Oz The Great and Powerful has a really good idea – how did the Wizard, of The Wizard of Oz, get to Oz? Who is the Wizard? And it starts well. But...well...
It starts, as the classic The Wizard of Oz, does – in sepia-toned Kansas. A nice visual touch, along with the sepia-tone, is using the Academy aspect ratio in this section (this is the more square picture films were shot in up until the early 1950s, like The Wizard of Oz). So, clearly, they're trying to connect it to the 1939 film. In this part we're introduced to a sideshow magician who dreams of being something greater. Cool. They establish the character. They set the table. It starts well.
They perhaps hit the notes here a little too hard, as though they don't trust that you can put the pieces together yourself on where this is going without hitting you with a “I want to be a great man” sledgehammer. In the 1939 film they show you Dorothy's motivation – she feels out of place and picked on, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” suggests her desire to leave, she runs away but quickly comes back. Here, they tell you, then tell you again, and tell you again just in case you missed it.
Then the twister comes. Oz takes to his hot-air balloon in order to escape a jealous husband (Oz is a bit of a rake) only to get up caught up in the cyclone. And they started losing me here. The cyclone becomes an action scene with things flying at the camera (in the laziest, least inventive use of 3D – and if you see it in 2D, as I did, then it's just horribly out of place and annoying). No visions of his friends or people he's wronged by being a fraud. No, that'd be character – we need action! He's almost stabbed by flying posts! A hole is ripped in the carriage and he falls! But he's saved by the updraft of the cyclone! More flying stuff! Heaven forbid we're actually made to feel and sense something deeply.
When he gets to Oz, the film switches to color and the picture widens out to widescreen. It looks bright and beautiful. But it feels sort of hollow, as again they toss stuff at the camera for 3D, we don't get to so much take it in and be awed as we are cheaply distracted by 'woah, look at this! And this! Look out here comes this!' And, really, the whole rest of the film goes like this – action scenes and superficial spectacle with little focus on character and story. The story, for what it's worth, is essentially the same as the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland from a few years ago, which was produced by the same people as this movie – the people of this land need to be saved from a cruel ruler, and they can only be saved by this one person which leads to a big climatic battle.
As he makes his way through the Land of Oz, he is accompanied by a talking monkey and a china doll girl. The monkey is his assistant from his magic act and the china doll girl is a girl who was unable to walk and went to his act, believing him to be a real magician, to ask to heal her (in the way the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion were the men from the farm in The Wizard of Oz, except here done digitally, not with makeup). Yet, all they really provide is attitude and wisecracks. There's nothing deeper to their presence – I mean, his assistant wants to help and feels bound to, like the monkey is because Oz saved him, and when Oz finds the china doll girl her legs are broken off, so he fixes them so she can walk again, like he wanted to do with the girl at his show, but there doesn't seem to be any recognition of this by Oz.
They don't help him grow. The monkey knows he's not a real wizard, but aside from the first few scenes after Oz tells him, he doesn't really seem to have a problem with it – imagine if he felt conflicted about helping a man he knows is a fraud, imagine if he struggled with not telling people, it'd create conflict and drama and tension. The china doll girl doesn't know and so she joins him and helps and everything is fine – imagine, again, if Oz saw in her the little girl who he couldn't help, it'd create a deeper character as he tries to be a better man; imagine if she believed in him and found out he wasn't a real wizard, again it'd create drama and tension. But, alas, they keep everything superficial and light.
It's an entertaining and fun movie, no doubt. And, obviously, there's nothing wrong with being an entertaining and fun movie. But it stands in a pretty tall shadow. And they clearly took some measures to try and embrace it. Unfortunately, not much. I feel as though, knowing this, they'd take greater steps to live up to it by creating a great story and developing great characters. Those are the things that make the 1939 The Wizard of Oz one of the greatest and most-loved movies of all time – it's well-made with characters we care about and have genuine interest in plus it looks beautiful with great costumes and make-up (for the time) and sets and effects (for the time). Here they seem satisfied hitting the effects and beautiful-looking notes. And it really is beautiful looking; it's a gorgeous film. On my own personal note I would've liked greater use of actual sets (as opposed to what you know was likely just a bit of yellow road with a couple trees on a giant green set – it seems to be a lot harder, at least for me, to be wowed and blown-away by a CG-landscape as opposed to a real set) and practical make-up and effects.
I wanted to like this movie, I really did. It looked like it would be good. But, the best I can say is it's a beautiful-looking, superficial fun movie.
2 out of 5
