The Great And Powerful Trailer for Sam Raimi's Trip To Oz

Comic Con is in full swing right now, and we've already gotten reports of some interesting trailers and exclusive clips.  Often times these presentations don't make their way online for days or even weeks, if at all.  Fortunately, Disney went the other route and put the first trailer for Sam Raimi's Oz The Great And Powerful online within a matter of hours.  Check it out below:

Whatever issues you may have with James Franco notwithstanding, I'm really excited to see Raimi have such a lush and sprawling world to play with.  At the panel afterwards, they were adamant that this newest journey into the Emerald City is not meant as a prequel to the 1939 movie, but as a play on the original L. Frank Baum books.  (You may have noticed that the circus at the beginning is the Baum Brothers Circus, which is a nice touch.)  In fact, they even mentioned that the infamous ruby slippers would not be making an appearance as they were solely an invention of the Garland film and therefore Raimi didn't have the rights to them.  

This is one of the last scripts I read before leaving Los Angeles and I can tell you that it is EPIC in scope, including a formidable battle sequence near the end.  (There's also a bit of "chosen one" mythology which felt shoe-horned in, but that's par for the course these days.)  I think the three witches are really the star of the show here and Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz are all ideal casting choices.  Kunis in particular is going to break your heart.  And that last shot of the green arm?  Awesome.

Do we really need to return to Oz?  Not really.  But if there's one person whose vision for that world could get me into the theater, it's Sam Raimi.  On a sidenote, I'm astounded at all the weird retconning around Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.  Yes, the third film was kind of a noble mess, but the second is still one of the best comic book films ever made.  In the weeks leading up to Webb's reboot, it felt like everyone's recollection of the entire trilogy was that one scene where Peter Parker had the audacity to dance in a nightclub, which isn't nearly as bad as you remember it being.