In collaboration with Detective Steve and Jimmy teh Freak of Freak N’ Nitro TV, we review 2013’s justly-forgotten wanna-be franchise-starter, Oz the Great and Powerful. Call it Part 4 in our occasional series exploring the rise and fall of one of our favorite directors, Sam Raimi. You were the Chosen One, Sam – you were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them. As Steve said in the video description, “Stay tuned for dry sarcasm and booze.”
Once again you have saved me from watching another terrible movie that I’ll probably watch some day anyway. My brother and I read all the Oz books back when we were kids. I’ve maintained an interest in the stories into adulthood and have read many contemporary sequels/prequels/reboots. (For better or worse I’ve even contributed to mess – see http://oz-squad.com .) Most of the new Oz stuff lacks the absurdity and humor that Baum put in the original stories. They’re not perfect but they are creative. And weird in ways that are weird even today.
Ah well. I’ve come to appreciate the original MGM film but I don’t love it. Dorothy is too simpering (compared to her younger and tougher literary counterpart) and the whole “it was just a dream” ending just pissed off the kid version of me.
There are bigger Oz fans than me, thought I have read a good chunk of the series and have watched every screen permutation I have ever come across…
There are bigger Sam Raimi fans than me; I tend to love the non-genre stuff more than most – I like his Western and his Sports Romance a lot, and I will also defend THE GIFT to my dying day…
But how did this filmmaker and this fantasy factory end up creating something so dull and lifeless?
You don’t hire Sam Raimi to slow your film’s pace. Just. Aghast.
My sentiments exactly.
Book Dorothy is Best Dorothy. And the whole “it was just a dream” ending pissed Kid Me off, too. But at least that film got me to check out the books…and, for as audacious as it was at the time, it had no absurd pretensions of being a franchise-starter. Just making the damn thing was hard enough – a high stakes gamble that didn’t really pay off for MGM’s bean counters until over a decade later, despite a ton of positive reviews.
But time vindicated my critical ancestors eventually. That’s why this movie struck me as so absurd. I knew going in that expecting it to even approach Baum’s level of imagination or whimsy would be like expecting the Martians in John Carter to actually show up naked. But this Oz seems to’ve been put together by people who’ve never even seen Garland’s flick. And that’s impossible – at least in the USA, where you can’t escape childhood without watching the thing at least once…
The only logical conclusion I can reach is: this movie was made by aliens wearing human skin. Or perhaps their human puppets, being remotely piloted by some device. Someone really should check the back of Sam Raimi’s neck. (Not to drop allusions to another movie where everybody should’ve been walking around naked just for the sake of it…expect that’s totally what I’m doing.)
Sorry to pose this question on a totally un-related video, (though I enjoyed this review immensely), but I just checked out your twitter (something I don’t have) to see your reactions to Batman v Superman and didn’t see anything other than a reference to being in your bunker waiting for the fallout to stop. Do you have an opinion on the film? And if so, even in its briefest form, will you share it with us? I enjoyed the film, much like I enjoyed Man of Steel, and was curious on your thoughts?
made me go and request this from the library. when you know IN ADVANCE that it’s a piece of shit, you can sometimes glean a few diamonds from it, ala Adam Warlock.