Luke Owen has a few thoughts on the first trailer for Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful…
Released late last night was the first trailer for Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, the prequel to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, which is directed by Sam Raimi (Spider-Man Trilogy, Evil Dead Trilogy) and produced by the team behind Alice in Wonderland.
We haven’t seen Raimi in the director’s chair since he returned to the horror genre with 2009’s Drag Me To Hell and we’ve been hearing a lot of publicity about this upcoming venture from its all-star cast to its promise of lavish production values.
From the trailer the movie seems to have landed everything in place perfectly. The sets all look impressive (if a little too much like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland) and the cast have moulded into their roles perfectly with James Franco (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) taking centre stage as the future Wizard of Oz. We haven’t seen what Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams are like as their respective witches, but they at least look the part.
Looking at the YouTube comments (where else would you go for insightful thoughts) that have been flooding in since the trailer went up a few hours ago, a lot of people are comparing this to the stage play Wicked, which has become a runaway success since its debut in 2003. I think it’s unfair to compare the two as this movie will be focusing on Oscar becoming the wizard he was prophesied to be, rather than being centred on the Wicked Witch of The West (who does make a small cameo at the end of the trailer, it would seem) and why nobody liked her.
While we don’t know much else about the movie, what we do know for sure is that it will be full of 3D gimmickry as the trailer was stock full of it. So at least we know that we can spend 35% of the movie looking at things unnaturally float in front of our faces.
Overall, this looks to be a promising start for Oz: The Great and Powerful and it has certainly piqued my interest in the film. I guess we’ll have to wait until a more detailed full-length trailer gives us a little more insight into performances, but this first trailer certainly hasn’t melted in the murky Internet waters.
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
Originally published July 13, 2012. Updated December 6, 2019.
