Channel Awesome
Ever wanted to see Meg from Family Guy as the Wicked Witch? Be afraid, but for diferent reasons. Doug checks out Oz the Great and Powerful.
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I absolutely load those movies as much as I load the musicals.
*Loath*
Again, loath (“unwilling or reluctant”) and loathe (“to hate”). It’s more likely that he meant the latter as the former wouldn’t make sense. Sorry to act as the language police but I’m bored.
You’re still a better Language Police officer than the ones in Quebec.
Lol that was random, but ok. Also the language is different so I am doing police work in a language that is not even my own, for free. You’re welcome. 🙂
“Loathe” is the word you’re looking for. But anyway, I thought the movie worked on many levels, but yeah there is a lot of cheesiness associated with Sam Raimi movies.
Being a Sam Raimi film, the story also follows the same structure as Army of Darkness.
Personally, I didn’t mind Mila Kunis’ performance. I think she was kind of good, despite what little she has to work with. I think she just needed to work on her screaming because that was really awkward. Was she the best actress that played The Wicked Witch of The West? Plus the character isn’t that well written and it was her choice to be evil, plus the motives to become evil were weak.
I think that the story arcs that Elphaba from Wicked and Zelena from Once Upon A Time have are very well-written, clever, and it’s understandable why they decided to become evil. Elphaba kept on trying to do good and to help others, but no one would give her a chance because of green skin. No matter how much she tried to help others it always came back to bite her in the butt, to the point where she decided that if no one wanted to give her a chance and just wanted to see her as evil, that’s exactly what she was going to give them and make sure they regretted it.
Zelena, much like Elphaba, had been abused by her father and thought of as a monster for something she had no control over. She just wanted to have a family to love her and was jealous because her birth mother gave her up for her own selfish reasons (leaving her in the woods alone where she could freeze, starve, or be eaten alive by beasts), her adopted father never wanted her, and her sister (appeared) to get everything. She was set up for failure because of the selfishness of others, much like her sister. Everything she did was just to be loved, not just a romantic love, but unconditional love in general.
But yeah, Oz The Great and Powerful is a bad movie but it’s better than Maleficent and Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland. However, give me Zelena/Once Upon A Time, Elphaba/Wicked, and The Wicked Witch of The West/The Wizard of Oz (1939) over Theodora/Oz ANY DAY! Better acting, better writing, better characters, and overall BETTER!
The only performance in this movie I liked was Rachel Weisz. Franco was meh…Williams was flat, and cardboard, and Two dimensional.
Kunis is bad, but I forgive her for it. Just hear me out. She had big shoes to fill: she was playing one of the most (if not the most) iconic villains in cinematic history. Those are pretty big shoes to fill. I don’t think she was bad. I think she was just trying way too hard…and on screen, it just looked like she was really overdoing it.
And I can’t blame the makeup…the 1939 film was done by MGM. So, for legal reasons, there’s actually a lot visual stuff they could not do. They couldn’t have her be the same shade of green, etc, etc.
It wasn’t terrible, but eh, it could have been a lot better to say the least.
I didn’t think the sympathetic wicked witch was a poor choice I think the already evil witch sould have used the wizard to steal so artifact of power that turn who ever has it more powerful but turns there outward appearance to match there inner appearance leve it to two witches the love interest turn into the good witch the Oz doesn’t touch it out of fear and with that expand some loor about the land of Oz to make it feel more real.
I wouldn’t say that Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, or Once Upon a Time were rip offs of anything. Wicked was a musical that was first performed 10 years before either of these movies were released. If anything they were attempts to capitalize on the renewed interest in fantasy and fairytale movies, particularly those that offered an edgier, darker look into those worlds (Mirror Mirror excluded. Man that was so cheesy).
Snow White and the Huntsman probably succeeds in it’s attempts more than the rest. It wasn’t a great movie, but it was based only on the original fairytale rather than a Disney retelling or novel and it got the balance between humanizing the Queen and still letting her keep all that outrageous evil in tact at the same time. Filling out the evil Queen, who was so petty and flat in the original tale, and characterizing her as a ruthless ladder climber in world that punished women without power gave her some understandable motivation without attempting to excuse her reprehensible actions and turned out to be one of the movie’s biggest redeeming qualities, helped along by a stellar performance with a ton of weight behind it from Charlize Theron.
Where with Oz the Great and Powerful, the plot just ended up stripping an incredibly iconic and powerful witch character of everything that made her great to begin with, along with most of her agency. Elphaba’s retelling worked because she never had power forced on her and her choices made sense in the world that was built up around her. Idina Menzel also has the maturity and intensity to pull off the role with power. Poor Mila Kunis was just so out of her depth in Oz. She just does not have the chops to pull off such an intense, mature role. She’s trying, bless, but that what it ends up looking like – trying. Trying hard. I can’t believe what a miscast it was.
Oh yeah, James Franco too. So miscast! I actually think Seth McFarlan would have been amazing for the Wizard role. He has that whole huckster, fast talker but out of his depth under it all, thing going on.
Apparently James Franco wasn’t Raimi’s first choice he wanted either Johnny Depp or Robert Downy Jr. but both were too busy.
Robert Downey, Jr.’s asking price was probably raised after working with Marvel. After Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, I think people might be getting sick of Johnny Depp doing typically weird characters.
Here, Depp wouldn’t have been playing a weird character, or at least wouldn’t need to. Oz is actually the most normal character in the movie. He’d be pretending.
No one can beat Margaret Hamilton.
Yeah, I could tell that Mila Kunis was trying her best but yeah, she just wasn’t the right actress for this. Also, her initial appearance was actually scary as heck due to the fact that I saw it in 3D. After that though, I had a hard time taking her seriously. I still like this movie though. The casting and everything else was great, in my opinion. I liked the rest of it. Mila Kunis was my only complaint.
Also horribly sexist, even by Sam’s own admission.
Sexist?
I had read somewhere that they originally asked for Robert Downey Jr. to play the wizard. I really enjoyed the idea of this move and would love to see good version but o know it’s very unlikely this will be remade or even just considered.
I’m waiting for a true to the book adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There has never been one and the witch in the original novel is a very interesting concept for me. She doesn’t have green skin in the book, and she only has one eye; but that eye can see for many miles like a telescope. It’s also revealed that the reason she melts is because she is so old, her blood has literally dried up, and any type of moisture would just melt her away. She always carried around an umbrella. I thought that was clever.
There was an animated version made in 1982 with Aileen Quinn as the voice of Dorothy and Lorne Greene as the voice of the wizard. It’s closer to the book than any other adaptation I’ve seen. You might want to check it out if you haven’t seen it.
I wouldn’t say I load this film, but it was pretty unremarkable.
Robert Downey Jr would be great as Oz but since they could not get him I see Bruce Campbell. He is so underrated. They made the Wicked Witch of the West into a pathetic whiny character like Anakin Skywalker.
I like what the movie was TRYING to do. I like that it took a lot of elements from the books. It just didn’t manage to achieve what it was going for. Many aspects fell flat or just didn’t work right.
I kind of wish they had made the movie about the little china girl. The China Village was just a little one-chapter scene in the book where nothing much happens, just a little diversion. I love what they were able to do with it, and the little girl just stole the show.
I enjoyed this film quite a bit, I liked that the protagonist actually is just a straight-up asshole trying to do things for his own benefit, which is a refreshing change of pace from the typical blank slate protagonists we’re usually forced to follow and I feel like as far as Oz and his main gang are concerned, it really works. But then so much else about this film just doesn’t.
There’s just so many poorly handled modern cliches. The forced love interest who shares 0 scenes and chemistry with the main character, the BS prophecy that just exists for the sake of the plot, the liar reveal crap, main character has to question himself before people somehow inevitably convince him to move forward, stuff like that is just everywhere and it’s done so badly. How much better would this film have been if he came across these decisions on his own or if there was no prophecy and he got himself into this situation? Or if he only revealed himself after he was ready to take out the witch because it’s the right thing to do or something?
And then there’s the other big problem where the villain is just freaking horrible. Honestly, it was the biggest revelation when I realized this was the same actress from Jupiter Ascending but I really wasn’t surprised after this performance…. The effects were good, but holy crap this character was miscast! AND they’re doing the Maleficent thing, as well, where they take a pure evil character and try to give them a sympathetic backstory and it’s just so bad!!!
But those things aside, I feel like there is quite a bit of good humor and entertaining characters here to make it a film worth watching at least once if you’re a fan of the Wizard of Oz.
surprised you didn’t mention the similarities to Army of Darkness, it was practically a remake of that movie.
The liar revealed plot has been played out since the 70’s, at least. You can’t go a day without seeing it on some sitcom. Any episode of Three’s Company that wasn’t about mishearing someone else’s conversation was one of these. At least hear, it has the benefit of the guy actually being a professional liar. The problem is he’s shown to be one in real life, as well.
It does have nice visuals and I loved the doll scenes….but for the most part, I was bored with this one.
I enjoyed this movie. On RottenTomatoes, it’s the second highest ranked Oz movie! I agree that Mila Kunis was a bad choice. The visuals were still amazing! I thought it was quite faithful to the original. I thought most people thought it was okay.