A travelling magician with an underdeveloped conscience and a penchant for deceit in his seductions as well as in his stage performances, Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) is not an overly likeable fellow. When an old flame named Annie (Michelle Williams) arrives after an abortive magic act to tell him another man has proposed to her, his response is ambiguous, and she ends up reassuring Oscar that he is a good man.
“Kansas is full of good men,” he replies, invoking the spectacular accomplishments of Harry Houdini and Thomas Edison. “I want to be a great one.”
They are promptly interrupted by a furious circus strongman whose wife Oscar lately put the moves on. One convenient hot air balloon and one unexpected tornado later, Oscar has escaped the black-and-white, 4:3 confines of turn-of-the-century Kansas to a lush, vividly colourful, wide-screen showcase of Avatar-like world-building, which is to say Oz, where Oscar will have the chance to test his mettle against the demands of greatness.
Encountering a talking winged monkey (voiced by Zach Braff, who appears as Oscar’s harried assistant in Kansas), a diminutive china girl, and a kindly, beautiful Good Witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis) who falls for him, Oscar is mistaken – because of his nickname and his handy bag of tricks – for a powerful, genuine wizard prophesied to save the land from the malevolent Wicked Witch.
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Oz the Great and Powerful
Directed by Sam Raimi. |
But in Emerald City, Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) doubts Oscar’s legitimacy. Then, after meeting the third beautiful witch sister, Glinda (Michelle Williams), Oscar discovers he is not the only lying manipulator in Oz and has to sort out the good from the wicked while preparing to defeat an occupying army and restore the land to its former glory.
Although Sam Raimi’s oddball sensibilities still generate arresting moments, including a brief scene in which our heroes teeter in silhouette at the edge of a precipice like a cluster of shadow-puppets, the director seems to have completed his own journey from creative maverick to mainstream standard-bearer.
In general, it’s all too sadly familiar, from the endless panoply of picture-perfect waterfalls and responsive flora – which one-up James Cameron’s Pandora on a scale of saccharinity – to the hillocks that collapse just as our heroes run over them, from sorcerous finger-lightning to wand duels.
Everything is a retread, and not even from The Wizard of Oz, which would make the derivative quality more palatable (though abundant hints do sketch the origins of characters from the Judy Garland film), but rather from the shallow, tepid soup of popular culture – and this despite a wealth of princesses, Munchkins, Nomes, Whimsies and Phanfasms in the 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum, where magic tended to be a bit more interesting than just furious fireballs one after another.
Oz the Great and Powerful plays fast and loose with the conventions of Oz, of good versus evil, and of witches, all in service to a generic, PG-rated, CG-warfare adventure.
The whole concept is in essence a cop-out: in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy fell ambiguously asleep and dreamed of variations on people she knew, whom she came to miss and appreciate all the more in the land of Oz. The self-styled wizard of this prequel, preceding her and being needed in Oz for Dorothy’s eventual arrival, can make no such exit, and so the pay-off is restricted to what can occur within the fantasy, which seems almost self-defeating. Should Oscar not naturally return to Kansas to court Annie at some point?
Between the period setting, his own redemptive arc as protagonist, and the whole fantastical setting (underpinned by the need to interact with other characters who don’t exist before post-production), James Franco has a lot on his plate. Considering how difficult it is to like the character as written for most of the story, he fairs reasonably well, though with his uneven accent, he seems out of his league opposite the trio of high-profile actresses – at least until green witch make-up instantly reduces an A-lister to something that could barely pass for a cheap caricature.
Finley the flying monkey plays comic relief well enough but the humour is distinctly modern and consequently at odds with the realm and nature of Oz.
Ultimately, this is Oz the way Tim Burton’s 2010 monstrosity was Wonderland: a CGI-infested emotional flatland capped off with generic battles and duels, jammed full of references to an original work the nostalgia for which deserves better. In both cases, set decoration and whiz-bang effects seem to have been prioritized above writing and direction.
About as brainy as the Scarecrow and with as much heart as the Tin Man – in both cases, before they met Dorothy – Raimi’s Oz is neither great nor powerful. You are better off renting Stardust.