The three major reasons why Wicked: For Good has got such worse reviews than the first film

Wicked: For Good was meant to be the epic conclusion of the pop cultural phenomenon that’s dominated film circles for two years now. But as soon as that review embargo started to lift, Wicked: For Good had a problem. Whilst it still had its absolute star secret weapon with the indomitable Cynthia Erivo – the epic conclusion to Wicked has seemingly left a lot to be desired. It’s heartbreaking to see the film not come out with glowing reviews across the board and the film has now had some shocking one star and two star reviews from the press. Here are the three main reasons why Wicked: For Good is getting slated with bad reviews.

Unfortunately… Ariana Grande’s performance

One brutal one star review called Ariana Grande’s performance ‘painfully wooden’ and even a lot of tweets reacting to Wicked: For Good said her performance was bad. It’s a far cry from the first film, where both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo got Oscar nominations for their turns as Glinda and Elphaba.

Robbie Collin at The Telegraph said “often seems to be trying to walk through her scenes as slowly as possible: as a performer she has a range of four octaves and around 1.6 emotions, and as such Glinda’s smaller moments simply aren’t dramatically interesting enough to merit this moonily protracted approach.”

One tweet even compared her unfavourably to a meme with a goofy face and said she delivers all her lines like that meme. Ouch.

The padding

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One of the biggest critiques of why Wicked: For Good is getting dragged is because it’s pacing is all over the place. Because this is of course act 2 of the musical – which is notably shorter than act one like most musicals tend to be structured, there’s a lot of padding in place to flesh it out to make it worthy of being a fully fledged musical. This has resulted in a film that feels more full of bloat than the snappy first one and doesn’t hit as hard.

The unfortunate truth that Wicked’s second act is … not good

Obviously, it’s not the film’s fault that Wicked’s second half is worse than its first. Most of the truly legendary iconic moments from the show and why Wicked is so famous all happen in the first act. When Defying Gravity is done – do we really care? No. And Wicked: For Good has the difficult task of matching that.

What really proves tough is the fact that Hollywood is insistent in splitting stories up into two films – to the detriment of whatever one ends up being weaker. It’s a fatal flaw, and now with the critical reception and how slated Wicked: For Good is getting it’s paying the price.

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