Saturday, August 10, 2013

Things I've Noticed: Prequels can be Tricky

Last night we got together with a bunch of friends and watched the 2013 fantasy film Oz the Great and Powerful and throughout the film thee were a few key things I noticed:

1) The image on both the poster and the DVD cover (pictured left) actually has nothing to do with any image in the film, there is no point where these characters all interact and certainly never while travelling down the yellow brick road.

2) Films which are designed to be both stories in their own right but also set ups for previously existing stories have an awful lot of challenges in store for them.

3) Much of what is covered in this film comes down to the hope that the Wizard of Oz's story is as interesting as Dorothy's story in the original film and that it might be able to capitalize on the success of both the Gregory Maguire book Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and the successful musical adaption of it as well.

As the movie is still relatively new (5 months as of this post), I don't want to go too deeply into the plot, but I will say that the film had quite a tough challenge if it wanted to appeal to fans of the classic 1939 MGM film, as well of those of the manay adaptations and newcomers as well.

For my money, my favourite Oz film has always been the 1985 film Return to OZ, which is both a great fantasy film and one of the scariest things I ever saw as a kid.

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