Oz: The Great and Powerful

With all the Wizard of Oz adaptations in development at the moment, it should come as no surprise that Disney is jumping on the bandwagon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz:_The_Great_and_Powerful

Going from what I've seen and heard so far, it looks like this is intended to be Alice in Wonderland's Spiritual Successor. Raimi directing is a plus, though. I'll give it a chance. What do we think? Will it pull a Wicked on us and come into its own, or will it be confined to the shadow cast by Judy Garland and her ruby slippers?

(sits back and waits for complaining)

edited 15th Feb '12 10:29:00 AM by Mort08

After just reading the summary in the Wikipedia article, I'm excited for this. It seems like a great concept. I've always been curious about more details behind the Wizard's origins, and if they can make this plausible, I'd be all for it.

After Alice In Wonderland, who would want a Spiritual Successor?!

From the casting it sounds more like an episode of Wizards Of Waverly Place!

It's Sam Raimi. Outside of Spider-Man 3 (which was marred by Executive Meddling), has he done a film that people didn't like?

Disney, of course.

I just realized, that's Harry Osborn playing the Wizard!

Well, at least now we know why it's an emerald city.

I'm calling it right now: this film will inspire pretentious gothlings to start appropriating Wizard of Oz stuff.

I do hope they put in elements of the original book that didn't get into the original film, and maybe some stuff from the sequels as well. They mentioned having one of the China People in there, so that's a good sign.

Didn't Disney do Return to Oz in the 80's? They already have a film in this style.

They'd like to forget that film exists. And they want to cash in on the wave of fairy tale adaptations.

edited 27th Feb '12 10:49:09 AM by Mort08

Oh really? I liked it.

Hollywood appears to be in a Fairy Tale binge lately.

Got that right. It started with Alice in Wonderland, although the success of that arguably had more to do with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp than, y'know, the material.

After the critical failure, I'm surprised executives looked at the reviews and said, "Hmm. People really seem to hate this! I know! MORE FAIRY TALE MOVIES!"

Executives? Caring about reviews? What madness is this?

You're right. I have no idea what I was thinking.

Besides, it was a success by all means at the box office and it's beloved by goths, hipsters, Johnny Depp fans, and the Hot Topic crowd, so why wouldn't they capitalize on that?

Tranformers was blasted in the reviews, but Paramount is making yet another one. The studios don't care about quality, they care about money.

First a wave of Snow white films, now Wizard of oz. yay.

Can we get an adaptation of some of the other stories in the Oz universe? Ozma, Patchwork Girl, Tik-Tok, Magic of Oz, anything?

Much like Alice In Wonderland, people look at the famous adaptation of The Wizard of Oz so much as a base that the other stories fall by the wayside.

How come Hollywood feels compelled to cover THE ORIGIN STORY of a series when adapting franchises?!

As opposed to anything else from the 12 other books, eh?

'Cause the people who have seen the MGM Wizard Of Oz movie vastly outnumber the people who have read any of the Oz books.

That doesn't really make it any better.

Rachel Weisz talking about the movie.

Not being based on the 1939 film gives me hope. I'm a bit more ambivalent about the lightning powers. Makes me picture Return Of The Jedi's climax with the WWW Leitmotif in the background.

edited 7th Apr '12 10:58:59 AM by Mort08