8 Recent Movies That Grossly Over-Estimated What Their CGI Could Do
7. Oz The Great And Powerful
The Wizard Of Oz has such vibrant colour scheme that any rudimentary effects can be ignored to this day; it still feels incredibly magical. Oz The Great And Powerful replicates the vibrant colour scheme, but in creating the world almost entirely with CGI things are far from the original's mysticism. Some parts of the CGI work well. And so they should; theres less of an impetus to make things photo-realistic, so characters like Finley the winged monkey hit the desired mark and the simplistic designs that have worked against other films (think The Lovely Bones in-between) are right on here. Some parts inexplicably dont; there's plenty of moments where the actors may not be correctly integrated in the scene or the background just feels flat. Now you could argue that these moments, particularly the latter, are intentional, but if it is then Sam Raimi has woefully misunderstood the originals charm. Yes, in the original you can tell where the set ends and the matte painting begins, but thats not a stylistic decision by director Victor Fleming like the sepia toned opening or plastic plants, but a limitation of the time. Im inclined, given the big commercial prospects of the film, to say it was more influenced by lack of time near the end of post-production. Like Alice In Wonderland, this was a Disney produced reimagining of a classic story, only here there's a real variation in the levels of polish to suggest it wasnt going all out for the skewed style of Burtons film.
