Trailer Trashin’: Follow the Yellow Brick Road in Oz: The Great and Powerful
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And the holiday week has brought with it a new look at what will hopefully be one of the big family films of next year. As you prepare to load your tables with the approaching holiday feast, this week’s special Thanksgiving edition of Trailer Trashin’ serves up a look at the second trailer for Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful.
Premise: When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz, he thinks he’s hit the jackpot – fame and fortune are his for the taking…that is, until he meets the witches Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone’s been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity, and even a bit of wizardry, Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful Wizard of Oz, but into a better man as well.
My take: MGM’s 1939 movie musical The Wizard of Oz is a cinematic classic beloved by generations of people, and is still well-regarded to this day. With branded properties being all the rage in Hollywood, and L. Frank Baum’s Oz books in the public domain, there’s multiple new takes on the stories in the works and headed to our movie screens. First out of the gate is Oz: The Great and Powerful, a prequel showing how the Wizard first came to Oz, brought to us by Walt Disney Pictures and director Sam Raimi. This is the second trailer for the film, and I think it looks like it could be a winner.
Compared to the first trailer, we see much more of the cast. I really like James Franco as an actor, and he definitely has both the comedic and dramatic chops needed for Oscar Diggs. I feel glad that Franco got the role, rather than the rumored contenders Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr., because I think either of them might have overwhelmed the rest of the film by being too big of a star. We see a lot more of the witch trio – Mila Kunis as Theodora, Michelle Williams as Glinda, and Rachel Weisz as Evanora; they all look amazing, of course, and I’m interested to see Kunis and Weisz depict their characters’ descent into evil. Teen actress Joey King – who most would know as young Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises – voices the living doll China Girl, who clearly gets put through a lot of peril. And according to available information, Raimi mainstay Bruce Campbell plays a yet-unseen character called Gore the Dark Wizard, so we’ll just have to wait to see who that is.
This trailer makes it clear that Sam Raimi is having a lot of fun with the various denizens and creatures of Oz. The flying monkeys definitely remind me of the winged Deadite from Raimi’s Army of Darkness (1992). China Girl is both endearing and slightly creepy. The snapping plant-things seem straight out of the Evil Dead films. And I don’t know why, but I love those two crows that say “You’ll die, you’ll die.”
I love how they keep teasing the Wicked Witch, and that stinger shot at the end was awesome. Anyone who’s seen Sam Raimi’s horror movies knows that Margaret Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West is a big influence on how he depicts hag and crone monsters. Because of that, I can’t wait to see what Raimi does with one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.
James Franco in “Oz: The Great and Powerful.” Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace, SMPSP – © 2012 – Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
But as jazzed as I am about this trailer, there are a couple sour notes. Some of the set-up/exposition lines sounded a little clunky. Also, Hollywood screenwriters, can you please stop falling back on the plot device of the ancient prophecy? It just feels so overused at this point. And the line “Guys, take five,” is waytoo contemporary-sounding to fit in a period setting.
But my minor quibbles aside; this is still a good trailer for what looks like it could be a really good movie. We’ve got a talented cast, a great director, and a cinematic world that hasn’t been depicted on this scale in a long time. Disney has had a mixed track record with its live action tent pole films in recent years, both in terms of quality and box office, but I hope that Oz: The Great and Powerful will both live up to its potential and find an audience. I’ll definitely be checking this one out come next March.
ANTICIPATION: Fly, my pretties, fly…to the local theater to see this movie!
Release Date: March 8th, 2013
Starring: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, Joey King, Abigail Spencer, Ted Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Tony Cox, Tim Holmes, and Martin Klebba
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire
Timothy Monforton
