On November 24, 2025 — three days after “Wicked: For Good” hit theaters and made magic at the box office — an account known as @DiscussingFish on the social media platform X posted a joke concerning the movie. “Jon M. Chu has confirmed he ‘Forgot’ to do the colour grading for each ‘WICKED’ motion pictures,” the account, which is clearly mimicking accounts like @DiscussingFilm, wrote, attributing a quote to Chu that merely reads, “My fault.”
Chu himself responded to the post elsewhere and called it “clickbait,” but it surely additionally hyperlinks to a Variety piece about how Chu forgot to name “minimize” whereas filming a very emotional scene between Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba Thropp and Ariana Grande-Butera’s Glinda the Good Witch in “Depraved: For Good.” The rationale this joke even occurred within the first place, although, is the colours in “Depraved: For Good” look, uh, dangerous.
Different individuals on X seen this downside too. Extra particularly, followers took umbrage with photos of sensible units supposedly used for each of Chu’s “Depraved” movies — 2024’s “Depraved: Half One” being the opposite — primarily based on the cinematic consequence we bought. X person @thediegocrespo reposted photographs of the brightly coloured units with the caption “Director and DP ought to be sued for malpractice,” referencing each Chu and the film’s cinematographer Alice Brooks. When questioned, he continued with some solutions: “Correct lighting, lensing, [and] blocking of actors inside a scene make a world of distinction. Loads of motion pictures shot digitally (and with a number of VFX) look fantastic. It is simply poorly applied with ‘Depraved.'”
I do not disagree with any of this, and I additionally suppose that is half of a bigger downside. The “Depraved” motion pictures, that are partially primarily based on probably the most famously colourful motion pictures in historical past, aren’t visible feasts, and even worse, they don’t seem to be alone.
Ugly, sludgy CGI is a contemporary cinematic epidemic
“The Wizard of Oz,” made in 1939, is legendary for its gorgeous use of Technicolor because it presents the well-known ruby slippers, the Yellow Brick Street, and the Emerald Metropolis. Sadly, none of these cinematic treasures are given a respectful therapy in both of Jon M. Chu’s “Depraved” motion pictures. The Emerald Metropolis is a muddy shade of inexperienced, the Yellow Brick Road is muted (perhaps because of the way the movie links it to oppression), and people ruby slippers persist with the canonical silver presentation (although they do briefly flip pink in “Depraved: For Good”). It is silly to fake, although, that this downside is in any approach particular to the “Depraved” movies; blockbusters simply appear to be this now.
Each the large and small display characteristic frankly insulting examples of sludgy, cruddy CGI results that blur collectively and dampen colours to make all the things look muffled and terrible. Consider, I do not know, virtually any superhero film, and you will notice what I imply; even way back to 2019, an episode within the remaining season of “Recreation of Thrones” titled “The Lengthy Evening” did not grade any of its colours, rendering it almost pitch-black. Movies like “The Wizard of Oz” and different colourful classics like “Singin’ within the Rain” really feel like bygone artifacts of previous eras, as a result of each time a brand new big-budget film comes out, we’re all handled to muted CGI and flat colours as a substitute of the visible feasts you need from a big-screen epic. It is irritating that, for a movie that makes use of a lot coloration in its advertising and marketing — pink for Glinda and inexperienced for Elphaba — all of it appears to be like so lifeless once you see it in motion.
Depraved: For Good has different issues past its unpopular aesthetics
The worst half is that, even with all of the bellyaching I have been doing about “Depraved: For Good” and the way it appears to be like, I genuinely loved a whole lot of this film. Ariana Grande-Butera and Cynthia Erivo are each wonderful, the titular friendship ballad “For Good” made me a little bit misty, and I do now agree that it was a good suggestion to separate “Depraved” into two motion pictures. Nonetheless, there’s one thing I need to harp on but once more about “Depraved: For Good” — it takes a Broadway act that does not take up multiple hour of time and greater than doubles that run-time for completely no cause.
If we will complain about motion pictures trying flat and muted today, because of digital filmmaking and VFX, we should always additionally be incensed that blockbusters refuse to maintain their runtimes affordable. I am fairly certain a film makes the identical sum of money whether or not it is lengthy or brief, and I am much more sure that “Wicked: For Good” would have been a lot better if it had seriously condensed everything, minimize the frankly missable new songs written for Erivo and Grande-Butera (by the Broadway present’s composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, no much less), and tightened up the narrative. Is it dangerous that “Depraved: For Good” appears to be like like that? Yeah. Is it worse that “Depraved: For Good” appears to be like like that and makes you sit there for properly over two hours as properly? That is a definitive, resounding sure.
“Depraved: For Good” is in theaters now.
