Published in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a peculiar piece of myth-making. For one thing, it neatly sidesteps the overt moralizing of the more traditional fairy tales of Grimm, Goose et al. Though plenty strange and wonderful in cast and occurrences, Baum’s tale falls a full rabbit hole shy of the rampant whimsy and strangeness of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Yet, neither is it the type of cumbersome (and/or terrifying) allegory that would mark future works involving talking animals. (Of course, by 1945’s Animal Farm, the world’s psyche had been given a lot more horror to digest.)
And then there’s the catalyst of 1939’s classic film treatment, The Wizard of Oz. Would Baum’s initially beloved books have cleaved to the popular imagination without the silver screen assistance of Garland, Bolger, Lahr, Haley and company? It’s hard to say. Would we have Sam Raimi’s latest film? Definitely not.
A prequel to the 1939 groundbreaker, Oz the Great and Powerful tells the story of how a carnival con man (James Franco) arrives in Oz, meets a monkey, a china doll and some witches, and becomes the Wizard. From the get-go, Raimi’s film is both tribute to and evocation of its predecessor. After a black-and-white opening that quickly gives way to a tornado-powered exit, pretty much everything encountered in Oz that was seen in the original film—munchkins, a yellow brick road, a green witch astride a broomstick in desperate need of an oil change—are faithful recreations of the original vision.
More often than not, this isn’t a bad thing. Much in the same manner that Raimi’s first two Spider-Man movies successfully channeled the vigor and élan of the original comics even while presenting them for modern tastes to devour, his Oz is replete with the spirit and vision of the original film. (For those hoping for more subversive themes, such as imagined in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, no dice.)
That’s not to say the production design relies solely on a movie 74 years its senior. Much as Baum’s original book drew its inspiration from myriad, disparate sources without overly relying on any of them, Raimi’s film draws on plenty of non-Ozian imagery to build its world. There are the magnificent vistas that evoke Maxfield Parrish, an Emerald City that occasionally looks like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the Winkies, who look like nothing less than an army of Gerard Depardieus (post Green Card, poor things).
The cast does a first-rate job. Franco, who in the past few years has drifted a bit toward “Joaquin Phoenix Land” in terms of real world eccentricity, turns in a pleasantly nuanced performance in a role that doesn’t really demand one.