The arrival of “Wicked: For Good” is as close to a monocultural phenomenon as we get in today’s fractured media and political landscape. The second installment in this two-part musical saga has already made more than $30 million in preview screenings ahead of its official opening this weekend. It also has marketing tie-ins shooting out of its broomstick. Variety reported that Universal, the studio behind the film, has partnered with 400 brands to cross-promote this revisionist “Wizard of Oz.”
Perhaps lost in all that hype is the fact that this “Wicked” sequel is an undeniably political film that’s arriving at a time when Americans may be looking to the movies more for pure escapism than social messaging. Like the 1995 novel and long-running Broadway musical that inspired it, “Wicked” is a blunt commentary on the dangers of fascism, a subject that is all the more potent now that President Donald Trump is running the country using a fascist’s playbook. It will be interesting to see whether those themes resonate with mass audiences or can even spark some political change. Or is that too much to hope for in this fraught climate?
There is no way to ignore the similarities between life in our country right now and life in the fictional Oz.
There is no way to ignore the similarities between life in our country right now and life in the fictional Oz presided over by the fraudulent Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his craven aide Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).
In “Wicked: For Good,” new laws require the citizens of Oz to show their identification papers when they travel, an echo of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. In Oz, the Wizard’s regime has stripped away the voices and civil rights from animals who once possessed both, a reminder of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to do away with diversity and inclusion programs.
The green-skinned Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, is characterized by authorities as an evil witch who wants to kill everyone in Oz, even though what she really wants is to expose the Wizard’s lies. “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy,” Goldblum advises. It’s the same strategy Trump and his cohorts use every time they marginalize women, people of color or anyone else they perceive as hostile.
But the most chilling dialogue may be the words that Ariana Grande’s Glinda speaks after a house falls on the Wicked Witch of the East, instantly crushing her. Acting as an official representative of Oz but unaware that Madame Morrible orchestrated that death, Glinda blithely says, “Accidents happen.” Who else will think of President Trump’s comments this week about the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi? While sitting in the Oval Office next to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who U.S. intelligence agencies concluded had to have approved the operation that killed Khashoggi, Trump dismissively said, “Things happen.”
Even if people recognize the parallels, it’s naive, perhaps, to think that recognition may spark political change, especially since past evidence tells us that rarely happens. Remember in 2004, when Michael Moore’s scathing anti-George W. Bush documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” became an unexpected box-office hit? Bush still won a second term. The 2023 box-office smash success “Barbie,” a cotton-candy-colored act of rage against the patriarchal machine that imagined a Black woman as president, should have foreshadowed the election of Vice President Kamala Harris the following year. But it did not, and now we live in the darkest, most demented mojo dojo casa house imaginable.
It’s naive to think that popular culture doesn’t have an effect on how we think and feel about the world around us. Yet it’s also naive to think that popular culture doesn’t have an effect on how we think and feel about the world around us. If it didn’t, conservatives would not be working so hard to ban so many books and Trump would not have taken over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Pop culture has the capacity to unify people in groups large and small. When a couple hundred people watch a movie together, it feels easy to agree on a shared morality. We collectively know which characters are virtuous and which are despicable. We’re on the same team, rooting for the same heroes. Demographic data from the opening weekend of the first “Wicked” suggest that the people watching its sequel together in the coming days will be overwhelmingly female and young, part of the same youthful demos that drove significant wins for Democrats in state and local elections earlier this month. If Democrats were smart — I did say if — they would court the Elphaba-Glinda vote with the same fervor that corporate America has displayed in all those “Wicked” product tie-ins. In one of two new songs written for “Wicked: For Good,” Elphaba sings: “Why do I love this place/That’s never loved me/A place that seems to be devolving/And even wanting to,” and, in a later verse: “When you feel you can’t fight anymore/Just tell yourself/There’s no place like home.” These are universal lyrics, but, like so much in this destined-to-be-blockbuster, feel completely intertwined with this moment in our country’s story. If even one American who feels politically defeated by this administration hears those lyrics and is inspired to fight harder for democracy, that’s a victory.
Jen Chaney is a freelance TV and film critic whose work has been published in The New York Times, TV Guide and other outlets. 
