Review: Oz the Great and Powerful

So on account of copyright issues, Disney was prevented from using specific stuff portrayed in the 1939 Oz movie. So this probably explains the creative changes made in the 2013 version.

So instead of The Scarecrow, The Cowardly Lion, and The Tin Man we have Glinda (Michelle Williams), Finley (Zach Braff), and the China Girl (Joey King). Instead of Dorothy, Oz (James Franco) takes the lead role. And instead of a treatise on theosophy, we get... Disney stuff.

I'm not even sure what Disney has stood and continues to stand for, but I don't trust it anymore. So instead of trying to decipher symbols relating to theosophy, I started to look for MK-ULTRA symbols and spotted a couple of one-eye salutes and a bunch of (monarch?) butterflies presaging the Black Swan metamorphosis that is to befall Theodora (Mila Kunis).

Bummer.

SORQ score: 4 (What can I say, it's right up my street after all.)

(Runtime: 130 minutes)

So I saw 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'

It wasn't the apes. It was capitalism killed humanity.

Capitalism in this instance being represented by private bioengineering outfit Gen-Sys. Researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) is on the brink of discovering a breakthrough cure for Alzheimer's involving a particular virus strain and is testing the drug on chimps. Assisting him is lab techie Robert Franklin (Tyler Labine of Reaper the TV series fame), who discovers that something is terribly amiss even when Gen-Sys boss Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) pushes to fast-track proceedings to start bringing in the greenbacks.

Unbeknownst to Jacobs, what he's really done is fast-tracking humanity's demise. So, when generations later Cracked.com would run an article on ten things that did humanity in, Rodman and Jacobs would rank way up on the list, which I don't suppose is a good thing, especially when the article would literally be written by wisecracking chimps.

Rise is a bad case of Murphy's Law that taps into today's zeitgeist for inspiration. 

(Running time: 105 minutes)