Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful arrives with a tagline that promises everything: “In Oz, nothing is what it seems.” The film, a prequel to the 1939 MGM classic, sets out to explain how a Kansas con man became the Wizard. What it delivers is a 130-minute fantasy adventure that looks the part but rarely feels it. The published critical score sits at 5.6/10, with a 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and that split verdict is fair. This is a film of considerable craft and almost no conviction.
Trailer, via Disney UK.
A Circus Magician in a Hot Air Balloon
James Franco plays Oscar Diggs, a stage magician and barnstormer traveling with a Midwest circus in 1905. He is, by the film’s own account, a philandering con artist. When a jealous strongman corners him, Oscar escapes in a hot air balloon and is swept by a tornado into the Land of Oz. The setup is efficient. The problem is that Franco never finds the con inside the man. He plays Oscar as a sleepy-eyed shrugger, and the film needs a rogue.
The supporting cast is where the movie spends its real money. Mila Kunis is Theodora, a naïve good witch who believes Oscar is the prophesied wizard. Rachel Weisz is Evanora, protector of the Emerald City, hiding a hideous form behind an enchanted necklace. Michelle Williams is Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, daughter of the late king. Williams also plays Annie, Oscar’s old flame and, the film notes, the future mother of Dorothy Gale.
That is a strong bench. Weisz has the most fun, playing Evanora as a hostess with a knife behind her back. Williams brings a calm that the rest of the film lacks. Kunis has the hardest job, and the film does not help her.
The Wicked Witch Transformation
The film’s central turn is Theodora’s. Evanora shows her visions of Oscar growing close to Glinda. Heartbroken, Theodora eats an enchanted apple and transforms into a green-skinned witch. It is the moment the whole prequel exists to deliver, and it lands with a thud. The apple is a plot device, not a tragedy. The film has not earned the heartbreak, so the transformation reads as a costume change.
The plot itself moves in a straight line. Oscar agrees to help Theodora reach the Emerald City, hoping for wealth and fame. He befriends Finley, a flying monkey voiced by Zach Braff, and a living china doll, voiced by Joey King, whose village was destroyed. At the Emerald City, Evanora tells Oscar that the Wicked Witch is Glinda and that he must destroy her wand. He sets out to do it. When he meets Glinda, he learns Evanora is the true Wicked Witch and has manipulated him.
That is a clean reversal, and it is the film’s best structural idea. Oscar is not a hero who is tested. He is a fraud who is exposed, then asked to keep faking it for a good cause. Glinda knows he is not a wizard. She believes he can still help save Oz. That is a more interesting premise than the film knows what to do with.
Mechanical Decoys and a Giant Spectral Image
The climax is where Oz the Great and Powerful finally commits to something. Oscar devises a plan using illusions and machinery to frighten Evanora’s forces into retreating. Glinda’s followers distract the witches’ army with mechanical decoys. Oscar sneaks into the Emerald City, stages his apparent death, then reappears as a giant spectral image with fireworks and smoke effects.
This is the one stretch where the film’s logic and its spectacle agree. Oscar wins not by becoming a real wizard but by being a better showman than anyone else. The con is the heroism. Raimi, who built a career on slapstick horror and practical invention, is clearly at home here. The decoys, the smoke, the projected face — it is a director’s sequence, and it is the reason to sit through the rest.
The resolution follows. Theodora, convinced Oscar has real power, flees Oz. Glinda destroys Evanora’s enchanted necklace, revealing her true appearance and banishing her from the city. Oscar becomes ruler of Oz and keeps projecting the illusion that he is a powerful wizard. That ending is genuinely cynical, and the film does not flinch from it.
What the Cast Is Given
The film’s ensemble is large, and several of its members are barely used.
- James Franco as Oscar Diggs, the con artist and stage magician
- Mila Kunis as Theodora, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West
- Rachel Weisz as Evanora, the Wicked Witch of the East
- Michelle Williams as Glinda and as Annie
- Zach Braff as the voice of Finley, the winged monkey
- Joey King as the China Girl
- Bill Cobbs as Master Tinker
- Tony Cox as Knuck
Bruce Campbell turns up as a Winkie gate keeper, and Ted Raimi appears as a skeptic in the audience. These are small roles, and the film does not pretend otherwise.
A Prequel That Explains Too Much
Oz the Great and Powerful is Disney’s third adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, after Return to Oz in 1985 and the television film The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz in 2005. It is set 20 years before the 1900 novel, and it is a spiritual prequel to the 1939 film. Mitchell Kapner wrote the story and shares screenplay credit with David Lindsay-Abaire. Joe Roth produced, with Grant Curtis, Joshua Donen, Philip Steuer and Palak Patel as executive producers. Raimi was hired to direct the year after Disney commissioned the production in 2009. Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp both declined the title role in early 2011, and Franco was cast.
That production history explains a lot. The film was assembled around a role that two bigger stars passed on, and Franco’s casting never solves the problem the part presents. Oscar needs to be charming enough that we forgive him and hollow enough that we believe the con. Franco gets the second half. He never gets the first.
The deeper issue is that the film treats explanation as drama. We learn why the Wicked Witch is wicked, why the Wizard is a fraud, why the Emerald City looks the way it does. None of it deepens the 1939 film. It just fills in blanks nobody was asking about.
Where Oz the Great and Powerful does work is in its design and its final act. The china doll is a real creation, and the mechanical decoy sequence is the only time the film’s scale and its story pull in the same direction. Raimi can stage a con. He just cannot make us care about the con man.
The published score of 5.6/10 is the right call. This is a film with a strong cast, a strong director, and a premise that should work. It does not, because it mistakes backstory for character and spectacle for feeling. The best moment in Oz the Great and Powerful is the one where Oscar admits he is a fake and does the trick anyway. The film should have been built around that idea from the first frame.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
