out our
Speaker 1: show notes. You can follow me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok, Threads,
Speaker 1: or letterboxed at Owitz Big Round. That's at h I
Speaker 1: T S b I g R o N. You found
Speaker 1: up more about this show and other oh It's Big
Speaker 1: Round Studio shows by following us on Instagram at OIZ
Speaker 1: Big Round Studios. Leaving the theater will be back soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Ronald Young Junior and I'm the Iron
Speaker 1: Iron Giant Man, the Iron Man, the ten Man, the
Speaker 1: ten Man, the ten Iron Giant Man, Iron Man