Oz The Great and Powerful

Oz The Great and Powerful is a Disney prequel to the 1939 MGM classic The Wizard of Oz. This movie explains how the wizard came to be in the land of Oz.






By their very nature, writing a prequel is more difficult to write than writing a sequel because essentially the writer is writing a sequel with the caveat that nothing can happen in the story that contradicts facts or events that are to occur later in the original movie. For example, the playwright can't have a character die that appears in the original story.

So the writer must not only come up with a compelling story, but one which is limited by future events known to the readers or audience. Add to that mix the fact that The Wizard of Oz is a classic, and the writer knows that they will judged on whether their story does justice to the original or not.

Keeping all this in mind, I went to see Oz The Great and Powerful with excitement and anticipation mixed with trepidation that it might fail miserably.

What I found was a movie that was quite enjoyable, and while it was not as good as the original and did have its shortcomings, it was nevertheless fun and entertaining, and I felt worthy of being considered part of the Oz universe and a true prequel.

James Franco plays the wizard -- a character that is intriguing and fun. Deliberately, for much of the movie, we are kept guessing as whether he is a kind-hearted man who means good, or a charlatan up to no good.

Mila Kuis, who played Jackie in That '70s Show, plays a witch! (As an aside, I noticed some mannerisms by the actress that I recognized as ones she had when she played Jackie.)

There are some new characters in this movie, including a talking monkey that wears a bellhops uniform!

As with the original Wizard of Oz movie, the beginning of this movie is similarly in black-and-white at the beginning, then turns to color when we reach the land of Oz. I very much enjoyed the introductory segment that was in black-and-white.

The land of Oz is shown to be beautiful, majestic, and very colorful. We are made to feel that we have truly entered a different world that is in some respects like our own, yet in other respects quite different. In fact, I couldn't help but think that it was similar to how we were shown the alien world in the movie Avatar.

However, there was a major difference between the movie magic that made the world of Avatar and that which made Oz. With Avatar, everything truly looked real. Although that world was created with computer animation, it nevertheless looked quite real. Oz, however, didn't look quite that real. I could tell with my naked eye that it was created using a mixture of real props, computer animation, and drawn animation! Now while Disney has some of the world's best animators, you can still always tell that you are looking at something drawn.

Also, this movie was not a big budget production that we are so used to today. However, that may have been on purpose so that this movie would have the same "feel" that the original had. For instance, I could tell that in many of the landscape shots, the backgrounds were matte paintings. The producers would use a camera trick of having something flying around the screen in 3-D -- such as falling leaves, or birds, or a witch on her broom -- to draw one's attention to that, and away from staring at the background too intensely.

The attention to detail though was exquisite. For instance, the beginning of the Yellow Brick Road, which begins in a tight circle, was faithfully reproduced down to the last brick!

I could not help but notice some flaws or holes in the story, however. These are plot spoilers, so the reader is cautioned to skip over this section if you don't want to have plot development from the story revealed. These things seemed to occur in the story solely for the entertainment value of the moment, but which didn't really make much sense if one stopped to think about it:

1. There was a giant translucent wall or bubble that surrounds and protects the town where the Muchkins and other folks live from the witches. Who built this wall, and how? How was it that whoever built it was able to keep the witches out while they were building the wall?!

2. The good witch Glinda lives in the evil forest. Now why would she live there, of the places she could live? Clearly the only reason she was put there was to fool the audience into thinking she was the evil witch.

3. At one point near the end of the movie, the wizard calls Glinda "Wanda" -- and she corrects him by saying, "Glinda". Was that a blooper that was left in because it was funny and worked? Or was it written that way? I have to suspect it was a blooper because it really made no sense for the script to have been written that way.

4. Along the way, a little girl made of porcelain joins the group. While the idea of a character made of porcelain is intriguing -- and works just as well as the original movie's scarecrow and tin woodsman -- there were scenes where she was just too sickeningly sweet. There was one scene, for instance, where she asked the wizard to tuck her into bed and he obliges her. That scene seemed completely out-of-character and context for the Oz universe, and seemed "too Disney".

5. The castle in the Emerald City holds all the gold coins and gold artifacts in the land of Oz and belongs to the king. How did all that gold get there, and why? What value is gold in Oz?!

6. Not only is the land called Oz, the wizard's name is also Oz. Why? That's just too confusing, and it didn't add anything to the movie. What was the reason they did that? Was the sole reason so that they could title the movie with the word "Oz"? ("Oz The Great and Powerful") At Wikipedia, the wizard's name is shown to be Oscar Diggs. I'm curious to learn what the wizard's name is in the original L. Frank Baum's "Oz" novels written circa 1900.

The finalé is spectacular. However, again I saw elements of Avatar -- as well the Ewoks from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi -- where the people with little or no technology are able to defeat the mighty and powerful.

These few criticisms aside, I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed the movie and feel it is a worthy prequel. SciFiGuy gives Oz The Great and Powerful a "Thumbs Up".

The best info I could find is that the Wizard of Oz has no other name in the original book. In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz published in 1908:

In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Oz explains that his real name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. To shorten this name, he used only his initials (O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D.), but since they spell out the word pinhead, he shortened his name further and called himself "Oz".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_(character)

Yes, I did hear him say that in the movie. Wow, what a name!

And here we thought Mexicans have long names!

Someone on my board said she believes the "Wanda" comment was meant to be an inside joke because people often confuse the names and call the good witch "Wanda" instead of "Glinda".