When James Cameron became “king of the world” with his astronomical success making the movie Titanic (1997), many wondered what he would do for a follow-up.  Well, he did have an idea about what he wanted to do next, but we wouldn’t know what that would be for another 12 years.  Even before Titanic, Cameron had a seed of an idea for a movie set on an alien world very much like Earth, but with it’s natural beauty still unmarked by mankind.  It would be a world populated by creatures unlike anything we had ever seen on the big screen before, with a blue skinned tribal race known as the Na’vi being the most advanced civilization on this alien world.  With Titanic providing him with the capital to get anything he wanted to make in Hollywood greenlit, he decided that this would be his next project.  The only thing was, visual effects had not advanced to the level needed for what he envisioned.  He didn’t want his Na’vi characters to be simple computer animated creatures; he wanted them to have the full expressive range that a real physical actor could bring.  Motion capture technology made it possible for Cameron to bring his vision to reality, and he went to the digital artist who made that leap forward in visual effects possible to bring them on board to realize that vision.  The folks at Weta Digital, the Oscar winning team behind The Lord of the Rings, were now tasked with helping to push motion capture to the next level.  Cameron, as we have seen, is a patient man and he will not execute his vision unless he knows he has the tools necessary to make it happen.  It would be a process that would go on for a decade, but eventually James Cameron got to the point where he was satisfied with the results.  He was now able to get his actors’ performances to shine through with these digitally rendered puppets, and he had the confidence to finally get his vision on the big screen.  The movie, Avatar (2009) as it would be called, hit theaters in the same holiday time window that Titanic opened in, and while it started off with modest box office, it remarkably kept bringing in people week after week until Cameron managed to top his own record and have the highest grossing film of all time, 12 years after he did the same feat with Titanic.

Of course, after you’ve managed to take the box office crown twice in your lifetime, people are going to wonder if you could do it again.  James Cameron did have plans, but they would still remain in the Avatar world that he created.  In fact, he had ideas for as many as four more Avatar films.  People expected that he would quickly try to get another Avatar film out soon after the first, but it wouldn’t be that simple.  Ever the perfectionist, Cameron was not ready to dive back into the world of Avatar until he felt he was confident that he could pull it off.  With the first film, the challenge was in perfecting the look of the Na’vi characters.  For his next film, Cameron wanted to explore a different environmental setting within that same world of the first movie; one set around a lot of water.  Creating water in a digital environment had been tricky.  The way water physics work has been difficult to simulate with computer animation.  In most films up to that point, water effects often looked either plastic-y or were only possible with live action mattes.  For someone like James Cameron, who has spent a good portion of his adult life in and around water, both as the director of Titanic and as a deep sea explorer, he had a particular high standard for how water should look, and digital effects needed some extra time to advance to get to the point where it met his high standard.  But, the team at Weta Digital managed to finally crack that nut after another decade of work, and Cameron was finally able to get rolling on his next Avatar film, with a release date now a whole 13 years after the last one.  Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) had a lot to prove.  It had been so long since the last Avatar.  Would audiences still care?  It turns out they did.  The Way of Water performed at the box office nearly identical to how the original did, and while it didn’t achieve the same height at the box office, it came pretty close.  But, audiences wouldn’t have to suffer through another decade long wait for another Avatar.  Cameron planned to shoot two of these Avatar sequels back to back, utilizing the same crew and cast, and developing the visual effects in tandem.  So, only three years after the last one, we now have Avatar: Fire and Ash coming to theaters.  The only question is, can James Cameron do it again?

Avatar: Fire and Ash picks up right after the events of Way of Water.  Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington) and his family are still reeling from the loss of their eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in their last battle with the human beings they call the Sky People.  Jake’s wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is particularly taking the loss very harshly, and has isolated herself from the others.  But their time of peace proves to be shortlived.  The human boy who lives with the Sulley family named Spider (Jack Champion) is running low on batteries for his oxygen mask, the thing that helps him to breathe because of the toxicity of the Pandoran atmosphere to human beings.  The Sulleys decide that it is safer for Spider to return to the research base where he was born, because they’ll have the supplies he needs to survive.  They say goodbye for now to the Metkayina clan that has protected them, including their Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), and set out on their journey.  Unfortunately on their way, they are ambushed by a clan of volcano-dwelling Na’vi known as the Mangkwan, who are led by their blood-thirsty queen Varang (Oona Chaplin).  The skirmish ends up splitting the family up.  Neytiri becomes wounded but escapes.  Jake Sulley ends up getting captured by an old adversary, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who keeps defying death and remains determined to destroy Jake and his family.  The children of the family try to remain hidden in the forests of Pandora, led by the now oldest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton).  Unfortunately for them, Spider’s mask starts to malfunction, nearly out of juice.  The adopted Sully daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) uses her connection with the spirits of the natural world to try something to save Spider.  Miraculously, she manages to save him, and he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask.  This causes profound curiosity amongst both Na’vi and human alike.  What does it mean for Pandora and the Na’vi now that there is a way for the humans to freely breathe their air, and why was Spider saved by the goddess Eywa in this way and for what purpose?

There’s one thing going into any of the Avatar films that we all seem to understand, and that is that these movies are far more about spectacle than substance.  James Cameron is unequalled when it comes to crafting spectacle.  It is quite remarkable that even 3 movies into this series, he’s still able to create a sense of awe and wonder for his audience.  There is indeed a lot to admire with Avatar: Fire and Ash.  I for one still love the fact that Cameron allows for the movies to take their time, allowing us the chance to be immersed in this world.  The dedication to world building is incredible, and that is likely what Cameron loves most of all about making these movies.  He wants to make us all believe that Pandora is a living breathing world with sights and sounds unlike anything seen on the big screen before.  But, the Avatar movies also have the same weaknesses that most of Cameron’s other films have and that’s the story and writing itself.  Cameron, ever the perfectionist, is committed to putting his voice throughout all his movies, and that includes writing the screenplay.  While Cameron remains strong in plotting his movies (very few of his films ever feel like they drag) he unfortunately still proves to be very amateurish when it comes to dialogue, and Fire and Ash is no exception.  James Cameron is corny and prone to cliché, and his characters often feel more like archetypes than actual people.  While he can from time to time come up with a clever line, most of his films still show their weakness in the dialogue.  This was true even with his Oscar-winning Titanic.  While Fire and Ash continues Cameron’s trend of sophomoric level dialogue (just count how many times they say ‘bro’ in the movie), the movie thankfully still attains the director’s high level of visual storytelling.  The movie does soar when it’s using the mood and setting to tell part of the story.  There are some especially interesting uses of eclipses in this film, which provides some very striking visuals.

There’s one other issue that plagues this movie as well.  When Avatar came out 16 years ago, it stood out because it was unlike anything we had seen before.  The Way of Water managed to overcome the sophomore slump because it came out so long after the first one that it made us the audience feel like we were rediscovering the world of Pandora again because of that long absence.  Fire and Ash doesn’t have that benefit of re-discovery, because it’s getting released after a relatively short 3 year gap.  One thing that Cameron could have done with this movie to help make it feel new and fresh was to allow us to see a whole other biome of Pandora and spend most of the film there, making it distinct from the visuals of the other movies.  For a while, it looked like that’s what Cameron was about to do, given how prominently the character of Varang and her tribe or Ash Na’vi featured in the marketing of this movie.  But, alas, we only spend a brief time with her clan in their home environment, on the slopes of an active volcano.  It would’ve been very exciting to have used this ash covered wasteland as a key battleground within the story, but sadly that’s not what we get.  Instead, this story chooses to re-tread most of the same locations we saw before in the series; the forests and the oceans of Pandora.  It all makes Fire and Ash feel less like it’s own movie and more like The Way of Water Part II.  It’s also sad that even with a 3 hour and 17 minute run time (the longest so far in the series) the story still doesn’t feel like it advances that much more than Way of Water did.  At least Cameron keeps things active, so it’s not a dull three hours.  But, this is the first film in this series where I feel like the novelty is clearly wearing thin.  If James Cameron says there are still 2 more films to go in this series, he needs to shake things up big time from here out because otherwise audiences are going to stop caring.

At this point, it’s the visuals that are carrying the series more than anything else.  I feel like I got the most out of the experience based on my choice of presentation.  In a select few IMAX theaters nationwide, not only are audiences able to see the film projected in 3D, but also at a high frame rate.  The high frame rate craze never really took off in the 2010’s, with it quickly fizzling out after the mixed reactions from the Hobbit trilogy’s usage of the format. 3D as well has been in a steady decline over the years.  But, James Cameron is still choosing to present his Avatar movies with these gimmicks still a part of the experience, and strangely enough it actually kind of works.  The high frame rate does take some getting used to, but over time it actually looks quite good.  I think it has to do with the fact that the majority of the movie features digital animation (whether it’s the environment or the actor’s motion capture performances) which looks better in a higher frame rate than live action.  And without a doubt, the Avatar movies feature the best uses of 3D photography ever put on screen.  It helps that Cameron made these movies with high frame rate 3D in mind, and crafted his movies to better integrate the gimmicks into the experience.  One of the best uses of the formats is a scene when Quaritch meet with Varang, and she gives him a powerful hallucinagenic drug to allow her to read his mind.  Cameron allows us to see from Quaritch’s POV in this scene, so we get the full hallucinagenic experience, which looks wild in 3D and with the smoothness of the high frame rate.  While we aren’t seeing the giant leap forwards in visual effects that the first two films represented, the Weta Digital team still delivers some incredible visual treats throughout the film, and it’s good to see this legendary visual effects studio continue to push the limits thanks to the challenge of keeping up with James Cameron’s vision.  Even if you are unable to see this movie in the ideal High Frame Rate IMAX 3D experience, you’ll see be amazed by the imaginative things that Cameron and company came up with for this third chapter.

The movie does also benefit from a committed cast of actors who over time have gotten better working with the motion capture technology over these last 16 years.  Zoe Saldana still remains the MVP of the series.  While Neytiri takes a bit of a back seat in the plot of this movie, Zoe nevertheless still shines in every moment she appears on screen.  Sam Worthington also seems to improve his portrayal of Jake Sully with every new film.  Starting off as pretty wooden in the first film, he has managed to become more forceful with his portrayal in the these last two.  He’s also becoming more flawless with that American accent, to the point where you can’t even hear any trace of his natural Australian accent anymore.  But, much like with many other space fantasy films, it’s the villains that become the favorites.  Stephen Lang returns again as the primary antagonist Colonel Quaritch, and he still is a blast to watch with his scenery chewing performance.  But, the best thing about his role here is that they paired him with another equally fascinating villain to work off of.  Oona Chaplin is easily the best new member of this cast, delivering a delightfully deranged and venomous performance as Varang.  She is a very compelling villainess, and she brings an incredible, sinister presence into the movie.  I also love the unique design of her outfit too, with the mix of blacks and reds making her feel all the more twisted.  The best part is also how well she works off of Stephen Lang’s performance as the Colonel, making their scenes together all the more electrifying.  The downside of the cast in this movie is that Cameron perhaps has too many characters taking up space in the plot, to the point where some even get neglected despite there being 3 hours to tell the story.  The Sully’s youngest child Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) for instance is barely a presence at all throughout this story.  And some performances seem to suffer from that lack of focus.  I still find Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Kiri to be a little off.  It’s distracting when you are listening to a older aged woman attempting to play a teenager.  It’s clear that James Cameron and the actors love these characters, but it also feels like the movies are not doing them justice either with it’s odd choices in pacing and stilted, unnatural dialogue.

In the end, my feelings about Avatar: Fire and Ash are pretty much the same with regards to how I felt about the other two Avatar films; that they are good but fall short of being great.  There are many times throughout this franchise where I do feel James Cameron coming very close to achieving greatness with these movies.  But, then he’ll drop the ball by falling back on clichés and making his characters deliver some pretty clunky dialogue.  In comparison, I believe that Fire and Ash falls a bit short of The Way of Water, mainly because so much of it feels like a retread.  But, at the same time, I like both of the sequels better than the original.  As flawed as these sequels are, I still feel the ambition behind them, and Cameron is working with a full deck of spectacle that is far ahead of what we had seen in the original.  It’s quite a feat to make these two, 3 hour long epics feel like they breeze by.  Truth be told, I was feeling the movie drag in it’s last hour, especially with a battle scene that felt like it went on a beat too long, but it never got me to the point where I was checking my watch, hoping it would be over soon.  I feel like this movie is unlikely to sway audiences one way or another.  People who hated the other two will like hate this one as well, while people who loved the other movies will get exactly what they want with this new film.  I for one liked revisiting this beautifully realized alien world on the big screen once again, but I feel like the novelty has worn off as well and it’s time for James Cameron to start reconsidering where he should go with the next film.  It’s not enough to keep making the same style of movie over again.  There is potential to be mined here in the world of Avatar; like say taking us to a completely new location on Pandora, like maybe a desert or the frozen polar regions.  Avatar needs variety to help make us care about returning to these worlds.  That’s the thing that I felt was lacking the most with this new release.  At the same time, I was mostly having a good time watching the flick, because Cameron can still deliver some exhilarating action sequences.  We’ll see what the future holds for this record-shattering franchise as James Cameron maps out his final two chapters and whatever lies beyond.  For what it’s worth, he did manage to do it again, but again merely means making almost the same movie as the other two, and we’ll see if that’s enough to set a fire to the box office again.

Rating: 7/10

Animation is in a weird fluctuation state right now, where what worked in the past doesn’t seem to be sure bets anymore.  The last 20 years in animation has been dominated largely by the trifecta of Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks, all of whom have built their brands on the strength of their innovation and storytelling through computer animation.  But, the computer animation craze seems to have died out, as the artform no longer has the novelty it once had.  Animated movies are still being made with computers, but they no longer look like computer animation.  Now films are being made that blend 3D computer animation with what looks like traditional hand drawn artwork.  Sony Animation Studios has been leading this shift in the animation industry with their innovative work on the Spiderverse movies, as well as their breakout hit KPOP Demon Hunters (2025) this year.  We are also seeing small independent studios adopting this new look in animation as well, including this last year’s Oscar winning entry from the nation of Latvia called Flow (2024).  And the bigger animation giants are seeing the results of this shift as their own film have been losing audience interest to newcomers.  This has been effecting original films from the big studios more than anything.  Pixar, which previously had one of the strongest track records of any animation studio in the world, has recently been struggling getting audiences to come see their new original films, like Elemental (2023) and Elio (2025).  Elio became the first non pandemic effected film by Pixar to not turn a profit in it’s theatrical run.  But even while these newer, original films struggle, we are also seeing record breaking success with sequels to past animated classics.  Between Elemental and Elio, Pixar had it’s biggest hit ever with Inside Out 2 (2024), which shows us that the only way these traditional animation powers are able to stay on top at the moment is to capitalize on their past glories.

Pixar’s sister studio Walt Disney Animation is also experiencing this same kind of cycle.  After the release of Frozen II  (2019), Disney has seen all of their original films fall short of crossing the $100 million mark at the box office.  Sure, in the case of Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto (both 2021), they faced headwinds from the lingering effects of the pandemic, but even as audiences were returning to the theaters (especially for animated films) Disney still was struggling at the box office, with both Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023) both becoming big box office bombs.  So, what was Disney going to do to salvage their reputation at the box office?  The answer would come in capitalizing on their past wins.  During the 2010’s, Disney had a strong resurgence in box office fortune with a steady stream of hits that all were brand new stories.  Frozen (2013) certainly got the ball rolling, but they continued to build upon that success with movies that hit with both audiences and critics, such as Big Hero 6 (2014), Zootopia (2016) and Moana (2016).  And while the pandemic era threw a wrench into Disney’s plans at the turn of the decade, the popularity of these films only continued to grow.  What Disney saw with the launch of their streaming platform, Disney+, was dominant numbers being put up by these movies from the past decade.  Moana in fact is not just the most watched film on that platform, but one of the most streamed movies ever across all platforms, even beating out many Netflix titles in the same time frame.  So, with their original films struggling to find their audience, it was time to look back at what worked before and try to replicate it.  A Disney+ original Moana series was quickly reworked into a feature film, and even though critics found it to be a cheapened cash grab, the gamble still worked, and Disney Animation had it’s first billion dollar film in 5 years.  Unfortunately, this means that we are going to be in a period of sequelizing rather than taking a shot at making new and original films in animation when it comes to Disney and Pixar, because these are the only ones that are bring in the money right now.  We’ve already seen this work out for Moana 2 (2024), despite it being a quickly slapped together sequel.  Does Zootopia 2 manage to overcome it’s intentions as a cash grab and actually justify itself as a worthy follow-up to it’s predecessor?

The story of Zootopia 2 picks up right on the heels of the first film.  Police officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has finally earned the respect of her department as it’s first rabbit recruit after solving the case of 13 missing animals from the city.  Her accomplice in solving that crime, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) has also been accepted into the department and the duo have been assigned as partners in the Investigative division.  Unfortunately their different methods in solving crimes have led to some incidents that have gotten out of control, which has forced their superior Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) to declare a separation of their partnership, unless they seek counseling or voluntarily remove themselves from cases.  Despite Bogo’s warning, Judy is determined to follow up on the smuggling case they were just kicked off of.  It leads them to an elite party in the Tundra Town district of Zootopia, hosted by one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, The Lynxleys.  On display at the party is a historical artifact called the Lynxley Journal, which has the original plans and patent for the city’s weather walls.  While investigating, Nick and Judy catch a mysterious figure that has invaded the party.  The figure turns out to be snake, the first appearance of one in Zootopia for many years.  The snake makes off with the Journal, but when confronted by Judy, he reveals that snakes like him have been unfairly scapegoated by people like the Lynxleys and that the journal is the key to helping him return to his rightful home.  Judy seeks to learn more from the snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) but both her and Nick are threatened by the head of the Lynxley household Milton (David Strathairn), who commands great power in the city, with the support of his equally ruthless children Cattrick (Macaulay Culkin) and Kitty (Brenda Song), and less so from his black sheep son Pawbert (Andy Samberg).  The pursuit of the truth takes Judy and Nick deep into the less travelled sides of the city, including Marsh Market, where the duo recieves help from an eccentric beaver named Nibbles (Fortune Feimster).  Can they solve the mystery of Zootopia’s shady past and help the reptile population from being wiped out ever further by the Lynxley’s devious plans.

It’s not a huge surprise that Zootopia would get the sequel treatment, given that the story left things open for further adventures of Nick and Judy.  There’s a ton of justification for developing Zootopia into a franchise because the world of the film is so rich with detail that there is a lot to further explore.  The only question is, did they have the right kind of story to follow up the first.  For me personally, I had very high expectations for a Zootopia sequel.  The first film is easily my favorite animated film of the last decade, and it has a place on my list of the Top Ten Movies of the 2010’s, found here.  Suffice to say, even if the movie is very good, it still has to contend with a movie that I hold in very high regard.  So, how does Zootopia 2 contend?  While I do think it falls short of the original, there is still a lot to like about this movie.  What Zootopia 2 does really well is build upon the world created in the first movie.  One of the great things about the world of Zootopia is the way that animators put in all these details about how the society is built around the different shapes and sizes of the animals that inhabit it.  Animals big and small call Zootopia home, and the architecture reflects this mix, as the society accommodates all the different aspects of the animal kingdom while they live and work in a way that looks so much like human civilization.  Zootopia 2 continues this, and gives us a look at the parts of the city that went unexplored in the first film.  In particular, we get a better view of the parts of the city away from the city center, in what human society would consider the suburbs.  The movie also uses it’s animal puns well, including some blink and you’ll miss them ones, like “Gnu Jersey.”  I have a feeling that this movie will benefit from a lot of re-watches in order to catch all of the different details.  The movie knows it’s strengths and plays to them pretty well, allowing us to see more of the world while at the same time allowing it’s two charismatic leads, Nick and Judy, to carry us through it all.

The only thing that is lacking from the experience is the novelty of the original.  Zootopia was a genuine surprise when it first came out because I feel like a lot of people (including myself) weren’t expecting it to be as deep and thought-provoking as it turned out to be.  A lot of us came to Zootopia thinking it was just going to be a simple, harmless animated romp meant for the whole family.  What we were surprised to find was that Zootopia was actually a profound commentary about modern society with a shockingly poignant message about institutionalized racism and how it unfairly drives people apart.  Sure, the kids would still get all the funny little animal moments to be entertained by, but for the parents there was a thought-provoking subtext to it all that you really didn’t expect to find worked into a Disney cartoon.  That’s what helped to make Zootopia stand out so strongly when it first came out, and in the years since, it’s message has only become even more prescient.  Zootopia 2 doesn’t quite have that element of surprise, since you already know going in that there will be a message in there.  Not that the message is bad by any means.  Instead about being institutional racism woven into society, Zootopia 2 is more about red-lining and gentrification splitting generational communities apart, which in a way is just a branch off of the message of the first movie.  I do appreciate that the movie is still trying to say something about society, but it doesn’t have the same punch as the first film.  Also, the plot twists feel a tad too familiar compared to the first film.  At least this time, the antagonistic force is set up much earlier instead of feeling like an afterthought in the first movie.  We don’t have to wait until the third act to realize the Lynxley family are bad people.  But, most of the rest of the movie lacks the element of surprise that made the original film so shockingly refreshing.

One the things that hasn’t been lost between films is the perfect chemistry between the two leads.  Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are some of the best characters to come out of Disney Animation in recent years, and they continue to be endlessly engaging in this sequel.  Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman both return to these iconic roles, and haven’t missed a beat.  I’m still struck by how much heart Goodwin puts into her vocal performance, making Judy’s emotional moments feel genuinely profound, while also at the same time nailing the more comical moments as well with Judy’s bubbly personality.  And Jason Bateman again proves that his personality was perfectly suited for slick, wise-cracking fox.  A lot of the heart of this sequel still remains the remarkable chemistry between these two.  I really do wonder if there were scenes which they recorded together, because their banter feels so perfectly in sync.  If not, the film’s vocal directors deserve a lot of praise for making the back and forth of these characters feel so perfectly in tune.  There are a lot of returning favorites from the first movie, though a couple of them like Chief Bogo and Officer Clawhauser (Nate Torrence) get their screen time diminished significantly in favor of introducing a lot of new faces.  One of the chief newcomers is Gary De’Snake, whose the heart of the plot of this story.  Ke Huy Quan delivers a very heartfelt performance as the newcomer to this world.  Given that Quan’s own family came to America as refugees must make this portrayal of a displaced animal like Gary something very close to home for him.  One of my favorite new characters though is the new horse mayor of Zootopia named Mayor Winddancer, voiced by a scene-stealing Patrick Warburton, here in a new Disney character role 25 years after his first when he voiced Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000).  Also looking through the cast list of this movie you’re going to see a surprising amount of cameo voices from some pretty big names sprinkled throughout.  These include pro-wrestlers like CM Punk and Roman Raines playing “Ze-Bros,” or the real CEO of the Disney Company playing Bob Tiger.  It may be somewhat of a gimmick to give all of these cameos to big names, even if it’s just for one throw away line, but thankfully it doesn’t take away from the stand out performances of it’s lead actors.

Once again, the incredible design work of the animation team delivers some incredible visuals for us to enjoy in this film.  The movie sees the return of the original directors, Byron Howard and the newly promoted chief creative officer of Disney Animation Jared Bush, and they continue the same outlook over the world of Zootopia that they devoted to the first movie.  This time around, they get to showcase more of the city we haven’t seen, but still keep it familiar enough to feel like a natural extension of what we saw in the first movie.  We saw a little bit of Tundra Town in the first movie, but it was mostly limited to seeing an inner city environment in a deep freeze during the winter.  In this movie, Tundra Town is expanded out more, and the grounds around the Lynxley mansion has the feel of a ski resort after a winter storm.  There are also completely new places shown in this movie like Marsh Market, that definitely have a Deep South vibe to them.  The variety of animals are also incredibly realized.  One particular scene when Nick and Judy visit an underground hideout of reptiles shows just how much fun the filmmakers were having in using all of the characteristics we know about these animals get reworked into a human like behavior.  This film definitely has a more expansive scope to it than the first film, which largely stuck pretty close to the inner city.  You really get a sense of the scale of the city of Zootopia from this film, which includes not just urban centers, but mountain ranges and deserts as well.  It’s also great that we get a lot more of the lore of Zootopia in this city, particularly with regards to how it was all built.  The engineering of the weather walls becomes a crucial part of the plot, and in this movie we get a lot more detail about how it actually works.  For a lot of this movie, it does exactly what you want a good sequel to do which is to give you more; fleshing out ideas from the first movie and enriching it.  But, given the strength of the first movie and how it was so unexpectedly rich, I feel like it elevated it ahead of this one, which does the job right but doesn’t go any further than that.

As far as Disney animation sequels go, Zootopia 2 is undoubtedly one of the best ones.  It’s lightyears ahead of the travesty that was Frozen II and even though I liked Moana 2 better than most critics, I do recognize that it is a lot messier than the original film.  Zootopia 2 may fall short of it’s predecessor, but it still does enough to make it a worthy sequel.  I love the richness of the world it portrays and a lot of the new characters are a ton of fun to watch.  But, I doubt this movie is going to make my Best of the Decade list like the first film did, and it may miss out on my yearly list as well.  All that said, it’s still a film very much worth seeing; it just has the disadvantage of coming after a masterpiece.  Zootopia was going to be a hard act to follow no matter what.  It quite simply is one of the best animated films ever made; by Disney or anyone else.  I would say that it’s unfair to compare one with the other, but it was only a year ago where I saw Pixar follow up one of their best films with a sequel that surpassed it in almost every way, delivering one of the best best films ever with Inside Out 2.  Maybe I’m being a tad too critical because this sequel wasn’t as good as the original, but it’s only because the first Zootopia is still so fresh in my mind, and that affected my viewing of this film.  That said, it still is a worthy follow up to the sequel that doesn’t take anything away from the original and compliments it well.  No matter what I say, this is going to be another massive success for Disney Animation, giving them two wins in a row at the box office which they desperately needed.  I just hope that the success of Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 alongside Inside Out 2’s record breaking success doesn’t lead to a cycle of sequels for the foreseeable future.  It doesn’t bode well that we are getting another Toy Story next summer, and though I am still looking forward to that too, I just wish there was also news of more original films coming as well.  Disney and Pixar can’t just coast on sequels forever.  They need to find ways to improved their marketing of their fresh new films; and to also make them as good as they can be.  People do want to see new things; look at the buzz around KPOP Demon Hunters for example.  Disney has the talent to bring new, fresh ideas to reality; they just need to find ways to reconnect that desire to see new things from the audience to what they have being worked on in their studio.  Zootopia 2 is fun no matter what, but Disney needs to improve their game otherwise their output will just devolve over time into managing aging franchises.

Rating: 8/10

One can’t imagine a world in which we never had a story like The Wizard of Oz in our lives.  Since author L. Frank Baum wrote down his imaginative tome about the magical world of Oz and the little Kansas girl who found her way there, we have been collectively enchanted for generations, finding new and creative ways to bring Oz to life.  No other adaptation has had as deep an impact as the big screen MGM production in 1939; a technicolor masterpiece that has been declared the most watched movie in history.  The Wizard of Oz (1939) remains the gold standard for all adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s stories, particularly in the visual iconography it created.  But, that hasn’t stopped many other people from trying to put their own spin on the Oz mythos.  One of the more creative came in the 70’s, when the musical The Wiz premiered on the Broadway stage and infused the familiar story with contemporary African-American culture and music.  The musical would later be adapted into a movie by Sidney Lumet and starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.  But that wouldn’t be it for The Wizard of Oz on both the Broadway stage and on the big screen.  In 1995, writer Gregory Maguire wrote an alternate history version of Baum’s original tale, recounting the events of The Wizard of Oz, but from the point of view of it’s villain, the Wicked Witch of the West.  Maguire’s book used the Oz story to deconstruct the notion of evil in the stories we tell, and whether people are born wicked or are made to be wicked, and how stories often are used as weapons to villainize the wrong people.  It was a compelling re-imagining of the Oz narrative and that gained the attention of some key people in the musical theater world.  Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz had been wanting to do a musical themed around the Land of Oz and he was instantly drawn to Maguire’s book and found it to be a perfect subject for adaptation.  Working alongside stage book writer Winnie Holzman, Wicked was realized into a lavish, high spectacle musical in 2003, and it has been playing non-stop on the Broadway stage ever since, becoming one of the longest running and most profitable shows ever on the Great White Way.

With the enormous success of the Wicked stage show it was easy to think that a big screen musical adaptation would follow very soon after.  But, the show’s producer Marc Platt held off bringing it to the big screen for twenty years, despite the fact that Universal Pictures was involved in the development of the show for the stage.  Platt’s intention was to allow Wicked to have a full, uninterrupted run on the stage before bringing it too the screen.  People would be less inclined to pay $50-100 per showing for the stage show if they could buy a movie ticket for a fraction of that price or rent it for even less to watch at home.   The Broadway show needed to build up that following first, and thanks to it’s record success both in New York and through it’s worldwide touring company, Wicked didn’t wane over time; it just kept growing.  So, after 20 years of running on stage (minus the Covid shutdowns for one year) it was time to finally bring the hit musical to the big screen.  But, it was going to require the right team behind it.  Mark Platt and Universal ended up turning to director Jon M. Chu , who had come up through directing music videos for the likes of Justin Bieber and many other hip hop groups, but managed to find his biggest success as a film director with the hit film Crazy Rich Asians (2018).  He came into this project with a lot of experience behind him, but Wicked was going to be a much heftier undertaking than anything he had made before.  There was also controversy surrounding the casting of the two lead characters; Elphaba, the Wicked Witch and Glinda, the Good Witch.  A lot of fans of the show wanted to see the return of the show’s original stars, Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba, a role that won her a Tony Award, but it was decided by the production to tap new performers for the roles; in particular Tony Winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and recording artist Ariana Grande as Glinda.  Also controversial was the decision to break the musical up into two films, with a year long gap in between releases.  Despite the worries of many fans, Part 1 of Wicked (2024) premiered over the holiday season and became a smashing success, creating a lot of anticipation for it’s concluding chapter this year.  The only question is, does Wicked: For Good defy gravity, or does the yellow brick road lead to nowhere.

Some time has passed between Part One of Wicked and this second act of the story.  The first part of the tale showed us the start of the relationship at the heart of the story, that between Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande).  Though they started out as rivals at the prestigious Shiz University of the Land of Oz, they found themselves becoming the closest of friends.  But, turmoil would once again test their friendship.  All across Oz, animal citizens continue to loose their rights to co-exist with the humans, leading many of them to be forced into cages which leads them to loosing their ability to speak.  Elphaba sees this injustice and becomes determined to help the animals that she sees being abused and scapegoated.  She believed that if she could make her case to the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) himself, he might be able to undo this injustice.  But unfortunately, upon arriving at the Emerald City, she finds out that not only is he complicit in the mistreatment of animals in Oz, but that he doesn’t have any magical power at all, and is just a con man trying to use her real magical abilities for his advantage.  Not only that, she also learns that the dean of her school, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is also the master mind behind this deception, making her feel even more betrayed.  After standing up against the Wizard, Elphaba is labeled a traitor and a menace to Ozians through a propaganda campaign that paints her as a Wicked Witch.  She chooses to go into exile and acts to disrupt the Wizard’s regime through select attacks.  All the while, Glinda tries to keep up appearances as a Good Witch to counter the “threat” of the Wicked one, while at the same time trying to keep Elphaba’s true whereabouts hidden.  Glinda’s attempt to broker peace between Elphaba and the Wizard becomes increasingly difficult, and it drives a wedge between her and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily), the captain of the Emerald City guards and her fiancée.  It turns out that Fiyero still has feelings for Elphaba, which also makes Glinda feel all the more betrayed by those she thought were her friends.  Is there hope that Elphaba and Glinda can bridge their differences once again and bring harmony to Oz, or are the betrayals too much to overcome?  And is it possible for Elphaba to be seen for the good that she does and not for the wickedness that the powerful have unjustly labeled her with?

For me personally, I came into the first Wicked movie completely cold.  I was familiar with the Broadway show, but I had never seen it performed live.  I also haven’t read the original Maguire novel it’s based on, so the only thing I brought with me going into the first movie was my knowledge of Oz lore from the original MGM classic.  I wasn’t expecting much, because I’ve had a particularly mixed experience with modern movie musicals based on hit Broadway shows.  Some have been pretty great over the years (Sweeny Todd, In the Heights, West Side Story) while others have been pretty dreadful (Les Miserables, Cats, Dear Evan Hansen).  Given how massive of a hit the show has been on the Broadway stage, I felt like there was no way they would be able to translate it successfully for the big screen, and splitting up the 2 1/2 stage show and blowing it up into a two part, 5 hour cinematic experience just spelt disaster.  So, color me pleasantly surprised when I walked out of the first part of Wicked having really enjoyed it.  I was pretty stunned by how well the movie ended up coming together.  The entire first film is longer than the whole of the Broadway show, running 160 minutes, and yet it never felt bloated or sagging.  It used it’s run time remarkably well, and it helped to immerse us the audience into this version of Oz which was incredibly imaginative and detailed.  The movie wound up winning very deserved Oscars for for it’s costumes and production design.  And Cynthia Erivo’s performance of the show’s signature song “Defying Gravity” was such a perfect high note to close the movie on and it really got me excited to watch the second film, which I’d have to wait a year for.  So, was it worth the wait.  Well, a lot of Broadway show fans will tell you that the musical peaks at “Defying Gravity” and the second half of the musical doesn’t quite match up with the first.  That’s true of the Broadway show, and sadly also true of the movie Wicked: For Good, but that doesn’t mean that the movie is bad; not at all.  It’s just not as good as it’s predecessor, and that flaw is not really a fault of the movie so much as a flaw built into the musical from the very start.  In order to be a faithful adaptation, Wicked had to take the bad along with the good.  One would have hoped that maybe the filmmakers would’ve found a work around to make the flaws of the stage show less of an issue here, but alas we see that they still made the translation to the big screen.

There’s still a lot of entertainment to be had here.  Jon M. Chu still proves to be a great stager of musical numbers.  One of the worries I had going into the first film was the fact that it was being directed by a man who cut his teeth as a director of musical videos.  I have long said that the MTV generation ruined movie musicals for a long time, because the prevailing style of quick edits that worked for snappy music videos on MTV did not translate well into musical adaptations for the cinema.  That’s why so many musicals over the last 20 or so years look so cheap, because the music video style just chops everything up in the edit and doesn’t allow for the musical numbers to really come alive.  You look at stage to screen musicals of the past like Oklahoma (1955) or The Music Man (1962), they relied on long takes that really showed off the incredible staging of the different musical numbers, immersing the audience the same way that the stage show would.  Thankfully, Jon M. Chu is not the kind of filmmaker to chop things up.  I think what helps is that in addition to directing music videos, he also directed concerts as well, and he was the creator of the choreography centered Step Up movies, so the man knows the importance of staging.  The musical numbers in Wicked are cinematic, but still feel true to their stage bound origins, and that remains true throughout both parts of the Wicked experience.  While none of the musical numbers here reach the epic heights of “Defying Gravity,” there’s still enough creativity in their staging to still make them feel immersive and visually pleasing.  There’s one particular number, a new original song for Glinda, that does some incredible things with mirrors that I thought really helped it to stand out in the movie.  Another highlight is the song “Wonderful” sung by Goldblum’s Wizard, which has some really great visual touches.  So, even while this is the lesser half of the narrative, there are still plenty of moments that will still enchant you while watching the movie.

I think one of the big issues that ends up hurting Wicked: For Good, which is a flaw inherent from the original show itself, is that it breaks up the heart of what made the first half so powerful, which is the chemistry between Elphaba and Glinda.  One of the best things about the Wicked movies is the absolutely perfect castings of the lead characters.  Cynthia Erivo of course has an angelic singing voice which made her a perfect candidate to fill Idina Menzel’s enormous shoes in the role of Elphaba.  But, she’s also a brilliant actor as well, bringing so much depth to this character.  And despite all of the naysayers who objected to her casting in the role, Ariana Grande has proven to be just as equally brilliant as Cynthia in her role as Glinda.  I would dare say that Ariana is the MVP of this whole endeavor, because so much of this movie rides on her ability to balance her performance between the silly comical aspects of Glinda’s character and the heavier emotional moments that she has to take very seriously.  So much of the movie relies on Cynthia and Ariana’s ability to work so harmoniously together and make this friendship the beating heart of the movie, and they pull it off magically.  It’s just unfortunate that they are apart for so much of Wicked: For Good.  The beautiful chemistry of these two actors is missing for a good chunk of the movie, and that unfortunately make a lot of the film feel like much of a drag.  But the highlights do come once they are finally sharing the screen again.  There’s an especially fun scene where Glinda tries to fight Elphaba one on one that is a hilarious high point in the film, and a much needed moment of levity in an otherwise darker second half.  Thankfully much of the returning supporting cast remain strong, though sadly with less to make them stand out.  Jeff Goldblum steals all of his scenes as the Wizard, strongly leaning into his own eccentric parody of himself, which matches the character well.  It’s also nice to see Michelle Yeoh really relishing her chance to play a villain, giving the character a nice menacing presence.  The one who unfortunately gets shorted the most in this second act is Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.  He still has his moments here or there, but unfortunately the bulk of his character development and screen presence happened in Part One, so he more or less is just here to be a key supporting player.  It’s especially unfortunate since Part One showed off just how good of a musical performer he is.

The movie also does a great job of presenting such a rich, detailed version of the Land of Oz.  One of the best decisions that was made about the adaptation of this musical to big screen was splitting it up into two movies.  If the movie had adapted the story as it is from the stage production, it would have felt rushed and truncated on the big screen.  Making the whole thing a lavish 5 hour long production allows more space to really immerse us in the world of Oz over these two films.  That way we are better able to appreciate Nathan Crowley’s lavish sets and Paul Tazewell’s amazing costumes.  There’s a big difference between what works on the stage and what works on the screen, and the best movie musicals are the ones that find that right balance.  It’s also why so many movie musicals run between 2 1/2 to 3 hours in length, because movies really need that extra time for immersion into the world of their story.  Wicked was such a monumental undertaking that it all couldn’t be contained in just one movie, unless audiences were willing to sit for a 5 hour long show.  Wicked: For Good continues the high stand of the first film’s incredible production design.  The only downside is that because this is the second film of a two part production, the novelty of seeing it all for the first time is not there.  Apart from just a handful of new locations, like the castle that Elphaba holds refuge in, every other place in this movie are holdovers from the first.  It’s probably unlikely this movie will see the same success it enjoyed from last year’s Awards season, because it really isn’t showing much that we haven’t seen before.  But, at the same time, the movie still gives us plenty of time to appreciate all the work that went into the production.  Whether it’s the amazing Glinda dresses that Ariana gets to wear, or the graceful staging of the musical numbers that John M. Chu puts together, Wicked: For Good still succeeds as a visual feast for the eyes.

Despite the strengths comparable between the two films, taken as a whole these Wicked movies are a remarkable success.  There were a lot of high expectations surrounding these movies, especially given the universal success of the stage musical, which even after the release of these movies is still selling out shows across the world.  I really appreciate that the makers of these films didn’t just make a direct translation of the musical, but instead really explored what was possible in bringing this to the big screen.  Like the best movie musicals of the past, these movies understand what it takes to make what worked on the stage become a spectacle on the big screen.  Wicked is an epic just as much as it is musical, full of lavish detail that really makes the world of Oz come alive.  And “Defying Gravity” gives the experience a cliffhanger ending for Part One that even the likes of Marvel would be jealous of.  There’s no doubt that Wicked: For Good is the lesser of the two halves, and the one that is more reliant upon the other to give it meaning.  You unfortunately loose a bit of the magic if you only watch For Good independent of the other film.  The only way that this movie could ever match up with it’s predecessor is if it had that emotional high of the cliffhanger ending, and sadly that wasn’t meant to be since the musical itself couldn’t repeat that same emotional high.  But, there’s still a lot to like, particularly with the performances of the actors.  I also loved the way that, just like the stage show, the plot of the original Wizard of Oz is playing out in the background.  We never even see Dorothy’s face, which is as it should be, because this isn’t her story.  The movie expects us to know how the original story goes, and the charm of Wicked is in how it subverts the original Oz narrative.  Over time, I do see Wicked being celebrated among the likes of The Sound of Music (1965), My Fair Lady (1964), and West Side Story (1961) as one of the greatest stage to screen musical adaptations ever made, especially for how well the spectacle of it all was pulled off.  More than likely it will be because of the strength of the first half, but I hope many out there also see the bright points of Wicked: For Good as something worth celebrating as well.  It may not be a strong finish to this adaptation, which is more the original musical’s fault than anything, but it does do the best job it can to compliment it’s sister film.  And that’s something worth the journey over the rainbow for.

Rating: 7.5/10