5 pieces
Eighteen months after Todd Phillips' much-hated sequel opened to a $37 million weekend and a 30% audience score, it is time to autopsy the corpse. The film isn't good. It also isn't quite what you've been told.
Universal's Wicked Part One grossed over $750 million globally. Part Two, released a year later, faces a specific commercial question familiar to every two-part release: does the second half hold?
Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language narco musical swept the Cannes awards and collapsed in the awards season that followed. The collapse had less to do with the controversies than with the film's formal failure to decide what it wanted to be.
Jon M. Chu's Wicked was the studio musical that worked, and the reasons it worked are specific to the form. A year on, its choices look like a template.
Michael Gracey's Robbie Williams biopic cast its subject as a CGI chimpanzee and posted one of the worst wide-opening results of the year. The film is still better than its box office.