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Oz The Great and Powerful. I hope this is as bad as it gets this year, because if there is anything worse waiting out there, it will probably kill me.

And I saw Movie 43, mind you.

Starting with astonishing miscasting in the form of James Franco, who gives the absolute dirt worst performance of his life as Oz - cast here as a womanizing, dim-witted twit who would probably wind up as one of those people on the TV news who confusedly wandered off into the woods and starved - and continuing right on with pathetically terrible special effects (hello blue screen with Sega CD graphics imposed on it!), and unbelievably stupid plotting

Spoiler

(the witch turns wicked because Oz dumps her for Glenda. Seriously, she's a jilted girlfriend. That's why she's pure evil incarnate.)

, Oz is a torturously awful film that infuriated me to the point that I tore the 3D glasses in half when it was all over. This isn't an homage to the original, or a celebration. It's a dumb, ugly piece of garbage that has nothing to do with the original, and happens to have a name check in the title. I'm thankful there was no attempt to shoehorn Dorothy into this, although there are a lion and some scarecrows. Never the less, as is Oz the Great and Powerful is about as Lame and Agonizing as it gets. I can't remember another time when a film made me this angry.

That said, my family liked it and I don't begrudge them that. I did have to apologize to them for venting at length when they asked my opinion. I felt like a jerk when I saw their smiles fade as I went on. I suppose it's just a movie and shouldn't bother me, but goodness it does. We agree to disagree and I still feel like a heel. Oh well. The movie's garbage but my anger is my own fault.

Still, if we're rating films, this one gets a FUCK YOU out of Five.

Parker is easily worse than whatever Rami has stewed up. At least his has a colourful pallet.

CSM126 wrote:This isn't an homage to the original, or a celebration. It's a dumb, ugly piece of garbage that has nothing to do with the original, and happens to have a name check in the title.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the other novels Baum wrote in the Oz series.

Mr Sausage wrote:

CSM126 wrote:This isn't an homage to the original, or a celebration. It's a dumb, ugly piece of garbage that has nothing to do with the original, and happens to have a name check in the title.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the other novels Baum wrote in the Oz series.

Is it really, though? Reading the plot synopsis, it doesn't seem to correspond to any of the novels and appears to be making new character histories entirely from scratch.

Mr Sausage wrote:

CSM126 wrote:This isn't an homage to the original, or a celebration. It's a dumb, ugly piece of garbage that has nothing to do with the original, and happens to have a name check in the title.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the other novels Baum wrote in the Oz series.

I refuse to believe that because Frank Baum wrote stories with strong female protagonists who fend for themselves, and the general point of this film is "women are incomplete and defenseless without men". Not to mention the witch turning wicked because she just wanted to ride Oz's "broomstick" and didn't get the chance if you know what I mean.

Kirkinson wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:

CSM126 wrote:This isn't an homage to the original, or a celebration. It's a dumb, ugly piece of garbage that has nothing to do with the original, and happens to have a name check in the title.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the other novels Baum wrote in the Oz series.

Is it really, though? Reading the plot synopsis, it doesn't seem to correspond to any of the novels and appears to be making new character histories entirely from scratch.

If not directly, then indirectly. It's not just name-dropping a famous movie, is what I meant.

CSM126 wrote:I refuse to believe that because Frank Baum wrote stories with strong female protagonists who fend for themselves, and the general point of this film is "women are incomplete and defenseless without men". Not to mention the witch turning wicked because she just wanted to ride Oz's "broomstick" and didn't get the chance if you know what I mean.

I actually have no idea what you mean.

You see, Theodora the witch wanted to get into Oz's pants...and because she couldn't she turned wicked and green.

Mr Sausage wrote:

CSM126 wrote:I refuse to believe that because Frank Baum wrote stories with strong female protagonists who fend for themselves, and the general point of this film is "women are incomplete and defenseless without men". Not to mention the witch turning wicked because she just wanted to ride Oz's "broomstick" and didn't get the chance if you know what I mean.

I actually have no idea what you mean.

I couldn't parse this at first, either. But change the first "that" to "your suggestion," and change the first "and" to "whereas" and the sentence magically becomes sensible.

That leaves a dangling "because" and, strangest of all, the idea that I could be suggesting anything that he describes.

What I meant to say is: I find it hard to believe this could be based on any of Baum's books (and its really not, they just used characters and settings from the books), because Baum never wrote his female protagonists as weak, pathetic ninnies in need of a man to save them. Would a powerful witch like Glinda really be helpless until a dim witted schmuck like this film's Oz showed up and started messing around? Disney seems to think so.

It's not based on the books...it just uses the books' characters and setting?

I think we might be working under two different definitions of the phrase "based on."

To me, "based on" would imply: "adaptation of". As in "this is an adaptation of [whichever book]". And in that sense, it's not "based on" any of the books because it's a wholly original story set in Oz, not taken directly from any of the books.

This is kind of a silly thing to nitpick, isn't it? To say something is based on "the novels" rather than "the/a novel" should be clear enough. Additionally, "based on" implies 'takes as its basis/foundation,' which isn't mutually inclusive with "adaptation of." But even so, 'to adapt' implies 'change' anyway, so...?

There are like a million ways that what I said was perfectly alright. Can we move past this now?

I'm really enjoying imagining this argument as voiced by your respective avatars.

I think it's safe to say that this movie, like the novel/musical "Wicked," is an amalgamation of ideas from both the 1939 film and Baum's work. I haven't seen Raimi's film, but the trailers and TV spots have given a ton of information away. I had already guessed which actress would turn out to be the w.w. of the west, and then Roger Ebert bluntly spoiled it in his review anyway. I have read the first three of Baum's 14 Oz books, and in those three, he never provided backstories for the wicked witches. There was no indication that they were sisters, and it is my understanding that this relationship was invented for the 1939 movie. Baum also never described the witch of the west as having green skin (though she did have only one good eye that acted as a telescope), nor did Glinda float in a bubble. All of these elements came from the MGM film.

Now, the new character of the china doll is apparently drawn from Baum's work. In the first novel, Dorothy and friends pass through a small land inhabited entirely by china figurines. Beyond that, having not seen the film myself, I can't say what else has been drawn exclusively from the original novels, but it does appear that the new film is more interested in fashioning ideas from both the books and older film into an entirely new mythology.

CSM126 wrote:because Baum never wrote his female protagonists as weak, pathetic ninnies in need of a man to save them.

While it is true that (in the first three novels) Dorothy and later Ozma are both headstrong, self-reliant young women, there is a subplot in the second novel, The Land of Oz, that could either be read as absurdly satirical or horribly mysoginistic. It involves an all-female army that stages a revolution in the Emerald City, using knitting needles as weapons, apparently because they are tired of being ruled by men. They liberate all the women in the Emerald City and force the men to carry out household chores, but their main desire is to laze about and procure all of the emeralds in the city for their own enjoyment. I chose to read this as satire, and there is a great amount of satirical humor in Baum's books that unfortunately has never made it to any of the popular film adaptations. For one thing, his characters are hilariously self-absorbed and petty, and sometimes just downright dumb (in the first book, even after discovering that the wizard is a fake, the scarecrow et. al. still demand their desired gifts, and the wizard resorts to sewing a pin cushion inside the scarecrow's head, installing a plush heart in the tin man's chest, and giving the lion some kind of Jesus juice just so they'll stop bothering him).

Since Disney does not own the rights to material created specifically for the 1939 film (Warners owns that one as I sure most of us know), Raimi and company had to avoid design or story elements that would be considered a legal infringement. I've heard that they went as far as avoiding the use of the same shade of green for the witch's skin, and digitally altered the hairdo of a munchkin because the lawyers claimed it was too close to a style from the '39 film!

Given Warner's insanely protective nature, I'm really surprised Disney was even able to use Glinda's bubble.

To be honest, I wish someone would just delve deeper into Baum's work for film inspiration. He created so many interesting characters and scenarios beyond Dorothy and friends' familiar trip down the yellow brick road, that it seems a waste to see the same characters being rehashed again and again. Of course, we'll always have Walter Murch's underrated, Disney-produced Return to Oz, which managed to stay truer to Baum's work (albeit retaining the 1939 film's ruby slippers, for a price). But then again that movie was a spectacular flop.

Feego wrote:Of course, we'll always have Walter Murch's underrated, Disney-produced Return to Oz, which managed to stay truer to Baum's work (albeit retaining the 1939 film's ruby slippers, for a price). But then again that movie was a spectacular flop.

This was always a hit in our household (then again, my kids read all the canonical Oz books, i.e. all the ones written by Baum himself).

I just realised rewatching Return to Oz that Mombi is the fourth witch (of the North?).

According to wiki her imprisoning Ozma is what led to the four witches rise to power!

Oh boy, I can't wait to go see one of the latest Hollywood re-boot/make/hash, sequel/prequel/sidequel/spinoff films, in which the artistic decisions are determined by which corporation has the more threatening battery of IP lawyers.

R0lf wrote:I just realised rewatching Return to Oz that Mombi is the fourth witch (of the North?).

Mombi is a comparatively minor witch (with a localized domain) -- and not the same character as the kind and elderly Witch of the North (seen in the first book -- and never heard of again in any subsequent Oz book).

The Good Witch of the North was Mombi's successor, having deposed her as Wicked Witch of the North

Mombi does play an important part in the backstory of the wizard, in that he conspires with her to hide Ozma, who is the rightful ruler of the Emerald City. There's actually a pretty interesting origin story hiding in the original texts, one that paints the wizard as a more complex figure and could have made for a terrific film, as opposed to the bland jilted romance this movie seems to be offering.

matrixschmatrix wrote:The Good Witch of the North was Mombi's successor, having deposed her as Wicked Witch of the North

Is this stated in one of the books -- or are you just speculating? (It's been rather a long while since my last Oz-ian traversal). In any event, Baum seems to have forgotten about the Non-Wicked Witch of the North (featured in book one) pretty thoroughly (and quickly).

Yeah, though I haven't read them since I was a kid so god knows where. The wiki page confirms it, so I'm fairly sure that I didn't just make it up.