However the largest drawback by far with the Depraved break up is the best way the brand new film tries for a happier ending than both the unique 1995 novel or the Broadway musical imagined. As a substitute of being a victory and redemption for each girls, Depraved: For Good ends with a milquetoast apology, a protection of authoritarianism, and an insult to the viewers.
For Worse
Depraved started life not as a musical, however as a cynical revisionist novel by Gregory Maguire. Depraved: The Life and Occasions of the Depraved Witch of the West used the world of Oz imagined by writer Frank L. Baum as a platform to discover the character of evil, reframing the Depraved Witch of the West Elphaba as a social outcast who will get pushed into evil-doing and Glinda the Good Witch as a pretend social climber who betrays the bond they shaped at school.
The musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman finds self-afirmation in Elphaba’s story and leans into the friendship between the 2 girls. It relegates a lot of the nastiness and political critique of Maguire’s novel to the second act, and even then it continues to underscore the connection between Elphaba and Glinda, as demonstrated by the reconciling quantity For Good. Within the musical, Elphaba fakes her demise and escapes Oz with Fiyero, leaving Glinda to rule because the Good Witch.
All of these parts from the musical make their means into Depraved: For Good, however the necessity to increase one act right into a full film signifies that they get much more consideration. We spend extra time with Elphaba as a beleaguered freedom fighter, as within the movie’s superhero-inspired opening, and extra time with Glinda as she seeks energy and riches for herself. In a single notably jarring second, the scene of Boq (Ethan Slater), now reworked into the Tin Man via a little bit of physique horror magic, leads a lynch mob to search out and kill Elphaba is adopted by a brand new track “Lady in a Bubble,” wherein Glinda has a little bit pity social gathering for the gilded cage she created by betraying her good friend to the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).
An analogous drawback happens with the staging of the track “Fantastic,” carried out by the Wizard in hopes of getting Elphaba to affix him with Glinda. Within the musical, the Wizard sings about how he’s a sufferer of individuals’s expectations, that he’s only a carnival barker from Kansas who was thrust into his place on the behest of Oz’s residents. However director Jon M. Chu and the screenplay by Holzman and Dana Fox provides a preamble wherein the Wizard muses upon epistemology. He rebuffs Elphaba’s insistence upon telling the reality by arguing that fact is simply what individuals comply with consider.
By spending extra time with the nihilistic and self-serving elements of the story, and separating these parts from the uplifting friendship within the first movie, Depraved: For Good builds to a contemptible shut.
