It confounded me when I saw the trailer for Oz The Great and Powerful, how James Franco was going to pull
off this very Johnny Depp looking role-- just didn't seem like his
thing. But I went to the damn movie anyway knowing it wasn't going to be the best thing ever and being okay with that. But I had no fucking idea what a pile of absolute shit it would end up being! Over two hours of absolute shit even. Nobody seemed to have put any imagination into it, there was no real storyline, none of the characters were believable, and the CGI was early 2000s quality. It wasn't even pretty. James Franco clearly hated the role and, it seemed, didn't give a dick whether or not he could pull it off (he couldn't). And the two witch sisters, one of whom must have grown up on the British side of Oz (that doesn't make any sense), didn't seem to be all that into it either. Whoever wrote this crap even stole some Sleeping Beauty stuff; using the apple full of poison witch trick.
Then there's the end where "Wanda" (what a funny, funny, joke!) the good witch says to the evil British witch,"In the name of my father I hereby banish you from the land of Oz never to return!" If she could fucking do that, why did any of this steaming pile of movie have to happen at all? Why did desperate, once cutesy, Zach Braff have to be a flying bellhop monkey sidekick? Why was there just one lone lion hanging out threatening to eat him in a land made up of bullshit imaginary characters? And why was the fucking monkey a bellhop!? Flying monkeys were the wicked witch of the West's minions, not fucking baboons. Yeah, baboons are scarier, but they weren't baboons and since this awful movie was clearly set up as a prequel, it really makes no sense. But what am I saying? None of it made sense. It was like a bunch of easily recognizable and reasonably famous actors got together and decided to mock Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, only that wasn't the plan at all and they just created this terrible two hours of bad CGI to show everyone that they could be shitty actors if they really wanted to. Or maybe they all got really excited about it and 1/4 of the way through filming went,"Oh fuck, this is going to be awful," and just stopped trying. Sam Raimi...you have made such wonderful things in your past, and man was there potential. He must just be thinking,"I've made a huge mistake," along with everyone else involved. But then as my good friend Ryan says,"The saddest part is that it's gonna make fuck loads of money," so probably not.
Speaking of Arrested Development, it's finally happening! Please, please, please don't destroy one of the best television shows ever written.
