Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello my friends and welcome back to another episode of Movie Deputy Reviews where we are talking about the iconic Wicked for good.
Now this one is a little different than what you might expect.
Now if you are a fan of Wicked, you probably know how the story concludes, but for those of us such as myself, I have never seen the Broadway play. I'm very familiar with the story of wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum and kind of all that. For those who are not familiar with who L. Frank Baum might be, he is the original author of the story that inspired the wizard of Oz. So if you are curious about any types of details like that, that's just kind of a neat little tidbit. Of course that's what the wizard of Oz was based on. And of course Wicked is based on the wizard of Oz. And we know of course Glinda our Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch or supposedly such as the Wicked Witch is.
Like I said, if you're familiar with the story, you know how this is going to end. If not, I hope you enjoy this.
I am giving Wicked For Good a I've been debating about this back and forth a little bit, but I am going to go with an innocent rating on this because there's really nothing in a more inappropriate here than what you'd see in like some of the early Harry Potter type stories. There's nothing scary, nothing really overly intense, but just I mean with it being Wicked, you know there's going to be magic involved. So if you don't want your children exposed to that, it's just kind of a little tidbit of information for that to help you hopefully.
So Wicked for Good is also getting an innocent rating. I believe I gave the first one an innocent rating too.
Now I have, I have definitely upset a few people with my the whole thing of what my review was for Wicked. Now that review is just in the podcast format, so it's not in this whole video type format. If I get enough feedback on this one, I might do a second review of the first part of Wicked and in this format just to kind of open the dial dialogue of that up a little bit more. So definitely feel free to go back in our podcast and check that one out if you are curious about what we gave the original Wicked. Now the story is, you know me, no spoilers. So sometimes I have to stop my brain and go reboot a little bit on that to find out like which direction what I want to do with that.
Now the first Wicked, like I said, I wasn't familiar at all with the story. I didn't look up any of it ahead of time and I was kind of harsh. The story, I mean, it, it's an okay story. I mean, if you're not into the whole thing, you're not gonna get really drawn into this A whole lot I will say, in the time from the first movie to this movie, I have fallen in love with the soundtrack. There are so many times I'm sitting here and I'm just working on stuff here on my computer, just clickety clack, clickety clack.
And I'm just blaring the songs and the soundtrack in my headphones and singing along and just kind of making a fool out of myself. But I have fun with it. And the songs get so stuck in your head and they are so good.
I only wish the movie had been as impactful as the music is. And so I had real. I tried not to, but I had really high hopes for this one. Going into this thinking, okay, I'm so excited because of the music for the other one. And I wanted the music for this one to be as impactful. And mind you, the songs are still beautiful. Their talent is undeniable when you've got Cynthia Erivo and you've got, well, my Ariana Grande's on my brain blinked there for a second.
But they are so, so talented in what they do and how they do it. And it's just, it's mind boggling how they get their voices to do that. I mean, there's a lot of people who have singing talent, but doing some of the things that they're doing requires a whole different level. And so I gotta give him credit for that.
Story wise, this one is.
This is a little bit confusing because it kind of begins at the beginning of the last one and it ends at the beginning of the last one. Now that may not make a lot of sense and I don't know if the play does that or not. And you know me, no spoilers ever. So nothing even close to it. But we get to see a little bit of how the relationships go and we get to see a little bit of Dorothy. We don't really get to. Dorothy does not really play much of a part in this.
But we get to see the Cowardly lion and we get to see, of course, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. And if you're familiar with the story, you know which characters from the first movie became the. These primary characters.
But how they fit into the story is a bit different than that. What you might, you might think of from the wizard of Oz.
And you know me, I won't give too much of away, but it's just.
I don't know, I guess I tried not to set my expectations up too. I expected the music to be incredible. And don't get me wrong, the music was very good, but it didn't.
It didn't do what the first movie did. The music didn't blow me away. The music didn't draw me in.
There was one particular scene in this movie that I will say that there I look at the entire movie, I break down the story, I look at the different pieces of the movie and. And I break it down according to the deputy scale. And you know me, I'll never give a perfect 10. And there's no such thing as a zero.
But different parts of this movie would have been graded differently. There's parts of this movie that. That were as high. There's like one scene in this movie that I probably would have given a nine to easily. One scene easily would have given it a nine. There's other scenes that are in the three and four range.
And don't worry, I mean, my score was nowhere near that, so. But I'm gonna wait and give you the score here in a little bit. But it was kind of all over the place. There's some movies where it kind of swims along and it's just at like really high up here or it's really low down here. And it doesn't really. It's got like occasional blips where it might do this.
And for those who can't see me, who are just hearing me, I'm like doing my hand in like a swimming motion, like up and down, the highs and lows.
But there, this one just. It's not.
If you're familiar with the story, it would have been what you expected. But somebody who's not familiar with it, I look at just. I agree that and review it just a little bit differently on that.
But I want to go ahead and share with you the podcast images. You can see the poster here is quite detailed. It's got Elphaba standing on one mountaintop and Glinda standing on the other side.
There's a couple funny moments in the filming of this that I'll get get on and touch touch on those moments before we are done here, but I want to share with you the podcast image that I took and I created from this poster. So here was the theatrical. One of the theatrical posters.
And this is the podcast image that I did now I don't know if you can notice. I kind of tweaked a little bit of the coloring and put like a filter on that because I wanted to kind of bring things out. I wanted to make it a little bit more ethereal than what the theatrical poster was. So I just. I wanted to bring a little bit more of that out with this, a little bit, because I felt not only does it fit the movie, but it also fits this review.
But before we get too much more into this, I want to share with you the.
The trailer for this movie, the original trailer. I know there's been a lot of trailers, but this is the original trailer for Wicked for Good. And so let's jump over and get into that.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Alpha Bethrop, I know you're out here.
Just come in before the monkeys spot you.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: There's no going back.
This is between us wizard and I.
The Wicked Witch can't elude us forever.
Not with Prince Fierro and his squadron hot on her trail.
The wonderful wizard of Oz.
Now wonderful believed in you more than I did.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: That really plays true through a lot of this. A lot of this movie is Elphaba's relationship with the Wizard. Things from the other movie that start to come out, truths that start to come out. And it's also the evolution of Oz, the building of the yellow Brick road, the evolution to see what happens with Glinda and her next position in power and how that happens. And. And that's actually one of the funny things we're going to be talking about here in a few minutes.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Elphaba, they're coming for you.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason.
I know I'm who I am today day Because I knew you.
Think of what we could do together.
Like a col.
As it passes the.
Like a se Drop by a sky in a distant world.
You can say changed for the better.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Bring me the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: For a while there, I thought you changed.
I have changed.
[00:10:06] Speaker D: It's time for both of us to fly.
Because I knew you.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: You're the only friend I ever had.
[00:10:18] Speaker D: Because I knew you.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And I've had so many friends, But only one that mattered.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: I'm off to see the wizard.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Now. I will say it's important to note that there are some very, very powerful scenes in this movie. Like I mentioned about the one that there's one particular scene I would give a nine. And there's. There's a few other scenes that also deserve very high scores as well, but I have to rate the movie as a whole and that's probably the hardest part. Sorry, my nose itches and. No, not, not like Sabrina and the Bewitch Days where I'm like wiggling my nose back and forth, forth. Don't have that ability.
But this one. And you probably saw as Glinda was approaching that bubble and as we know from the first movie, she comes floating in in this bubble and she's like, she pops it and it's just so elegant.
But in one of the just interview things I saw, I couldn't help but laugh because it was just Ariana was like talking about how much. So how much soap that she ate because every time the, the bubble that she was around that they worked with actual bubbles. And so when it popped, she would ingest all of these soap bubbles and she made some. There was some sort of a reference or some little comment that she made that she was going to be really clean on the inside. And that just tickled my funny bone in a cute way. And that's just kind of stuck with me. So even when I was watching the movie and I was watching the. That she kept like a petal with her foot that she was tapping to create the bubble and then she'd keep popping it and it's like I just kept imagining her ingesting all of this soap and I could not help but chuckle. The poor lady next that was sitting next to me in the theater, she was just kind of looking at me like, you've lost it, lady. And I'm like, you have no idea why I'm laughing so hard.
So that was just a lot of fun. And like I said, there's a lot of parts of this movie that are really fun and then there are just parts that you're just.
It's almost.
Why did they have the filler content? It's like there's. There's definitely scenes that are important to the story, but there's a lot of filler content in this as well. And this one just does as much magic as this one has and as much passion as this one has in those particular moments, it loses it at all the spots in between. So score wise. And I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for this. I know that right up front. I want to just touch on the fact that I gave the original wicked just a 5.5 out of 10 on the Deputy scale.
Now that part of it was because just that sickly green tinge it kind of had throughout most of the movie and just it. I think it was trying too hard. And it's these, this movie is honestly not for everybody. It's going to be for a lot of people and there's going to be a lot of people that love it, a lot of people passionate about it. And there's going to be people who this is their favorite movie of all time.
But for me, a movie that needs, that higher score needs to have a wider audience. Now, there are exceptions to that rule if the story is just really exceptional or just not necessarily exceptional, but just where there's something more to it that it carries heavier. So I've given stories that had weaker moments in between higher scores.
And like I said, there were parts of this that really deserved a higher score.
But like I said, I have to judge it as a whole. And so for Wicked For Good, I am, I really was debating. I'm about a quarter point. There's a quarter point where I've just kind of been teeter tottering on that a little bit.
But I am coming in at Wicked for good at a 5.25 out of 10 on the Deputy scale. Now mind you, I'm harsh, so that does not mean that it's a bad score at all on the Deputy scale. A six on the Deputy scale is a watchable, good story. Some flaws. A 5 is a watchable, decent story. Significant flaws. And my thing is just because the fact it teetered so much between really powerful, intense parts of the story and content that was just filler that didn't really add to it a whole lot. I mean, there was some important information, but other, other parts were just like, okay, like where you're just like squinting and you're thinking to yourself like the whole head scratcher type deal.
And that's why I'm coming at Wicked for Good with this type of score. So I like to kind of explain that a little bit. Like to go into a little bit more of that detail just because you never know what people are thinking and why they're thinking it. I do recommend that if you are a fan of musicals, if you are a fan of Wicked, if you are a fan of Broadway, please go see this.
This will not disappoint. If you are a, if you are a fan of this type of story, if you are a fan especially of these particular characters, there is so much here. There is a lot of woke stuff that's happening behind the scenes. Amazingly, the story itself really is not woke. I was really kind of surprised, especially with all of the stuff that's happening in the tour and into into the releases and stuff like that of like some quotes from Ariana and from Cynthia herself where they're kind of talking about the movie and it's almost leading that it could really go in a woke direction. So the fact that they kept that out of the story, I, I have to really commend them for that. So if you are worried about that, please don't be worried about that. Even though it's in a lot of the press stuff that's going on right now, it's really not in the movie. The story is very true to the story without all of the woke crap in it. So I'm very proud to say that. So that was a concern. Please be at ease about that at least. But I will be back tomorrow with another one of the newer movies with a movie that came out a couple weeks ago actually. But if you always want to stay on top of the latest and greatest movie Deputy content, our reviews, our trailers. We've got some really special stuff coming up in December and and we've got some major changes at the first of the year. Obviously this is a pretty big change having these video reviews and everything up, but I really hope that you will be pleasantly surprised with some of our other changes that we've got coming. So as always, stay tuned and this is an adventure and I'm glad you're coming along with it. On coming along with me on it.
That's all folks. And for this show, that is all. So until then, I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.
