Oz The Great and Powerful

Oz The Great and Powerful is a 2013 American 3D fantasy adventure film directed by Sam Raimi. The film is adapted from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and is a prequel to both the novel and the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The film was released by Walt Disney Pictures in traditional 2D, as well as in the Disney Digital 3D, RealD 3D and IMAX 3D formats.
==Plot==
In 1905 Kansas, Oscar "Oz" Diggs works as a small-time magician in a traveling circus. As a storm approaches, the circus strongman learns Oscar has flirted with his wife and goes after him. Oscar escapes in a hot air balloon, but is sucked into a tornado that takes him to the Land of Oz. There he encounters the beautiful yet naive witch Theodora, who believes him to be a wizard prophesied to destroy the Wicked Witch who killed the King of Oz. En route to the Emerald City, Theodora falls in love with Oscar. They encounter the flying monkey Finley, who pledges a life debt to Oscar when he saves Finley from a lion.
At the Emerald City, Oscar meets Theodora's sister Evanora, who tells him the Wicked Witch resides in the Dark Forest and can be killed by destroying her wand, the source of her powers. Oscar and Finley are joined en route to the forest by China Girl, a young, living china doll whose village and family were destroyed by the Wicked Witch. The three reach the forest and, upon retrieving the wand, discover the "Wicked Witch" is Glinda the Good Witch, who tells them Evanora is the real Wicked Witch. Evanora sees this with her crystal ball and manipulates Theodora against Oscar, falsely claiming he is trying to court all three witches. She offers the heartbroken Theodora a magic apple she says will remove her heartache. Theodora bites it and changes into a green-skinned Wicked Witch.
Glinda brings Oscar's group to her domain in Oz to escape Evanora's army of Winkies and flying baboons. She confides to Oscar that she knows he is not a wizard. However, she still believes he can help stop Evanora, and provides him an "army" of Quadlings, tinkers, and Munchkins. Theodora enters Glinda's domain and angrily reveals her new, hideous appearance to Oscar before threatening to kill him and his allies with the Emerald City's well-prepared army. Oscar despairs of his chances, but after telling China Girl about the exploits of his hero Thomas Edison, he realizes they can fight using prestidigitation.
Glinda and her subjects mount a mock attack on the Wicked Witches' castle using a pulley-rig army of scarecrows blanketed by thick fog. The witches are tricked into sending their flying baboons through a poppy field that puts them to sleep. However, two baboons manage to capture Glinda, who is brought to the city square and enchained. Meanwhile, Oscar infiltrates the Emerald City with his allies, only to seemingly abandon them in a hot air balloon loaded with gold, which Theodora destroys with a fireball. Oscar then secretly reveals himself to his friends, having faked his death. Using a hidden smoke machine and image projector, he presents a giant, holographic image of his face as his "true" form, and a fireworks display to attack and intimidate the Wicked Witches. Evanora fearfully hides in her castle while Theodora flees on her broom, unable to hurt the "invincible" wizard. China Girl frees Glinda, who defeats Evanora, destroying the Wicked Witch's emerald necklace that hides her true, crone-like appearance. The banished Evanora is carried off by the two remaining flying baboons.
Oscar, now King of Oz, uses his projector to sustain the belief he is a powerful wizard. He also presents gifts to his friends: Master Tinker, who helped build his machines, receives Oscar's camping-tool jackknife; Knuck, the grumpy Munchkin herald, receives a mask with a smiley face; the long-suffering Finley receives Oscar's friendship along with his top hat; and China Girl accepts her friends as her new family. Finally, Oscar takes Glinda behind the curtains of his projector and kisses her.
==Cast==
*James Franco as Oscar Diggs/The Wizard of Oz
*Mila Kunis as Theodora
*Michelle Williams as Glinda
*Rachel Weisz as Evanora
*Zach Braff as Frank/Finley
*Joey King as China Girl
*Abigail Spencer as Mrs. Hamilton
*Ted Raimi as Skeptic/Tinker
*Bruce Campbell as Gore, the Dark Wizard
*Tony Cox as Knuck
*Tim Holmes as The Strong Man
*Martin Klebba as Nikko
*Abigail Spencer as May
*Bill Cobbs as Master Tinker
==Production==
Before Sam Raimi signed on to direct the film, directors Sam Mendes and Adam Shankman were also reported to be top candidates. In June 2011, Danny Elfman was chosen to compose the score for Oz: The Great and Powerful. This comes after Elfman and Raimi had a falling out over Spider-Man 2 (2004) and declaring that the two would never again work together.
The script was written by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire with Joe Roth serving as a producer. In an interview, director Sam Raimi stated that Kapner used information about the Wizard from L. Frank Baum's books, but the film will also "nod lovingly" to the 1939 classic film. According to a reporter for Deadline Hollywood, Disney wanted to reduce the film's production budget to about $200 million.
Robert Downey, Jr. was Raimi's first choice for the part of Oz. When Downey declined, Johnny Depp was linked to the role of Oz with Tim Burton attached to direct, which would've made their ninth collaboration. By the end of February 2011, James Franco was in final negotiations to star in this film. This is the first time that Franco and Raimi have worked together following the conclusion of the Spider-Man trilogy. While he will work with Franco, Raimi will be joined by his actor brother Ted Raimi, who appeared on TV and film and played Joxer on Xena, and Bruce Campbell, who did the Evil Dead films and on TV played Autolycus on Xena and Hercules and a dragoon hero on Jack of All Trades.
==Censorship==
The scene when Mila Kunis is transformed from Theodora into the wicked witch of the west was considered disturbing. This was the first entry in the Wizard of Oz franchise to get a PG rating (even PG some people thought was being too gentle). Because of this scene, this film was not recommended to anyone under the age of 8 due to the highly disturbing nature of this film.
== Reception ==
=== Box office ===
Oz the Great and Powerful earned $234.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $258.4 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $493.3 million. Worldwide, it was the thirteenth-highest-grossing film of 2013. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $36  million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the 13th most profitable release of 2013. It topped the box office on its worldwide opening weekend with $149 million. Before its theatrical release, several media outlets reported that Oz the Great and Powerful was expected to duplicate the box office performance of 2010's Alice in Wonderland. However, Oz accumulated less than half of Alice's worldwide gross. This marked the first time an Oz film did not perform poorly as all the previous entries either bombed at the box office or were criticized deeply
Preliminary reports had the film tracking for an $80–100 million debut in North America. The movie earned $2 million from 9 p.m. showings on Thursday night. For its opening day, Oz the Great and Powerful grossed $24.1 million, the fourth-highest March opening day. During its opening weekend, the film topped the box office with $79.1 million, the third-highest March opening weekend. Despite the film's solid debut, which was larger than nearly all comparable titles, it clearly lagged behind Alice in Wonderland's opening ($116.1 million). The film's 3-D share of the opening weekend was 53%. Females made up 52% of the audience. Surprisingly, though, families only represented 41% of attendance, while couples accounted for 43%. The film retained first place at the box office during its second weekend with $41.3 million.
Outside North America, the film earned $69.9 million on its opening weekend from 46 territories. Among all markets, its highest-grossing debuts were achieved in Russia and the CIS ($14.7 million), China ($9.06 million), France and the Maghreb region ($5.77 million). The film's openings trailed Alice in Wonderland in all major markets except Russia and the CIS. It retained first place at the box office outside North America for a second weekend.In total grosses, Oz's largest countries are Russia and the CIS ($27.4 million), China ($25.9 million) and the UK, Ireland and Malta ($23.4 million).
=== Critical response ===
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Oz the Great and Powerful received an approval rating of 57% based on 273 reviews, with an average rating of 6.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It suffers from some tonal inconsistency and a deflated sense of wonder, but Oz the Great and Powerful still packs enough visual dazzle and clever wit to be entertaining in its own right." On Metacritic the film holds a score of 44 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed to average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Kim Newman, writing for Empire, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and said, "If there are post-Harry Potter children who don't know or care about The Wizard Of Oz, they might be at sea with this story about a not-very-nice grownup in a magic land, but long-term Oz watchers will be enchanted and enthralled ... Mila Kunis gets a gold star for excellence in bewitchery and Sam Raimi can settle securely behind the curtain as a mature master of illusion." Critic Alonso Duralde also admired the movie: "That Oz the Great and Powerful is so thoroughly effective both on its own terms and as a prequel to one of the most beloved movies ever made indicates that this team has magic to match any witch or wizard." Leonard Maltin on IndieWire claimed that "No movie ever can, or will, replace 1939's The Wizard Of Oz, but taken on its own terms, this eye-filling fantasy is an entertaining riff on how the Wizard of that immortal film found his way to Oz." IGN rated the film 7.8 and said, "The film is expansive and larger-than-life in scope and so are the performances, overall. Franco in particular hams it up and is often playing to the balcony ... The 3D is utilized just as it should be in a children's fantasy epic such as this – overtly, but with skill. Snowflakes, music boxes and mysterious animals all leap through the screen towards the audience as the story unfolds."
Justin Chang of Variety had a mixed reaction, writing that the film "gets some mileage out of its game performances, luscious production design and the unfettered enthusiasm director Sam Raimi brings to a thin, simplistic origin story." He also compared the film's scale with the Star Wars prequel trilogyadding, "In a real sense, Oz the Great and Powerful has a certain kinship with George Lucas's Star Wars prequels, in the way it presents a beautiful but borderline-sterile digital update of a world that was richer, purer and a lot more fun in lower-tech form. Here, too, the actors often look artificially superimposed against their CG backdrops, though the intensity of the fakery generates its own visual fascination." /Film rated the film 7 out of 10, saying it had "many charms" while considering it to be "basically Army of Darkness: (Normal guy lands in magical land, is forced to go on quest to save that land.) But just when you see Raimi's kinetic, signature style starting to unleash, the story forces the film back into its Disney shell to play to the masses. We're left with a film that's entertaining, a little scarier than you'd expect, but extremely inconsistent."
Richard Roeper, writing for Roger Ebert, noted the film's omnipresent visual effects but was largely disappointed by the performance of some cast members; "... to see Williams so bland and sugary as Glinda, and Kunis so flat and ineffectual as the heartsick Theodora ..." Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post was unimpressed, writing, "Oh, it's exciting enough for a six-year-old; anyone older, however, will already have been exposed to so much on TV, at the movies and on the Internet that this will seem like so much visual cotton-candy. Even a sophisticated grade-schooler will find these doings weak and overblown." Similarly, Todd McCarthy criticized the characterization, writing that the film's supporting cast "can't begin to compare with their equivalents in the original ... so the burden rests entirely upon Franco and Williams, whose dialogue exchanges are repetitive and feel tentative."Entertainment Weekly agreed, giving the film a C+ and saying that the "miscast" Franco "lacks the humor, charm, and gee-whiz wonder we're meant to feel as he trades wisecracks with a flying monkey ... and soars above a field of poppies in a giant soap bubble. If he's not enchanted, how are we supposed to be?" and complaining that "while Raimi's Oz is like retinal crack, he never seduces our hearts and minds." Alisha Coelho of in.com gave the movie 2.5 stars, saying "Oz The Great and Powerful doesn't leave a lasting impression, but is an a-ok watch."
==Videos==
===Cast and Crew Interview===
File:Oz the Great and Powerful - Mila Kunis Interview|Mila Kunis
File:Oz the Great and Powerful - Abigail Lee Spencer Interview|Abigail Lee Spencer
File:Oz the Great and Powerful - Sam Raimi Interview|Sam Raimi
File:Oz the Great and Powerful - Michelle Williams Interview|Michelle Williams
File:Oz the Great and Powerful - James Franco Interview|James Franco
===Trailers===
Oz The Great and Powerful - Extended Trailer
Oz The Great and Powerful Trailer 2013 - Disney Movie - Official HD
Oz the Great and Powerful Featurette - Costume and MakeUp
Oz the Great and Powerful Clip - Travel by Bubble
Oz the Great and Powerful Clip - Argument Over Oz
==Images==
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==Posters==
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==Related Links==
Official site
Facebook
IMDB
Category:Adventure
Category:Adventure films
Category:Films based on novels
Category:2013 films
Category:Black-and-white films
Category:Walt Disney Pictures films
Category:Prequel films
Category:Disney films
Category:Fantasy
Category:2010s films
Category:Film controversies
Category:IMAX films
Category:Rated PG
Category:Films directed by Sam Raimi
Category:Films scored by Danny Elfman
Category:The Wizard of Oz
Category:Films starring James Franco
Category:Films starring Michelle Williams
Category:Films starring Bruce Campbell
Category:2:35:1 Aspect Ratio Films
Category:2:39:1 Aspect Ratio Films