Oz the Great and Powerful | Eastern North Carolina Now

    In Emerald City, one can well see that Theodora, Mila Kunis, has taken a shine to the squinting huckster, and actually believes him to be the wizard he portends to be. Theodora's older sister, Evanora, played by the actress of estimable talent, Rachel Weisz, can see through the veil of his carnival illusion, and hatches a plan to reveal Oscar, James Franco, as he truly is.

The two sister witches, Evanora, Rachel Weisz (left), and Theodora, Mila Kunis (rigth), discuss the potential vagaries of the found huckster wizard, but to little avail; Theodora remains smitten: Above. Above. To enforce her point, Evanora lures the Wizard to her huge hall of gold to promise Oz incredible riches if he will kill Glinda, a good witch, not evil as promised by Evanora: Below.    Click the picture to expand to as much as 1000 pixels wide within most expanded images, and then push the arrows embedded in the center edge of the play-box to access the gallery, and slide new images into viewing within the center of the screen. Evanora, Rachel Weisz (left), conning the grand deceiver, Oscar Diggs, James Franco (right) into killing Glinda, the Good Witch from the North: Above. Click the image to return to expansion.
    As one who is now a stranger to poverty, from rural Kansas, vast sums of gold can be a rather convincing argument for this huckster, so Wizard Diggs hits the road to liquidate the lovely Glinda, and, understandably, as was the case in the original film, this is when the second adventure begins.


    That second adventure began with the Wizard's voluntary exodus from Emerald City, and his first stop was the city of China, which had no Asian influence other than the city was built out of china: bowls, saucers, plates, cups, etc. Within the confines of this village of ceramic eatery tools grown large, there existed one small child in the composition of a china doll - a china doll with a broken leg.
The city of China, destroyed by an evil witch and her wicked flying baboons, is the fleeting home of the aforementioned China Doll: Above. The China Doll, voiced by Joey King, who also plays the girl in the wheelchair during the black and white segment, meets Oscar Diggs, James Franco: Below. Click the picture to expand to as much as 1000 pixels wide within most expanded images, and then push the arrows embedded in the center edge of the play-box to access the gallery, and slide new images into viewing within the center of the screen.
    The 14 inch China Doll, rendered handsomely in CG, had the mannerisms of a real girl, including the puckish wit of a survivor at all costs. This porcelain child delivered some of the best scenes in the film which were the ones between the Wizard and the China Girl.
The ambitious Wizard, James Franco meets the China Doll, her broken leg (which is actually broken off), and it appears he remembers, with some sympathy, the child in the wheelchair from that other world, who implored that the Kansas Wizard help her to walk again: Above. Oscar, Franco, fortuitously keeps glue in his traveling bag, and fixes the leg, since it is obviously within his power. After this one kindness, he tells the China Girl it is time for an amicable split, but the porcelain child would have none of it: Below. Click the picture to expand to as much as 1000 pixels wide within most expanded images, and then push the arrows embedded in the center edge of the play-box to access the gallery, and slide new images into viewing within the center of the screen.

    All great men, irrespective of whether that greatness is merited, need a go-to-guy, a helper, who is often under-appreciated. For the Wizard of Oz in-waiting, there was Frank, Oscar's helper in the Kansas black and white, who was played by Zach Braff. Not unlike the China Girl in Oz, who was voiced by Joey King, who also plays the girl in the wheelchair back in that Kansas carnival, Zach Braff also voiced the flying monkey, Finley, who swore his allegiance to Oscar, James Franco, when he cut an ensnared Finley from an entanglement of vines and monkey leg.
Finley, voiced by Zach Braff, did what he could for his newfound master, the unremarkable Wizard, but mainly lent comic relief as an over-sized visage of an organ-grinder-monkey: Above. The assembled trio: Oz, the China Girl and Finley make their way toward the Good Witch of the North, Glinda, to accomplishe the bade task of Evanora: Below. Click the picture to expand to as much as 1000 pixels wide within most expanded images, and then push the arrows embedded in the center edge of the play-box to access the gallery, and slide new images into viewing within the center of the screen.