Originally Posted By plpeters70 <<I never thought for a minute I was anywhere else but on a sound stage with green screen backdrops.>> In that respect, the new movie will be very similar to the old one. Most of those Oz scenes consisted of some pretty obvious painted backdrops. There's a couple shots in the original when Dorothy and the gang are skipping off singing down the Yellow Brick Road, and I'm waiting for them to hit the wall!
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "I'm still angry over their ruling back in 1999 to stop teaching evolution." How dare science contradict God!!
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance berol, thank you. Your comment was witty and light enough to keep this from turning into an ugly WE like thread that eventually gets shut down and someone ends up leaving LP forever.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <<I never thought for a minute I was anywhere else but on a sound stage with green screen backdrops.>> <In that respect, the new movie will be very similar to the old one.> Well....sort of. I think CGI has taken over the heart of these movies. To the point where you're essentially watching an animated cartoon. <Most of those Oz scenes consisted of some pretty obvious painted backdrops. There's a couple shots in the original when Dorothy and the gang are skipping off singing down the Yellow Brick Road, and I'm waiting for them to hit the wall!> I'm familiar with that scene in 'The Wizard of Oz' too -- where Dorothy is waving goodbye to the Munchkins and in two or three more steps, she's literally going to bump into the painted back drop. But -- she was on a partial set, there were actual actors playing the Munchkins around her, and the Munchkinland set from the previous scenes were practical sets built on a sound stage. Again, it just seems that today, CGI has gone too far. I would compare the twister sequence in the original MGM 'Oz' to the twister sequence shown in the trailer. I find the twister scene in the original to be very moody and scary and very, very well done. Dorothy and the farm hands are running around, the horses are fleeing the barn, chickens scurrying around -- all actual live animals by the way! The sequence with the balloon flying through the air and heading for the twister -- all very obviously CGI. In modern movie making, EVERYTHING is CGI -- including the the actor in the balloon! Even when the guy flips the top hat to the guy in the balloon -- the hat is CGI! WTF! It's my same gripe with the newest 'Indiana Jones' movie compared with 'Raiders' or the new 'Star Wars' movies compared to the original 'Star Wars' -- the new ones are so obviously people standing on a sound stage in front of green screen, they almost become robotic. When live elements are combined with movie making trickery, the results have a much more realistic look, in my opinion.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I find the twister scene in the original to be very moody and scary and very, very well done.<< It does hold up really well all these years later. The twister off in the dark distance, it's still a very frightening image. >>It's my same gripe with the newest 'Indiana Jones' movie compared with 'Raiders' or the new 'Star Wars' movies compared to the original 'Star Wars' -- the new ones are so obviously people standing on a sound stage in front of green screen, they almost become robotic.<< Yep. I am sure they are thinking that they can't step a millimeter too far off their mark or they'll be in for take #798.
Originally Posted By Vic Sage "I'm still angry over their ruling back in 1999 to stop teaching evolution." You do know they didn't actually do that right? <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2001-02-14/us/kansas.evolution.02_1_science-standards-kansas-board-sue-gamble?_s=PM:US" target="_blank">http://articles.cnn.com/2001-0..._s=PM:US</a> "The 1999 vote never banned the teaching of evolution nor required the teaching of the Biblical story of creation."
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "But it dropped Darwin's theory from standardized tests taken by Kansas students." Given how important standardized testing has become, this is hair splitting
Originally Posted By doombuggy "In his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum describes Kansas as being 'in shades of gray'" There...it's in the book KS is in B&W so WB couldn't sue.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: I don't like how this new version of Oz portrays the Wicked Witch of the West. She's too young and pretty to be believable--unless they're gonna' go and age her up later on and make her look more like the one from the 1939 classic. If they do that then I'll be able to accept this movie. But if they just wanna' have an excuse to use the land of Oz as a backdrop for a glamorous 1920's kind of soap opera, I'm not interested in such a project.
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb The last images of the trailer indicate that something DOES happen to ugly her up.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: Maybe but I was also wondering if that hand could belong to the Wicked Witch of the East, instead, because she's in the movie, too.
Originally Posted By doombuggy "I don't like how this new version of Oz portrays the Wicked Witch of the West" How do we know thats WWW? It could be her sister WWE who has great power thanks to the silver slippers.
Originally Posted By doombuggy If it's how the wizard comes to rule then why no Ozma or Mombi? They are important to how he came to rule. I'm thinking they didn't stick with the books and made the same mistake they did with Return to Oz.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: Well, Return to Oz was more faithful to the original stories than this newest version looks like it's going to be. Yes there were some changes but they were quite so jarring as this new version. And the actress in this trailer--whatever her name is I don't remember--already said in an interview that she will be the Wicked Witch of the West. That's how I knew.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: Sorry, I mean to say the changes made in Return to Oz were NOT quite so jarring as the changes in this newest version of Oz seem like they're going to be. I agree that they need to add Mombi and baby Ozma as they were quite important to the early history of Oz. In the original story, the Wizard made a secret pact with Mombi to take baby Ozma away with her so there wouldn't be an heir to the throne. Then Mombi changed Ozma into a boy named Tip.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Then Mombi changed Ozma into a boy named Tip.<< Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that. Now there's a plot point I'd love to see in a Disney movie circa 2012. We'd NEVER hear the end of it!
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 "If it's how the wizard comes to rule then why no Ozma or Mombi? They are important to how he came to rule. I'm thinking they didn't stick with the books and made the same mistake they did with Return to Oz." What mistake did they make with Return to OZ? It was very faithful to the books...it's just that it combined two of the books into one, so you had mixed up characters...but the plot lines were there, and the character designs were based off of the original illustrations too.
Originally Posted By MrDisneyGeek Well all of the OZ books are public domain now and you can pick them up for free off Amazon for the Kindle (Kindle pc app if nothing else) I paid 99₵ for a compilation. After finishing the Wizard of OZ, I haven’t read it since I was quite young, the tornado trip for Dorothy was so long she got board and fell asleep. i am enjoying rereading the books after all this time.
