Oz the Great and Powerful is a bad movie from both a feminist and general standpoint, and fails to even be entertainingly bad.
Let me give some background.
When I was four, I was obsessed with the Wizard of Oz. It was the first movie I’d ever seen. I wanted to be called Dorothy and I had a blue dress I wore constantly and my games were all about finding and going down the yellow brick road. Then I got a little older and like most kids, moved on to new obsessions. Mostly, I remember I was starstruck by the bright colors, I thought Dorothy was amazing, and that I’d only watch about half the movie because the rest of the scenes were too scary.
I didn’t think I still had any real feeling about the movie until I saw the trailer for the new one. It was a gorgeous trailer, with all the bright colors and fantastic backdrop I remembered as a child but with modern special effects.
It was about how a guy came to Oz to have women in tight outfits follow him around telling him they believed in him and he was a real hero who just needed to realize he had the power inside all along.
And I discovered that actually yes, I do have really strong feelings about The Wizard of Oz, mostly that the wizard is a goddamn coward and not a hero and fuck you Hollywood! I generally like to believe things improve over time and maybe the most frustrating part of this is looking at this movie and realizing that the original couldn’t be made today.
I was content to wait a while to see it, expecting it to just be your typical movie made objectional only by the tie to the original. Then I read a spoiler and an interview and suddenly couldn’t wait that long.
The movie has an old timey black and white opening, very pretty. Then we meet our main character.
He’s flirting/conning a young woman he’s hired as his assistant – hiring not involving any pay, of course. But she goes on to be too stupid to even remember to raise her hand to volunteer when he asks the crowd for someone and needs to be prompted, because I guess it’s important we not sympathize with her in the least.
That opening scene is the last we’ll see of him being an actual bad guy as opposed to a rough-around-the-edges protohero. During his magic show, he freezes up when a family asks him to heal their daughter and seems genuinely upset to hurt them even by just letting them down, and the crowd turning on him for that is manifestly unfair (it’s also the first hint we get that he’s a complete disappointment as a conman character – he’s only good at fast-talking people he can have sex with). Another woman, this one blonde, shows up afterward, but this doesn’t lead to trouble because he’s been leading two women on – she’s there to say she’s been asked to marry someone else, and he nobly tells her that she should because he’s no good for her. Then the scene goes on to talk about how he doesn’t want to be good but GREAT and otherwise frames this as a completely noble endeavor that just means he can’t support a wife very well. Finally, he’s chased out of the circus by the strongman because he’s also been flirting with that guy’s wife – it’s presenting him as a lovable rogue and it’s only a flaw because it gets him in trouble, not because he’s a terrible person. (Given how the other guy is shoving his wife around, there’s also the decent chance he’s going to be beating her up too.)
The only thing it seems to recognize as an actual bad thing he does is that he’s an arrogant jerk to his partner, who I don’t think I need to specify is male, and he doesn’t treat that guy nearly as badly. At least he’s honest about not respecting him, while his relationship with the women involves lying to them to get something.
Anyway, he jumps into the balloon to escape the strongman, and then tornado. The special effects are silly and exaggerated but definitely eyepopping.
After arriving in Oz, Oz the not-wizard meets a woman in red. He produces a bouquet of flowers from up his sleeve, at which point she says he must be the wizard their former king prophesied would come to save them (and take the throne)!
This is not exactly how the story went in the books.
Anyway, he’s a lot more interested in the throne and the gold than her bit about needing him to save everyone. Really, really obviously so, so she looks like an idiot for not picking up on it at all.
Right after he agrees that yes, he’s totally that guy, there’s screeching and Red says it’s the minions of the wicked witch come to kill him. Already more competent than her in a place he’s never been full of things he doesn’t know, he ends up saving them both with his steely nerves and tricks (seriously he has to cover her mouth to keep her quiet). She identifies herself as a witch here, but that doesn’t stop her from needing him to save her and then help her down or otherwise lead to her doing anything useful whatsoever.
Also, she’s in heels.
We learn the wicked witch poisoned her wizard dad to get the throne, because lol like a woman could have a throne normally. At least the other good witch is the one who chased her off, but still, it didn’t really deal with the problem which is why they need a wizard to save them now.
Anyway, he’s flirting shamelessly with her the whole time, doing his apparently standard music box that was his grandmother’s pitch, and she’s floored because “No one has ever given me something just because they wanted to”. His reason is he wants to fuck you. Anyway, she then implies that for some reason witches don’t really date. This is never followed up on, so I guess the moviemakers just think it’s self-evident that women with even pathetic, ineffectual power scare men off.
Red then starts acting like they’ll be together forever, so the framing quickly shifts to how she’s way too clingy as opposed to how he shouldn’t have been saying anything to get her to kiss him and definitely shouldn’t have pushed even harder as soon as he knew she had no experience and was an easy target. It’s turning his character flaw from being an asshole who lies to women to how oh no, if you lie to women you might run into one of the clingy delusional ones who try to get you to marry them. It’s hard, being a lying asshole. It’s hard and only the moviemakers understand.
Then they run across flying monkey and Red asks the asshole to save it because it’s not like she can do anything. The monkey says that he’s been hiding out since his former master was attacked and now he’ll be the wizard’s servant for saving him, because I guess slavery is okay with monkeys. (Why is there a random flying monkey here? Because. Because is why.)
Not-wizard promptly hands off his giant heavy bag to the tiny monkey for the lulz (Red doesn’t seem to care he’s being a dick because she’s an idiot) and then, after making sure that swearing to serve is something the monkey can’t get out of, tells him that actually, not the wizard, sucker! Because he couldn’t just say that to the woman. No, guys can only do guy talk with guys. Anyway, the monkey does at least say he needs to tell Red this, but it’s presented as just generally that lying is bad, not that he’s doing anything wrong on top of that.
On the way to the palace he and Red get in the carriage and leave the monkey to hop alongside with the bag, because he’s an asshole and Red is, I don’t know, selectively blind and deaf? It’d explain why she can’t figure out he’s lying when he’s so bad at it. This is presumably meant to be funny dickishness.
The movie never seems to understand that the problem isn’t not respecting or thinking of the monkey as his friend, the problem is he’s going out of his way to abuse someone for fun.
At the palace, they meet the second woman, this one initially hidden in darkness and then revealed to be wearing green and black. Hey, I wonder if she’s secretly evil?
Green&Black (“Evanora”) is very happy to see him right and flirts with him until she gets him out of the room, at which point she accuses Red of being an idiot for letting an idiot in. See, she’s deceitful while female, and that makes her bad, unlike the hero, who’s deceitful while male. When Red says Asshole really is the wizard, Green&Black suddenly becomes crazy paranoid and suggests maybe Red’s in league with the wicked witch, then that “deep down you are wicked” prompting an outburst of literal flame from Red so I guess she is. Women! So delusional, temperamental and secretly evil. Red calms down and says she loves her sister and would never turn against her. On the brighter side, the conversation was only mostly about two men, so it does scrape out a Bechtel test pass there. (For anyone keeping score, it passed the reverse Bechtel before he even got on the balloon.)
Anyway, she’s totally right about him being a liar and totally right to be suspicious as he puts her off about actually doing any of that magic, and then continues to be totally right by showing him the giant treasury (note to future Oz rulers: for god’s sake, learn economics), watching him swim around in it, and then saying he doesn’t get it until after he saves them all to get him moving.
This is where his terrible failure of being a conman gets really evident. He’s acting like an ordinary (dickish) guy dropped into the place, not someone with any skill at all in deception. Even around someone obviously testing him he doesn’t manage to step up his game. Does he even think to send her out of the room before rolling around in the gold shouting about how great life is going to be? No. He does it in front of her, then starts talking to her about how awesome the gold is. He’s the worst conman ever.
But at least she got him moving. He’s been told to kill the witch by breaking her wand, so he’s off to do that.
Just him and the monkey. So much for my mistaken belief the two women would at least be secondary characters on this adventure. He makes a banana crack, the monkey’s offended, he asks if the monkey doesn’t like them then. “Of course I love them, I’m a monkey! I just don’t like you saying it.” Because it’s not that your stupid stereotypes aren’t totally right, people just get offended by them because they hate how right you are.
In the distance, they see smoke and the monkey forces him to detour. There, they discover a china village that’s been destroyed by the wicked witch and find a damaged china doll. He has glue in his bag, allowing him to fix her broken legs. I was expecting this to be when he realized that people really are being hurt and that he has skills that can help them, even if he’s not the guy they expected. Nope!
The china doll turns out to have no personality of her own. It’s not initially obvious because at first she’s crying and scared which seems reasonable, but then she insists on going with him to find the wicked witch and just acts like a bratty child doing it because she’s dumb and impulsive, not someone who just saw everyone she knew killed. Then once she gets there she starts being scared…of the dark and ghosts, not the fact they’re going toward the person who killed everyone she knew. Throughout the movie, she’s obnoxiously used to signal whatever emotion the director wants you to feel. “This is the sad scene. The doll is crying.” “This is the comic relief scene. The doll is being silly.” “This is the scary scene. The doll is scared.”
They find the evil witch, only for her to unhood to reveal she’s blondy, the woman he was turning down in Kansas! Blonde people are good so he immediately knows she’s good. Identifying herself as Glinda, and, in case we don’t remember the original movie, specifying she’s a good witch, she says she’s really glad to see him because she too has been waiting for the wizard. Also, Green&Black is the real evil witch who murdered Blonde’s wizard dad. Everyone immediately accepts this, because she’s blonde and blonde people are good. The other two have black hair so they’re evil.
Lest there be a moment of doubt, we promptly cut to Green&Black hissing angrily at her crystal ball. Her sister shows up and she pulls out a music ball and claims the guy came to her room to dance with her and how he must be the wizard because she loves him so much, causing Red to have a breakdown and making it so it’s not actually the asshole’s fault – Red doesn’t lose it because he’s actually playing the field, she loses it because her evil sister lies to her about it, which would have happened regardless. His only flaw is being so handsome and attractive he makes women go mad from jealousy.
Then Black&Green sends out her minions to kill the wizard, so it seems the flying monkeys and the winkies are just evil.
Then back to Blonde, who explains how she couldn’t stop Green&Black and had to wait for the prophesy of a wizard to come save everyone, then graces us with yet another scene of the supposed magic-using women turning to him and asking him to save her. It ultimately falls to her to rescue them, but her powers are pretty pathetic and they barely make it. They go to her rebel kingdom and it’s never explained why she was hanging out wandering around the dark forest in the first place. Also, the kingdom is protected by the first bit of effective magic we’ve seen, a barrier only good people can pass through. The barrier holds the guy a second and then lets him through, so the narration has officially stamped him as a hero.
Then he confesses he’s not actually the wizard and she says she’s figured that out, but for the sake of everyone else, she needs him to continue talking himself up and basking in the limelight. “If you can make them believe, then you’re wizard enough.” So literally she cannot do anything unless they have a guy leading them even if the guy will contribute nothing. Being a superpowerful witch who’s the rightful heir to the throne isn’t enough to get people to follow you, apparently.
Blonde doesn’t seem to have emotions beyond motherish exasperation at him. She’s initially thrilled to see him because she’s been waiting and hoping for the prophesy’s fulfillment, but she doesn’t show any disappointment when she realizes he’s totally useless, or frustration, and certainly not anger at the fact he lied about who he is to get her dad’s throne and treasury. She’s just there to support him.
None of them really do, though. Red is just there to be an idiot child who believes anything she’s told while Green&Black antagonizes everyone for no reason.
We’re now most of the way into the movie and he still hasn’t decided to actually help. See, if he’d resolved to try to do his best to help out with the china girl, then froze up here because he’s overwhelmed by the magnitude of it and how many people are relying on him, then he’d be heroic, and if she’d seen that he could do and had reason to believe in him beyond that he was a guy, it’d have worked. But he’s only there now because he wants the gold and he’s done nothing but run and scream (and almost get stopped by her wall) in the time she’s known him. Then he asks her if he’ll get the gold if he agrees, so he only intended to say he wasn’t the wizard because he was worried the stakes were too high for the potential gain.
Seeing him hanging out with Blonde pushes Red over the edge. She acts like some weird robot girl not understanding this whole “heart” business and just wants the pain to stop, so her sister gives her a green apple of wickedness(?) and by eating it her heart shrivels up. Somehow this also makes her suddenly realize that her sister is the actual evil one. For some reason the heart shriveling makes her tear off her clothes, then she turns into a green monster, because who knows? Green&Black seems pretty confused by it too. Doesn’t seem like the heart shriveling took because she says she wants to be that way when he sees her so he’ll know what he did. Then she does that cackle the witch did in the original movie despite it not fitting with any of her dialogue. She’ll keep doing that throughout the rest of the movie and it’s always just as nonsensical.
So – she’s not actually evil, because she was pretty upset during her transformation and realizing her sister was the actual wicked witch, but now that she’s eaten the apple we know she’s irredeemably evil because we know that when Dorothy gets there, there’s two evil witches and she has to go throw a bucket of water on the green one. So Dorothy is actually murdering the victim of a curse then.
Back in rebellionland, Blonde is showing him around and he’s whining that her army of non-soldiers is useless even though the second group she shows him are guys who can construct anything. What good would that be to someone like him? Then the munchkins appear.
The decades between the first movie and now do not seem to have led to any improvement in the munchkins. I’d say it’s gone backwards – the original movie has a silly dance number, but that’s the munchkins celebrating. Here, they go into a dance number about how great he is because that’s just what they do, and Blonde had them come because she thinks it’s cute. I hope they’re at least better paid this time around.
We know, of course, that he does not rescue the munchkins, who will remain slaves of one wicked witch until Dorothy shows up, but the movie sees no problem presenting him as their savior anyway.
Then they’re attacked. Blonde explains the wicked witch isn’t strong enough to get through their barrier, but now that there’s two… So in other words, it’s his fault everything’s gone wrong. Without him, Red wouldn’t have turned evil and upset the balance of power. Green&Black would’ve eventually screwed up and revealed herself as evil to her sister, and the two good witches could have taken down the one evil one.
Anyway Red, who’s now green throwing off my whole naming thing, shows up to cackle and Mr. Not-A-Wizard decides it’s time to split. Blonde finds him running and tries to get him to talk strategy, because not only do they need him as a figurehead leader because she’s not good enough, she’s also not good enough to be actual leader.
Then the annoying doll reappears and we find out the old wizard granted wishes, because wizards >>>> witches I get it already. Hers is for her family back, which he can’t do except that possibly he can given we don’t know what would happen if they went and glued all the pieces of everyone back together, but hey, that’d be effort. Then he realizes that Edison was a real wizard and he can wizard stuff by being a conman!
The movie is exactly three quarters done with by this point. Pacing? What pacing?
So, they rig up a plan to fight (oh, right, also all the tinkers are male and everyone else involved in the core plan are male) and rush off to do it, and it works great except Blonde is easily kidnapped anyway because women can only accomplish anything when evil.
Then there’s a big climatic fight establishing that the minions of the wicked witches are evil, which I guess explains why it’s fine that in the next movie it’s okay for the wicked witch to have been left ruling over them because they’re helping her by choice. Blonde is chained up to be tortured to death but they defeat the wicked witches by scaring them away. Blonde goes after the older sister and gets her ass kicked, but manages to grab the gemstone the woman’s been wearing, and it turns out that wickedness does always make you ugly, it’s just she’s not green-ugly but old-ugly. “Now everyone will see you as you truly are!” says Blonde, reminding everyone that you should burn any old women you see because they’re the bad sort of witches – you know, the effective kind.
Before Red flies off, the asshole tells her “I know this wickedness is not your doing.” and that if she feels like being good again she can come back. Anyway, a vague statement totally absolves him from how it’s his fault this happened and he doesn’t need to actually go try to help her. Or even apologize. He said she can come back if she stops being evil and that’s enough effort for an ugly girl, you know? Also later he’ll send another girl to murder her or be murdered.
Then the ending! They set up the floating wizard head for the sake of the people so that the witches won’t find out the truth and not at all to intimidate the regular citizens into not asking him for stuff he can’t give due to not being a real wizard, and he’ll rule the city forever because lol like women can inherit thrones, then he and Blonde kiss.
So anyway, even aside from horrible gender aspect, the movie was terrible. I actually really like clever characters, fast-talking characters, and modern characters winning with the help of modern inventions in lower-tech worlds. This failed at every aspect of that. Watching the movie the character might as well be being handed whatever solution he uses – he generally looks as stunned something happened as everyone else. He takes most of the movie to figure out a conman can con his enemies – he initially sets out to attack the wicked witch without any intention to trick her into losing or indeed any plan at all beyond “grab wand” and that’s what he was told to do. Even realizing he has glue in a world where china dolls are alive and have no way of fixing themselves doesn’t spark an ounce of realization that his usual bag of tricks is incredibly useful here.