Villain: For Good | Goodbye

★★★

A year later, it seems legitimate to consider Jon M. Chu’s project Villain: Part One a resounding success. Not content with defying gravity at the box office, the film proved popular throughout awards season and spawned the cultural moment that was Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s space press tour. Part two, subtitled For gooddancing on a slightly tougher sell. It’s the second half of the musical’s least favorite, with notably weaker songs and a haphazard attempt to force the original Baum Circle into Macguire’s place.

Although filmed at the same time as its predecessor, For good enjoys a certain tonal separation from the exuberance and spectacular aspirations of the former. Reducing his larger ensemble to just a handful of lines each – some better than others – Chu here delves deeper into the fundamental relationship between his witches, which now can’t help but feel inbred with that of Erivo and Grande themselves. The sets, while more diverse than before, seem smaller here, almost reminiscent of the soundstages of 1939. That’s not a bad thing. It’s almost nostalgic.

While it’s not entirely clear how much time separates the two films, vibes suggest no more than a year. Chu never fully commits to YA dystopia, but there’s a tint of mud to the pink this time around. Faced with the machinations of Jeff Goldblum’s not-so-wonderful Wizard of Oz and his Machiavellian press secretary – Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible – Elphaba (Erivo) and Glinda (Grande) are now firmly cast to their deaths. Eco-warrior Elphie is known throughout Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West, with Glinda decidedly “the good one.” One wears black from the pointy hat to the pointy boot, the other rummages through a rich wardrobe of disguises to put on dresses that get brighter and bigger from one scene to the next. Each significantly strengthens the camp from the first part. Essential as things get serious…and maybe a little gloomy.

Which does not mean that For good is a film of great narrative depth or, even, a substantial progression from where we left off a year ago. Sometimes, notably in the fleshing out of the Tin Man and Cowardly Lion stories, For good serves more as fan fiction than as a revisionist work in its own right. Some of these things are funny, some of them absurd. For example, the politicization of Oz’s iconic yellow brick road makes sense, but the hunt for Scarecrow’s brain is never satisfactorily explained.

The decision to present Dorothy, meanwhile, solely as a faceless sequence of disembodied limbs and extremities proves a misfire. The silhouette and the suggestion are dramatically beautiful on stage but disjoint a film. Nor is this to say that Dorothy’s contribution is particularly successful on Broadway.

Two new songs complete the soundtrack, a ballad each for Elphaba and Glinda, written by original lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Neither breaks new melodic ground, nor resolves the memorization imbalance of acts one to two. And yet, Chu shoots each sequence with admirable bravery, seizing the opportunity for performance-driven storytelling. In No Place Like Home, Erivo explores the translatable racial tensions in Oz with a heart and soul that extends well beyond the fourth wall and feels as real as ever. Grande’s Girl in the Bubble, meanwhile, is delicate, elegant, and overshadowed by Chu’s clever use of mirror choreography. It’s rather cleverly done.

If Grande remains an excellent Glinda – her gift for flinty humor is undeniable but outweighs her ability to convey emotional depth here – the film belongs to a superior Erivo. Pushed to the limit, Erivo’s Elphaba vibrates with each beat of the magic flowing through it, offset by total fluidity by its extremely distressing energy. Erivo is all in with his performance and digs deep for the delivery.

That much of this delivery was done while Erivo was wired and projected in front of a blue screen – the flight visuals are superb here – is quite extraordinary. Erivo is quite extraordinary. A casting move that really changes the game.

T.S.