Wicked For Good Gets Surprising Review Scores From Critics Compared to the Original

Many critics are not pleased with Wicked For Good and have made the sequel’s score on Rotten Tomatoes fall much lower than the score for the original 2024 film. At the time of writing, the Tomatometer for Wicked For Good stands at 69% out of 175 reviews. While this means that most critics feel positive about the second movie in the Wicked franchise starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, it is markedly well below the 88% Tomatometer score that the first Wicked film received. Here’s a breakdown of why more than 50 critics are disappointed with the Wicked sequel.

Wicked For Good dips nearly 20 points below the first Wicked movie

One of the consistent sour notes that critics had with Wicked For Good is that Universal Pictures split the adaptation into two parts in the first place.

Critic Peter Sobczynski on the Auteurist Class Substack describes the movie as a “particularly blatant cash grab” that would be “far more effective as one single streamlined unit.” Meanwhile, reviewer Simon Foster for the Screen-Space Substack says that while the original 2024 film combined the “music, drama, comedy and spectacle” to “perfection,” the sequel “amounts to an overstretched Act 3.”

Many other critics shared the same sentiment, saying that the movie doesn’t have enough narrative material to fill out its 2 hour and 18 minute runtime. Robbie Collin of the UK’s Daily Telegraph found the movie frustrating since its director Jon M Chu, despite being “an established musicals master,” was forced to take a “corporate stretch-it-out-and-wring-it-dry approach.”

Nick Levine of NME points out that this sequel is based on the shorter second act of the Wicked stage musical, which is only an hour in length.

Still, even some of the more critical reviews for the film said that the performances from Erivo and Grande were strong, particularly their duet near the end. ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim believes that the film “works because of Erivo and Grande” in his review, which gives it a 7 out of 10.

The lower critical scores for Wicked For Good are in stark contrast to the audience score, or Popcornmeter, which stands at an astounding 97% from over 2500 verified ratings.

Source: Comingsoon.net