Oz the Great and Powerful
Mar. 11th, 2013 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
becomingkate Enter your cut contents here.Okay so! Oz The Great and Powerful!
I went into it not expecting a lot. From the previews it was hard to tell if it was going to be great or really terrible. From the moment it started, I was sucked in. We saw it in 3D. First of all I didn't know it was going to start in black and white and also be in small format. I really enjoyed this--it was a great way to kind of symbolize the smallness and dreariness of Kansas and also pay homage to the original movie. I caught a couple other nods to the original throughout the movie-first off in the scene where it starts to get windy, there is a man trying to calm a panicked horse. I also noted that Annie said she had been proposed to by a man whose last name is Gale. Gale is Dorothy's last name. I noticed the burn marks when Theodora was crying (it looks like mascara at first, except it's slightly red)-a hint of her weakness to water. I loved the references to the book-the China town, the mention of the Winkies and Quadlings and their respective trades. I loved the recreation of the locations used in the original-the poppy field, the city itself, the wizard's throne room and the curtain, and how his tricks in the end mirrored the tricks the wizard in the original uses (projection of a giant head, and lots of fireballs). I'm a sucker for parallels between different stories which is one reason why I love Wicked. Also, the almost throwaway line to Oz's assistant in the beginning about how "a trained monkey could do it" and Zack Braff ends up voicing the monkey in Oz. Cute.
Okay. But. I HATED THE THEODORA CHARACTER. She was so shallow, and whether this was intentionally a mocking of fairy tales and children's stories in general (meet a guy once and fall in love with him, and fall to pieces if he doesn't love you back) I don't know, but I found it insulting. Evanora wasn't much better. There just wasn't a whole lot of depth to the female characters. Not that Franco had a lot to work with, either. It was nice to see Michelle Williams, since I'm currently watching Dawson's Creek. I like her and she got the character down pretty good but she too was pretty weak. Oh, I also appreciated the kiss on the forehead for protection-also from the book. But just...it had so much going for it in SFX and parallels to the original Oz world but it lacked so much in character development and story, I thought. I was also hoping that by knowing Glinda he'd come around about Annie and go home and ask her to marry him. But they never really tied up that end.
Also! There was a line at the end that Glinda says. Something about "marvel". Professor Marvel was the name of the fortune teller in the original movie.
There was a nice message about how you don't have to be powerful or even great to make dreams and wishes come true. All you have to do is use what you know and what you have and make people believe it. Fake it until you make it, that phrase comes back to me all the time.
I also felt like it didn't know if it wanted to be a children's movie or an adult movie. The Munchkin song was downright embarassing and some of the dialogue was too. As I said before, the weak female characters were not cool. And a womanizing male lead, not much better.
So why did I like this movie at all? I guess for the references, although there could have been a lot more. It just didn't quite get me there as far as story and character development and all. But I guess it left room for a sequel!
I went into it not expecting a lot. From the previews it was hard to tell if it was going to be great or really terrible. From the moment it started, I was sucked in. We saw it in 3D. First of all I didn't know it was going to start in black and white and also be in small format. I really enjoyed this--it was a great way to kind of symbolize the smallness and dreariness of Kansas and also pay homage to the original movie. I caught a couple other nods to the original throughout the movie-first off in the scene where it starts to get windy, there is a man trying to calm a panicked horse. I also noted that Annie said she had been proposed to by a man whose last name is Gale. Gale is Dorothy's last name. I noticed the burn marks when Theodora was crying (it looks like mascara at first, except it's slightly red)-a hint of her weakness to water. I loved the references to the book-the China town, the mention of the Winkies and Quadlings and their respective trades. I loved the recreation of the locations used in the original-the poppy field, the city itself, the wizard's throne room and the curtain, and how his tricks in the end mirrored the tricks the wizard in the original uses (projection of a giant head, and lots of fireballs). I'm a sucker for parallels between different stories which is one reason why I love Wicked. Also, the almost throwaway line to Oz's assistant in the beginning about how "a trained monkey could do it" and Zack Braff ends up voicing the monkey in Oz. Cute.
Okay. But. I HATED THE THEODORA CHARACTER. She was so shallow, and whether this was intentionally a mocking of fairy tales and children's stories in general (meet a guy once and fall in love with him, and fall to pieces if he doesn't love you back) I don't know, but I found it insulting. Evanora wasn't much better. There just wasn't a whole lot of depth to the female characters. Not that Franco had a lot to work with, either. It was nice to see Michelle Williams, since I'm currently watching Dawson's Creek. I like her and she got the character down pretty good but she too was pretty weak. Oh, I also appreciated the kiss on the forehead for protection-also from the book. But just...it had so much going for it in SFX and parallels to the original Oz world but it lacked so much in character development and story, I thought. I was also hoping that by knowing Glinda he'd come around about Annie and go home and ask her to marry him. But they never really tied up that end.
Also! There was a line at the end that Glinda says. Something about "marvel". Professor Marvel was the name of the fortune teller in the original movie.
There was a nice message about how you don't have to be powerful or even great to make dreams and wishes come true. All you have to do is use what you know and what you have and make people believe it. Fake it until you make it, that phrase comes back to me all the time.
I also felt like it didn't know if it wanted to be a children's movie or an adult movie. The Munchkin song was downright embarassing and some of the dialogue was too. As I said before, the weak female characters were not cool. And a womanizing male lead, not much better.
So why did I like this movie at all? I guess for the references, although there could have been a lot more. It just didn't quite get me there as far as story and character development and all. But I guess it left room for a sequel!
