Christian reviewers are giving the thumbs down on the sequel to the hit movie, Wicked, and for good reason. Wicked: For Good is filled with mixed messaging about good and evil. It features witchcraft throughout the film, constantly suggesting that sorcery is okay if intended for good purposes. The PG film also contains sexually suggestive content that is not suitable for young children.
Since its debut in late November, the wildly successful Wicked: For Good has taken in $524 million worldwide. It stars Ariana Grande as Glinda, and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, and continues where the first movie left off. Glinda is happily engaged to Fiyero Tigelaar, the Prince of Arjikis, played by Jonathon Bailey. She’s living in the palace of the Wizard of Oz in Emerald City and is loved by all.
Meanwhile, her wicked counterpart, Elphaba “Elphie,” is hated by all and is on the run from the Wizard. She stole Oz’s grimoire which contains all of his magic spells and uses these spells and curses throughout the movie it in defense of the animals in Oz who are being arrested or enslaved.
Because Elphie is using this magic for a good purpose, Glinda is convinced that Elphie’s heart is in the right place and wants to convince Ozians of the same, but without tarnishing her own reputation.
As Christian reviewer Emily Tsaio of Plugged In summarizes, “Each woman must ask herself how far she’s willing to go to protect a friend—and what she’s willing to do for good.”
This theme, which is at the crux of the movie, is why so many secular reviewers are saying the movie is about “friendship, truth, and moral courage,” but while Tsaio and many other Christian reviewers appreciate these messages, they find them to be far outweighed by the darker messaging in the film.
As Tsaio writes, “Magic is a huge component of this film and that’s nothing to sweep aside. Even when magic is used for good, there’s a certain darkness to it—a wickedness, if you will. Indeed, all the magic we see in For Good is considerably darker and, for many Christian families, even more distressing than what we witness in the first film. Though the film’s magic users seem to be born with their abilities, they also use magical words and incantations to cast spells.”
The constant use of magic throughout the film is what made social media influencer Sarah Burnett walk out of the movie with her daughters in tow. In her Instagram video, she explained her reasons for walking out.
"Gosh I am not sitting in a movie that is casting legit spells over me and my family and allowing my children to watch scenes where men are sexually taking off women’s clothing and music that is talking about them laying in bed together," she wrote in her caption. “I have a feeling that the spells cast in this movie weren’t just some made up words.. they had purpose in them! The Bible tells us to stay far away from that and my children even looked at me with big eyes and felt uncomfortable in certain parts of the movie. The mom gut knew it was time to walk out.”
Even Christian moviegoers across the pond were upset with the film’s content. Writing for the UK’s Premier Christian, Rebecca Chapman admits being conflicted about the movie. “This is a story about a redemption of sorts – about a girl who makes a sacrifice to make other’s lives better. It is about the need to include, not exclude, those who are different from us, and to think about why people who are ‘evil’ might act the way they do. But it plays fast and loose with the idea of truth and the risks of propaganda.”
What worries her most about the film “wasn’t the implied sex scene or the magic spells, but how it presents ideas about truth,” she continues. “The Wizard sings: ‘The truth is not a fact or reason.’ The truth is just what everyone agrees on.’ Near the end of the film, Elphaba explains to Glinda that ‘They need someone to be wicked so you can be good.’ What is true or real seems to no longer be the issue.”
The Chapman family is a big fan of series such as C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which means magic is not a deal breaker for her. In fact, she appreciated a scene in the movie when Elphie misused a spell that caused problems because it showed the consequences of magic, regardless of why it’s being used. But she still found the film to be much darker than she expected, especially for a PG film.
Maggie Orsinger, a graduate of John Paul the Great University, reviewed the movie for Family Theater Productions and describes Elphie’s evolving character in the sequel.
“Elphaba, who held on to her values so tightly in the first movie, does get her moment as the Wicked Witch of the West,” Orsinger writes.
For example, Elphie runs away with Glinda’s fiancé, Fiyero. The two engage in a passionate duet that ends with the camera panning away, then later showing the two in bed. Later, when Fiyero is captured and tortured for helping her, Elphie casts a protection spell on him that mistakenly turns him into the Scarecrow. While believing her spell failed and he died, she sings the movie’s most popular song, “No Good Deed” in which she briefly swears off doing good.
The good news is that the spells used in the movie are not working magic. They were created by composer Stephen Schwartz from roots of various languages such as Latin, Greek, German, Egyptian and Arabic.
As Claudia Cox explains in The Tab, the spell used on Nessa contains the words “Ambulahn dare pahto pahpoot ambulahn dasca. . . pede pede caldapess.”
“’Ambulahn’ comes from the Latin verb ‘ambulare’, which means ‘to walk’,” Cox explains. ‘Dare’ means ‘to give’ in Latin. ‘Pede’ is Latin for ‘on foot’. . . ‘Caldapess’ is pretty close to the Italian verb for stomping on someone, ‘calpestare’. . .”
Schwartz explained: “I was trying to come up with chants that one sort of understood, without them being in any one recognizable language.”
The bottom line is that Wicked for Good distorts the moral order in ways that make the film unsuitable for children, and very unsavory for Christian adults.
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