In saying that, it isn't entirely a disaster; the film boasts a great amount of CGI that is stunning, but beyond the spectacle of Oz itself, it has nothing new to offer. My main issue is really with the characters within the story; I just didn't care about them. I know that Oz is supposed to be smug and narcissistic and then develop into the hero, but his journey was just predictable and therefore not particularly interesting. His sidekicks actually interested me more because they were funny and endearing in their own ways, even though we don't really get to see much of them at all.
Then there's Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Unfortunately she fits in as the stereotypical romantic interest who helps the hero discover the greatness within himself, but she is really bland; there's nothing interesting about her in regards to personality or character development. And her connection with looking like Dorothy's Aunty Em is really the only part of her story I found interesting.
The villainess Evanora, played by the fantastic Rachel Weisz, also disappoints; we don't know why she's evil except that she made herself that way. There's no backstory for Endora to show why she is evil, yet Glinda's story about her father is all that they seem to talk about. Evanora starts off as potentially the villain before taking a back seat for the majority of the second half.
The focus shift is the part that I was really looking forward to: How does the Wicked Witch of the West come to be? Through a broken heart. That's it. She falls for Oz after knowing him for five minutes and becomes insanely attached; rather than being cute it kinda makes her look a bit crazy and desperate; and a possible bunny boiler. Through her sister's manipulation Theodora witnesses Oz and Glinda together and is heartbroken, believing the Don Juan has betrayed her. This is sad for any girl, but there's hardly any development into the relationship between Oz and Theodora to make it heartbreaking. We know that Oz is a player, so we're not really surprised when Theodora learns that he had no plans of spending his life with her.
The evolution of the iconic wicked witch being a result of a broken heart could've been so much better; the tragedy is that the story isn't well developed enough to make us hope for her redemption. We want her to be evil because that's why we loved her in The Wizard of Oz. The transformation of Theodora is very impressive, and a lot of work has gone into making this the most anticipated transformation in the film, way more than Oz's, but the young girl she was before just didn't really have any interesting characteristics about her to make us feel sorry for her; she was similar to Glinda, except even more naive.
The finale was quite good. Oz comes up with a good plan and saves the day, sending the wicked witches on their way, but it's still predictable. There's nothing new for an audience to really learn about the characters because they aren't very well developed. The real star of the film is OZ itself. The CGI is great, to the point of overshadowing the narrative.
I think Oz: The Great and Powerful is a good popcorn film, but nothing else. What really made the film suffer was the lack of characterization. Oz was a jerk and then had an epiphany, not really a surprise without much just cause; Glinda is the angelic witch without any flaws whatsoever thus making her really dull; Evanora had the potential to be a good villain but she was sidelined in favour of her sister. Theodora as a good witch wasn't interesting at all, and way too naive; her transformation is the best part of the film, with the green hand and black nails scratching the surface of a table, then the excitement dissipated with no real development beyond Theodora's evolution as the Wicked Witch. The characters don't really change at all, only carry on doing the same thing as before.
The film fails where the original succeeded - interesting characters that feel love, pain, fear, anger etc. Here they don't go through any significant change the way the cowardly lion or scarecrow did, they just exist for the sake of nostalgia.
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