Oz The Great and Powerful is both fascinating and disappointing. It’s disappointing in the sense that most big films are these days. There are so many big moments that the small ones tend to get lost and the big ones are so frequent that none truly stand out. It is fascinating in the ways that it connects to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz and in the ways that it doesn’t.

Oz The Great and Powerful is a prequel to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first of eighteen Oz books published between 1900 and 1921, which was the basis for the MGM classic. Baum (1856-1919) was a prolific story writer and dramatist who authored many other works, none of which achieved the level of success of the Oz books, three of which were published posthumously, the third being an appreciation written entirely by another author. There was plenty of material for the screenwriters to work with.

Walt Disney had apparently wanted to make a live action film of Oz in the 1930s but the failure of the 1933 film version of the children’s classic, Alice in Wonderland kept him from obtaining financing. In the late 1950s he actually began working on a production, but it was scrapped. Now all these years later, his company has finally succeeded in producing a version that incorporates many of the characters from the Oz books but was contractually prohibited from re-creating anything specifically designed for the 1939 film. Those prohibitions included the ruby slippers, the design of the yellow brick road and even the shade of green of the wicked witch.

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