In revisiting the iconic 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz" (and the L. Frank Baum novels that inspired it), there are any number of missteps that director Sam Raimi ("Spider-Man," "Drag Me to Hell") and screenwriters Mitchell Kapner ("The Whole Nine Yards") and David Lindsay-Abaire ("Rabbit Hole") could have taken on that particular Yellow Brick Road.
That "Oz the Great and Powerful" is so thoroughly effective both on its own terms and as a prequel to one of the most beloved movies ever made indicates that this team has magic to match any witch or wizard.
It's an achievement that's doubly miraculous, since the film falls squarely into two genres that have produced some of the worst movies of the last decade: the sequel/prequel/reboot/retread and what I call "storybook characters in combat."
But this is no "Jack the Giant Slayer" or "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters"; rather than tell us that everything we know about Oz is wrong, the filmmakers take what we already know about the wonderful wizard and thread it into a tale about the magic behind cinema itself.
