#oz: the great and powerful

[userghouls]

COLORS of Oz: The Great and Powerful [template]

@lgbtqcreators creator bingo - [rainbow | free choice-creative]

[themousefromfantasyland]

For those who still remember Disney's Oz: The Great and Powerful:

Since the daughter of the pre-Wizard King of Oz is Glinda in this continuity, my headcanon is that Ozma in this universe is the daughter of Oscar and Glinda.

Then Evanora, the Wicked Witch of the East, uses the witch Mombi to kidnap Ozma in revenge for being deposed by Oscar and Glinda.

Distraught, Oscar and Glinda start drifting away from each other, with Oscar isolating himself more and more in his Wizard persona. This until the day when a certain Kansas girl finally sees the man hiding behind the curtains.

[peasantflour]

It’s very bold to assume anyone will recognize “Oz: The Great and Powerful” fan art, but I’m somewhat proud of this, so I’m posting it anyway.

[adaptations-polls]

Which version of this do you prefer?

Note: This is a part 2 poll, mostly meant to feature looser adaptations/reinterpretations of the Oz books. You can find the first part here

Further notes:

The stage version of The Wiz looks like it is currently only licensable for school productions; but the script itself also appears to be separately available, and I believe there is currently a revival running on Broadway

Wicked is apparently licensable in Australia(?) and not elsewhere, but it is still running on Broadway, too

All the movies/shows are available on DVD or streaming

There's also a direct Wizard of Oz stage musical, but there's actually like *four* of them and some of them seem to build off each other to a degree? And multiple versions are licensable. I didn't want to include all four versions (this polls is at the max amount of things I want to include even without any of them) and I am not entirely sure which version is the one that is most commonly revived/considered the main version, so I've just opted to leave it off the poll for now.

[data-reel]

Oz the Great and Powerful - (2013) dir. Sam Raimi

[goldennekomario]

A Wizard of Oz lineup

[katiestardoodles]

Thank you tumblr user because your silly post inspired me lmao

💛💚🤍

[illegiblehandwriting1]

"Why are you still around, anyway? he groused. What do you want from me, Oh Most Great and Powerful Highness?"

-Smoke & Ashes, chapter 18

Sky's such a bitch, I love him

also i'm thinking tomorrow. I'll post it tomorrow.

[mask131]

What Oz could have been: The Great and Powerful

I first heard about the original script for Disney's "Oz The Great and Powerful" through a fan art of Theodora by the brilliant artist hwilki65 over at DeviantArt. The fan-art in question is gone now, but do not hesitate to go check the artist's gallery over at DeviantArt, he is one of the most thorough Oz artists of the Internet with tons of clever and beautiful takes on the Ozian world.

Everybody remembers Disney's "Oz The Great and Powerful", right? This Disney movie that attempted to be a prequel to the MGM movie, and yet couldn't really because Disney didn't have the rights? This VERY divise 2013 movie which was a big flop in terms of Oz adaptation? You remember, this thing which took a very cool concept of prequel, a lot of beautiful visuals and impressive visual effects and just... drowned it in cliche plot points, wasted opportunities and the most insufferable characters you ever met?

Yeah, this movie.

In his description for his fan-art, hwilki65 evoked the original scenario for the movie. His fan-art was of the "original" Theodora, not the one from the movie - and while the final product might seem like a simple cash-grab attempting at reclaiming the MGM heritage, these early drafts proved that the movie ACTUALLY started out as much more faithful to the Oz books and more sincere in its attempt at reconciliating the various Oz heritages into something new.

Of course, the idea of a better original version of the movie, that eventually was butchered into the story we can see today, was very intriguing. So I checked out the original script for the movie (but not after YEARS of searching it around, because it wasn't disponible online at first). And OH MY! The original scenario is indeed very different from the final movie, and quite better in term of overall quality! I did a full breakdown of this script back at my Oz side-blog (@witchesoz ), but to give you a taste of what we lost, and to encourage you to go seek this original scenario, here are some key points different from the final movie:

Oscar, the Wizard of Oz. In the movie? A selfish, greedy, womanizing jerk who starts out as the villain of the story, and his evolution arc is basically just him learning to be a decent human being. In the original script? He was such a positive character - in fact I will dare say he was a saner and cleaner version of Jack Sparrow. He was this kind-hearted, goofy, extravagant stage magician VERY good at his job (he was also a ventriloquist like in the novel, AND an escape artist/contortionist), but unfortunately unappreciated by the folks of 1900s USA, so he was forced to do snake-oil selling just to survive. He wasn't motived by greed or lust, but by his day-dreaming and ambition at being the greatest magician of all time, acclaimed by the masses - and the reason he played into "Yes I'm the Wizard of the prophecy" wasn't because of some girls or riches, but simply because Oz was the first place where his magic tricks actually impressed someone.

Remember this little winged monkey fella that Oscar saves the life of in Oz, and so the monkey swears a "life debt" to the wizard and becomes his funny sidekick? In the original script it was the reverse situation. Oscar was helped by a winged monkey, and thanked the talking animal for saving his life, swearing he had a "life debt" TO THE WINGED MONKEY, not the reverse.

In the final movie, when Oscar is in the tornado, he just whimpers and begs for his life. In the original script? He underwent a King Lear-like monologue, insulting the winds and defying the storm, insulting the tornado and daring it to kill him.

Theodora... Oh, Theodora! The character was originally designed as the very opposite of what she ended up as. She wasn't a shy, naive, nice girl - she was this strong, confident, majestic witch. Oscar didn't manipulate her like a teenage girl: she was the one who manipulated Oscar like a puppet by pretending to be a good witch and forcing him into the role of The Wizard of Oz. Yes I say "by pretending" to be a good a witch. Because originally, Theodora was a wicked witch FROM the start. She knew and was in league with her sister's evil plan. The only difference between the two is that Theodora, as the younger and less experimented sister, still had some humanity left in her - feelings of kindness and human decency that the wizard managed to "wake up" by just... being nice to her and treating her like a regular human being. There was the whole "I give you the music box" scene, but it was the reverse? In the original draft Oscar didn't lie, he just gave her a random music box as a gift for helping him in Oz, just out of kindness without expecting anything in return ; and that DID touch Theodora because indeed, since she is a wicked witch, she never had such a genuine gift out of pure kindness.

Originally we would have the backstory of the Cowardly Lion. Theodora, wishing to "test" if the Wizard truly had powers or not, secretely turned a rabbit into a lion, and had it attack Oscar while he was alone and presumably defenseless... Only for the Wizard to shoot it with a gun, causing in this rabbit-lion the fear of humanity.

Originally the servants of the Wicked Witches were the various terrible tribes of the novel "The Emerald City of Oz", monstrous outsiders the Witch sisters had Oz invaded with. The Growleywogs, the Whimsies, the Nomes (well rather the Gnomes)...

In the movie Theodora "turn to evil" is literaly just "Oh, a guy cheated on me, I'm heartbroken, let me nomnom on some evil". In the original draft? SO MUCH BETTER! Evanora, noticing Oscar had rekindled the last piece of goodness in her sister, first tries to convince Oscar he should kill Theodora because she is "in league with the wicked witch". When Oscar refuses to commit murder, Evanora tries to convince Theodora Oscar was trying to kill her... But Theodora doesn't buy it and, even though the Wizard knows she is a Wicked Witch, she still helps him escape Evanora in return for the kindness he showed her. And afterward, Evanora spends many, many scenes abusing her sister, at first verbally, psychologically, finally physically, to convince her to give up on the last of her humanity and enter a deeper, more monstrous stage of wickedness. Theodora does end up burning her skin due to the tears - but they're the tears her sisters make her shed with her torture. And Theodora resists' Evanora poisonous words, only to give up when Glinda causes a siege on the Emerald City and the Witches must prepare themselves to directly confront and fight Oscar.

And can we speak about Glinda? She was SO MUCH closer to the Glinda of the books! She was this majestic, beautiful and powerful warlord-witch living in a grand palace in the south, all on her own (because, since she is a witch, she literaly needs no servant). As soon as she saw Oscar, she cut through his bullshit and shoot down his dream of grandeur, because she knows what real magic is (all Witches do, but the Wicked Witches played along to better manipulate Oscar). She gathers an ACTUAL army of thousand of people to besiege the Emerald City ; and during the war she uses so much more her powers, bu unleashing blinding mists and huge snowstorms, and literaly stopping or unleashing the winds. Oh yes, and all possible romance between Oscar and her is also clearly made impossible when it is revealed that Witches cannot kiss humans - else humans DIE (which also puts Theodora's loneliness under a new light).

Oh yes, and in the original draft, Oscar's development was actually him going from this ambitious daydreamer who only wished for a fantasy land to escape to, where he would be a great and acclaimed wizard... to him actually being fed up with Oz where everybody wants to kill or manipulate him, and dreaming to return to Kansas to settle down with those he truly love, and live there a mundane, quiet, normal life, as a regular man... Something he ends up being forced to give up, because he is needed to prevent the Wicked Witches from overtaking Oz, and so he literaly is trapped within his own dream and forced to give up what he realized too lat was what he wanted all along...

Seriously, the original draft for the movie was SO INSANELY COOL. It was still a rough draft and it had pacing problems, and some cheesy stuff that definitively needed to be cut, and also some weird phrasing that made it sound somehow racist sometimes? But outside of that, the characters and plot were truly so much better than what we got!

[artistic-moth-man]

I think dorothy and alice would have tea parties together

[stardusteyes]

Library of Ruina was so based for making the Wizard of Oz a lady

[dragonsdemer]

Does anyone remember how that one witch's tears from Oz the Great and Powerful left scars as they trailed down her face? Yeah, that but Annabel's spectre

[ghduck]

The Wizard of Ass

(Please Laugh)

[disneyboot]

After losing the film rights to MGM back in the 30s, Disney never quite managed to move on from Oz

[sysig]

Spoiling for a fight, spoiled for choice (Patreon)

[pulpsandcomics2]

motion poster for Oz the Great and Powerful