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Oz the Great
Oz the Great and Powerful: A rambly review
Spoilers for the movie itself and also for SyFy's Tin Man and kinda-sorta season one Once Upon a Time (kinda-sorta in that a plot arc is mentioned).
I just got back from seeing it. My expectations were not *terribly* high (in that I was expecting an Oz!version of Burton's Alice in Wonderland: visually stunning, with mediocre writing and acting ranging from wooden to decent), and they were basically met. This version of Oz is even more breathtaking than Burton!Wonderland, and I readily admit I spent a good portion of the movie staring fixedly at the gloriously detailed and 100% computer generated background, especially whenever we were focused on Our Heroes, because Our Heroes were... well, boring.
The plot was bland, uninspired, and predictable where it wasn't being a complete mess. The dialogue was meh, as was most of the acting (Rachel Weisz was by far the most interesting to watch, as she hammed it up deliciously whenever she wasn't being surprisingly subtle with Evanora's discomfort with Theodora's crazy. Also: sparkly dress of win and green lightning hands, GO).
There was this part of my brain that WOULD NOT shut up while I was watching that insisted on comparing everything to SyFy's Tin Man, god knows why. In particular whenever Evanora's flying baboons were onscreen, all I could think was "those are really big mobats, i wonder if evanora carries them around in her chest when she's not using them, too. how do they all fit?" and it was terribly, terribly distracting. Of course it didn't help that Evanora also wore black feathers and a gigantic emerald around her neck. (Evanora DOES also shoot green lightning out of her hands, which is something Az DOESN'T do. I mentioned that, didn't I? It's really freaking awesome. Not as awesome as being able to suck out people's souls a la Dementor, but whatevs). Nor that breaking said emerald turns her into an old crone who looks kinda sorta like the one that possessed Az, if you squint. Therefore, Evanora is clearly the Witch of the Dark. Headcanon!
Evanora also channelled a bit of Regina Mills, for some reason. I don't know. But her... thing... about Glinda felt VERY similar to Regina's... thing... about Mary Snow during the Mary-killed-Kathryn arc in season one of OUaT. COMPLETE WITH VICTORIOUS (and slashy) FACE-TOUCHING. Because Evanora's utter hatred of Glinda is never adequately explained (a lot of things aren't), I'm choosing to believe that she had a crush and was viciously rebuffed, and that prompted her realization that Glinda's goody-goody act was nothing but a cover for her UTTER DOORMAT-NESS and that Glinda would be a TERRIBLE leader (she would, seriously. what kind of leader just waits around with the vague hope that someone will show up to save everyone without even a HINT of a backup plan?), so she framed Glinda for the king's murder and seized power herself. Considering how she's all, isn't it marvelous how clear everything is and whatever when she turns Theodora evil, it's not even that much of a stretch. Headcanon!
(I liked Evanora a lot, can you tell?)
I don't know what the writers were trying to do with Theodora. Seriously. The only sense I got of her character was that she has The Temper and makes fireballs. And that she's an unbearably naive idiot. And there were weird Snow White parallels, with the apple and everything. Also, does water make ALL witches burn, or just Theodora? Were her BURNING TEARS OF ACID an intentional reference to book!Elphaba's "tears, they burn like fire" thing?
There was a bit when Theodora threw a fireball at the OBVIOUSLY NONCORPOREAL head of Oscar, and then said "Not so great and powerful after all, huh?" and I was the only one in the theater who laughed. Not because it was such a hammy line (it was, though), but because that's literally ONE WORD OFF ("powerful" instead of "terrible") from what Azkadellia says as she steps over the Mystic Man's corpse after sucking out his soul like a Dementor. It was awesome when Az said it, 'cause she has both the firepower to back it up (I mean, she just uncerimoniously ate the guy's soul) and the boast itself comes from a place in her actual characterization: Az is powermad but also insecure as a result of being her parent's unfavorite, and the Mystic Man (a) is a symbol of hope for the resistance and especially for DG & Co, and (b) insinuates that DG is more powerful than Az seconds before she eats his soul. So this line, in her case, is her way of telling DG (who is forced to watch the whole exchange 'cause she's a prisoner) that Az is more powerful than the Mystic Man and therefore more powerful than DG, who looked to the Mystic Man for guidance. And it works, since DG is clearly terrified.
With Theodora, on the other hand... I guess she was trying to do the same thing? Except... her motivation for getting rid of Oscaris revenge because he spurned her, and she wants to kill everyone else, too... for the evulz, I guess? It's never really explained why she wants to destroy everyone instead of just Oscar.
For that matter, what was the DEAL with the "final battle?" What's the difference between citizens of the Emerald City and the people who live in Glinda's giant... bubble thing? They look the same to me. Are they the same people? Why are they living in both places? If they're not loyal to Evanora, why aren't they with Glinda in her bubble? They must not be loyal to Evanora, 'cause they were protesting when she was publicly torturing Glinda. But why? If they were only loyal to Evanora until they found out she'd framed Glinda (which... I think is what the writers were getting at?), how on EARTH did they find out? No one told them! I just... gack. I don't know.
And then, conveniently, NO ONE noticed Oscar just popping in and huggling Chistery (Er, the flying bellhop monkey. I dub him Chistery, because I can't remember what his actual name was). Even though he was out in the open around the wreckage of the balloon that everyone was ogling right before Oscar popped up. Um... I don't really... understand what was going on here. I really don't.
The villains were VERY nice to refrain from attacking as soon as they punctured Glinda's bubble. You have a group of untrained, frightened people who are FORBIDDEN TO KILL ANYONE even, apparently, in self defense, who now have NOTHING to protect them, and whom you want dead for... some... reason. You have an army of giant mobats and Winkie soldiers. And you just... what... sit on your hands and wait for them to stockpile fireworks and build a giant projection machine and a hot air balloon. Bzuh?
The only explanation I can come up with ties into my earlier headcanon about Evanora framing Glinda for the greater good of Oz (and partially because she was spurned). There's not anything actually *wrong* in Oz before Oscar shows up, except the decimation of China Town (and that happens *because* of Oscar showing up). Everything Evanora does is *reactive* except the random plundering of China Town. The country seems to be running smoothly enough. The people are happy. The city's wealthy (hellooo, giant piles of gold!). There's nothing *wrong* that we can see. It follows that Evanora doesn't *want* to ruin Oz, and is dedicated to being a good ruler. This is supported by the fact that she has NO interest whatsoever in destroying Glinda's people (she specifically intends to drive them AWAY from the Emerald City without slaughtering them--it's Theodora who's all LEAVE NO SURVIVORS, RAWR). Every action she takes is clearly intended to keep her own power without having to resort to genocide; even razing China Town is a (very extreme) attempt to convince Oscar that Glinda IS evil and needs to be killed as quickly as possible. It's clear that, when she gives the Apple of Evil to Theodora, she's expecting Theodora to end up like herself, and when Theodora goes completely nuts and is hellbent on revenge and genocide, Evanora is visibly not comfortable with it.
So basically, the reason Glinda's people have the time to build Oscar's giant con is that Evanora DOESN'T want anyone but Glinda dead and she's not willing to commit genocide to do it, and she spends that time trying to stop Theodora from killing *everyone* and/or trying to talk Theodora down from DESTROY EVERYTHING mode.
Seriously, this is the only conclusion I can come to that makes sense. It also means I was rooting hard for Evanora for the entire climax, because she's demonstrably the best ruler of the four candidates. Glinda, as I mentioned, is a spineless doormat with all the leadership skills of a slug. Oscar is a conman with basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever; he's a complete jerk whose pet the dog moments come off as either giving in out of annoyance (the china girl) or exploitation (Chistery). He never grows out of it or learns to be better, either; the writers were obviously aiming for Moist von Lipwig and got Reacher Gilt instead, if you will. Yes, he's "better" at the end, but because he's never actually shown *learning* to be better, it feels every bit as false and showy as his "defeat" of Evanora and Theodora. Theodora is a genocidal lunatic with no quantifiable motivations outside of blind, vengeance-driven rage. Give me a well-intentioned extremist with my best interests at heart like Evanora seems to be over all that ANY day of the week.
Generally there were a lot of loose ends that were brought up and promptly forgotten. It felt very rough around the edges. I don't think the writers cared very much about what they were writing, honestly.
Also, both villains are "punished" with ugliness. (Although in Theodora's case, that ugliness is relative. We're told she's "hideous," but, um, that pretty shade of green and those not-so-very disfiguring prosthetics aren't enough to make Mila Kunis hideous or even terribly unattractive. Those contacts were creepy, yes, but Wicked has proven rather resoundly that most brunettes actually look pretty good in that shade of green and there's nothing wrong with having a pointy chin and a hooked nose) This DISPLEASES me. And, in Evanora's case, it was completely random and unnecessary; it's built up that witches DIE when their wands (or I guess just the gems *in* the wands?) are broken, so when Evanora's broke, I expected her to MELT or lose her power or something, not randomly turn into the Witch of the Dark (lite!version though, since her head didn't deform THAT much). GAH. Beauty Equals Goodness ought to be a discredited trope by now! It's 2013!! *beserk button*
TL;DR: Evanora was great and totally turns into the Witch of the Dark from Tin Man in about 500 years, you know it to be true. Everyone else... meh.
Done now.
submitted by TNÖ, age 19, Deep Space
(March 10, 2013 - 11:52 pm)
(March 10, 2013 - 11:52 pm)
Our teacher insists on getting these terrible magazines from Scholastic and reading through them with the entire class, and they had a really bad reader's theater of Oz the Great and Powerful. It sounded really stupid, because how does this add to the Wizard of Oz story already? It's pretty much as if Oz became Dorothy and then became ruler of Oz. How awful is that. And pointless. Et cetera.
(March 11, 2013 - 7:07 pm)
Personally, I like the practice of telling the story of how already-established stories came to be. It can be really interesting if done correctly; Wicked, for example, is essentially Oz the Great and Powerful but for the Wicked Witch of the West instead of the Wizard. (Wicked is much better, though, decline in quality of the rest of the series notwithstanding) Or... Once Upon a Time attempts to do this with loads of different fairytale characters (and Frankenstein, for... some... reason), with varying degrees of success, and the Looking Glass Wars trilogy did it with Alice in Wonderland, et cetera. It's a well-established subgenre and, like I said, it can be really good IF the road to the already-established ending is interesting enough to make us not care that we know how it's going to end even before we begin.
With Wicked, that happens. You pick up the book or walk into the show with the full knowledge that Dorothy is going to dump a bucket of water on Elphaba's head and make her melt at the end. The draw here is in finding out about Elphaba's life before, and while the book!verse and the musical!verse are very, very different, both Gregory Maguire and Stephen Schwartz/Winnie Holzman did a good job of making Elphie's journey a sound story in its own right despite the forgone conclusions at the end.
Oz... did not, so much. As I mentioned above, the plot rambled and suffered for at several gaping plot holes, the acting was, with one exception, not engaging enough to make up for bad writing, and even the ending itself with the set up of Evanora=Witch of the East and Theodora=Witch of the West didn't make any sense because they just sort of... wandered off...
Oz didn't even really succeed in feeling like a prequel to Wizard of Oz, not even the 1939 movie!canon like they were (sneakily) aiming for. Oh, the shout outs were obvious and the set up at the end even more so, but the plot itself? does not work with the ending. The ending was jarring because it didn't fit the rest of the movie at all. Letting Theodora go, I can understand, because of the whole cursed-apple thing. But Evanora? If we accept what the movie tells us about her being OMGTEHEBULZ, then... why did they just let her go? Why didn't they execute her for treason (SHE KILLED THE KING, for cripes sake!) or, barring that, at least IMPRISON HER so she wouldn't have the chance to restore her magic and, you know, take revenge with her army of GIANT MOBATS.
The answer, of course, is because they had to let her go so she could become the Wicked Witch of the East (and later the Witch of the Dark, because headcanon).
That's not a sign of good writing.
(Mind you, I'd've been very Not Happy if they'd killed Evanora in the end. She was the best part of the movie BY FAR.)
That said, you know, it's an entertaining movie. The CGI was mind-blowingly amazing, and, well, Rachel Weisz was awesome. It wasn't a bad movie so much as underwhelming.
(March 11, 2013 - 8:31 pm)
TOP
(March 11, 2013 - 7:11 pm)
I saw Oz the Great and Powerful yesterday. I loved it! They are making a sequel. I bet that Evanora will get her powers back through the ruby/silver slippers. I think I read that they are going to use the silver slippers instead of ruby, because they don't own the rights to ruby slippers.
(March 11, 2013 - 9:33 pm)
I imagine they're either going to go with book!verse silver slippers, or change the style of the shoes and call them "ruby shoes" instead of "ruby slippers." Copyright is a weird thing.
In other news, I just got back from seeing it again (because Rachel Weisz, and the theater here is dirt cheap [7 dollars for ticket and snacks dirt cheap :D]), and I have a correction to make to my original post: it isn't Theodora who delivers the "not so great and powerful" line, it's Evanora (after Theodora blows up the balloon). I don't know why I mis-saw it the first time, 'cause it's far more in character a thing for Evanora (who, at this point, does not and never has believe that Oscar is any kind of wizard at all, let alone one powerful enough to challenge her) to say than for Theodora (who does believe that Oscar is the prophesied wizard and is only challenging him because she's a lunatic).
Therefore, Evanora=Witch of the Dark is canon. It's official. There is no way they created a character with so many blatant references to Azkadellia on accident.
(March 12, 2013 - 9:59 pm)
If all goes well, I'm going to see Oz: The Great and Powerful tomorrow at 1:15 at my neighborhood movie theater. They have a $5 Dollar Thursday, so tickets are only $5, plus a $3 surcharge if you're seeing 3D. I have to see it by myself on my own buck cause the mixed reviews (60% score on Rotten Tomatoes) turned the rest of my family off.
The flying monkey's name is Finley. I haven't even seen the movie yet and I know that the flying monkey's name is Finley! When I'm interested in seeing a movie, I go deep into the murky depths of the Internet searching for info on it.
More stuff I know about the movie:
1. Finley is voiced by Zach Braff.
2. Sam Raimi had to edit several scenes in post-production because they were too frightening to get Disney's desired PG rating.
3. Several iconic things from the original movie could not be reproduced by Disney for this one because Warner Bros. holds the rights to them. Such as:
1. The green color of the Witch's skin. They had to have a makeup artist create his own shade of green called theostein.
2. Dorothy's Ruby Slippers. They could use silver slippers like in L. Frank Baum's book, but apparently the ruby ones are too iconic to deviate from. (The slippers are silver in the book, they changed them to ruby in the movie to show off the magic of TECHNICOLOR!)
3. The spiral design of the Yellow Brick Road, and actually the overall design of the 1939 TECHNICOLOR Oz. They had to use diffrent shades of colors, diffrently designed outfits, etc., while still making it look like Oz. No easy task.
4. They are considering a sequel based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
(March 13, 2013 - 3:42 pm)
I prefer to go into movies with as few expectations as possible, so usually I just watch a trailer or two and avoid reading any other promotional material until AFTER I've seen the actual movie. I do this because I like to form opinions of movies (and other types of fiction, too, for that matter) on my own and based as much as possible on JUST the text itself. This isn't always possible, especially with movies that are adapted from books that I've already read, but I do try.
(In Oz's case, this led to an opening credits moment where I heard the first few notes of the music and was like "Danny Elfman composed this, didn't he?" and then, five minutes later... and I felt very pleased with myself. Not that it's difficult to recognize DE's handywork, even though I was skeptical at first because the credits music for Oz was extremely similar in tone and theme to his credits music for Alice in Wonderland. I know Oz is its spiritual successor, but come on! ...The rest of the score was much more specific to Oz though, so that was good.)
My approach to remembering character names is that, if they don't actually capture my interest, I'm not going to bother remembering their names unless I'm doing a serious analysis (and by "serious" I mean "one that's going to be turned in and graded and therefore probably has a list of references at least a page long"). The monkey... was boring. He had a good minute-long speech that was nothing but Suspiciously Specific Denial and a trite-but-still-amusing stereotype joke towards the beginning, but on the whole... his character is just forgettable.
The movie toed the copyright line very closely, and handwaved any differences in detail with the whole "but this ISN'T Munchkinland, it's *Quadling Country*!!" thing. Which was just confusing because, as I mentioned, there is absolutely no effort put into distinguishing Glinda's people from the citizens of the Emerald City, to the point that I think the filmmakers might have forgotten they were supposed to be different (or just didn't care). Seriously, the second time I saw it I was actively looking for an explanation for how the citizens of Emerald City found out that Evanora is the "true" wicked witch (which I am still not sold on), but no one told them. Glinda's people know because Theodora is a TERRIBLE villain and told them EVERYTHING (-_-), but... Glinda's people aren't (or shouldn't be) the citizens of Emerald City, so... I don't know. It's just a really big plot hole and it bothers. me. /digression
I hated Mila Kunis's post-wicked'ed acting even more the second time. It was so... narmy. Blech.
But Rachel Weisz alone is worth the price of admission. Seriously. I love Evanora so much.
Tell us what you think after you've seen it! I'm always interested to read other people's opinions.
(March 13, 2013 - 7:07 pm)
Okay, yesterday I saw the movie. So, this is how it started:
My mom drives me to the theater. There are already a bunch of people in
line, and I go wait with them. To try to move things along, my mom goes
to the machine to purchase my ticket for me.
She buys the ticket from the machine and gives it to me. I thank her,
promise I'll pay her back, and run to the theater. The dude who's
supposed to take my stub is not at his post for unknown reasons, and I
enter the theater.
I'm
in there for about 5 minutes before I realize I don't have any 3D
glasses cause the stub dude wasn't there to do his job. I run out of the
theater.
The dude still isn't
there, even though the theater is surprisingly crowded for a Thursday
afternoon. I unpile a box of little kids 3D glasses behind his box and
pull a pair out of the box. I head back to the theater.
Trailers include Now You See Me, Oblivion, Star Trek Into Darkness, Monsters University, Iron Man 3, and The Croods.
Once
the movie starts, I enjoy the black-and-white opening Kansas scene with
glee. Oscar Diggs is a surprisingly charming antihero. Then he gets swept into the tornado, and it switches from a dream to one of Sam Raimi's horror movies. (You realize that Sam Raimi directed the original Evil Dead, right?) Until he stops yelling "I don't want to die!" pathetically, and says "I promise I can change!" and the tornado seems to stop spinning. Then his crash landing in Oz switches it back to a horror movie, and then his float in the river and the introduction of the color makes it a blissful dream again.
It seems to be leaning back toward a horror film as the balloon basket sinks, then quickly relieves us once we realize the water isn't that deep.
From then on, the movie is enjoyable, although the cheap Billy Crystal imitation from Finley isn't really funny. But most of the movie scores, especially China Girl, who succeeds to make our hearts melt as Oscar mends her. Everything and everyone else scores wonderfully. The journey to Oz starts off a feeling of "What if this wasn't the movie to go see?" But Glinda says to the Wizard, as he protests that he is not really a Wizard, "If you can make them believe, then you're wizard enough."
And by the ending, the wizards behind this film - Sam Raimi, Joe Roth, and, though he's dead, especially the wonderful magic L. Frank Baum created in his works, and those who dared to use it in both past and present - make us all believe, using nothing but a show, an illusion...
A trick.
But a trick that spawned a movie that I will remember forever.
(March 15, 2013 - 3:36 pm)
I won't comment on your experience getting to the theater except to say that yours is clearly a lot bigger than mine (mine's called the bijou, it's one-screen and the lobby's about six-by-six feet, including concessions counter. it's adorable), and the ticket checker's absence is deserving of a good smack upside the head. I worked in a movie theater, once, small enough that we didn't need to check tickets except for really big movies like Harry Potter or something, but that's the kind of thing that is Not Done. *annoyed*
How was the 3D? I'm not usually a 3D fan, since it's so rarely done well...
The trailer for Monsters University made me snicker uncontrollably for a good two minutes, because I've watched advertisements for *real* colleges that are EXACTLY LIKE THAT... without any sense of irony whatsoever. Also, Iron Man 3 made me sad because RDJ was Raimi's first choice to play Oscar, and he would have made the movie SO MUCH BETTER by sheer force of charisma.
The opening was so great, especially the first time, because I assumed that, over the course of the rest of the movie, Oscar would realize what an absolute jerk he is and get better and experience actual character growth. I think this is what the filmmakers were aiming for, especially considering the disparity between how Oscar treats Glinda in comparison with... everyone else... and the China Girl/Wheelchair Girl similarities. However, like a lot of other things in the movie, there wasn't enough follow through and that made the resolution ring false, for me. Oscar's driving motivations never seem to make a switch from the egocentric "I want to be a great man" that he expresses during the opening sequence, and even in the period when he's ostensibly supposed to be discovering his "good heart," he's mostly just interested in the gold and the power (he specifically asks Glinda whether he still gets the gold before he announces that he's the wizard again). Even his gift-giving thing at the end felt like another cheap trick, rather than the heartwarming resolution to his transformation that I think it was supposed to be, because there's simply not enough change in his character to make it *real*. Like I said in the OP, the writers aimed for Moist von Lipwig, the sympathetic con with a heart of gold who ultimately realizes that he can use his skills for the betterment of society instead of its detriment and not only does that but embraces it and does his best to atone for his past life of crime and the people he hurt to the point that he donates every single bit of the money he has from said life of crime TO THE CITY, and instead they got Reacher Gilt, Moist's foil who is still a conman of the worst order and never feels even in the slightest bit guilty about it but uses those skills to make people think he's a man worth following.
(March 15, 2013 - 7:46 pm)
This is a pic of what my local theater looks like from the outside:
(March 16, 2013 - 11:43 am)
Ooh, that looks nice.
This? is the Bijou. Yes, it is orange and adorable and it's run by a guy named Jerry, and before every movie Jerry (or sometimes Zack, on matinees) comes in and talks about the movie, what movies are coming next, and does a ticket drawing for a free ticket/medium drink/medium soda gift card. And also tells people that cellphones, pagers, iPods, other noisemaking devices, chainsaws, and dodgeballs are all off-limits inside the theater.
(March 16, 2013 - 6:58 pm)
Looks small but sweet.
I don't know what else to say about it.
(March 17, 2013 - 7:06 pm)
Oh, sorry, forgot to answer the question about the 3D. It was good enough, but I didn't really notice so much. I like 3D cause it's a nice fad worth some extra money.
(March 16, 2013 - 5:46 pm)
The reason it was so crowded was cuz' it was 5 DOLLAR THURSDAY at the movie theater.
cuob
cuddly undead orange baboons. okay.
(March 16, 2013 - 10:50 am)
One more thing.
The Wizard's real name is as follows...
Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs!!!!!!!!!!!
Read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, which also features my favorite animal character, Eureka, Dorothy's kitten, who fantasizes about eating the Wizard's pet piglets that he uses for his magic tricks. (I know it may seem a little weird that she's my favorite nonhuman Oz character, but she's pretty snappy.)
(March 13, 2013 - 3:48 pm)