Spoiler alert!! If you haven’t seen Oz, the Great and Powerful starring James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, and Mila Kunis, you should probably read this review some other time. Thank you.

How to make a little something out of a great something…

Take one girl (Dorothy), place her within a coming-of-age story, add a doting mother figure (Aunt Em), a dull father figure (Uncle Henry), three male caricatures representing lack of understanding (the Scarecrow), lack of self awareness (the Tin Man), and lack of self assurance (the Cowardly Lion), a wicked witch, a good witch, a legion of background characters, and a shadowy wizard. You have one fantastic and fantastical tale!

Next, remove the girl from the story. Then remove all other significant characters except for the good witch, the bad witch, and the shadowy wizard. Keep the legion of background characters.

Now, add a third witch and turn the shadowy wizard into the protagonist (you won’t need a magic wand for this–trust me). Wipe away any residue left by Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, or the Cowardly Lion. Mix in one China Girl and one flying monkey named Finley.

Presto! You have turned a heroic girl’s coming-of-age tale into the story of a brutish, narcissistic man who will appear to be redeemed, but strangely, will require further redemption when Dorothy’s story is picked up again in the future. In other words, rejoice in the wizard’s redemption, but you know he’s going to backslide. And the wizard makes for a strange hero in another sense. He doesn’t really go from A to B. He ends up in the Emerald City, but he begins as a traveling carny, with no real home. He flees his caravan, but there’s no sense of loss, that something of value has been left behind and could ever be found again, other than countless jilted women, only one of whom seems worth returning for (and will be a feature character in the land of Oz).

Dorothy’s heroic journey begins and ends in a wood frame house on the American Prairie.

Until recently, I hadn’t thought of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum as a girl power kind of story. It not only has a female lead, but other significant female characters offering wisdom, comfort, enmity–the whole bag of human tricks. It also has three male characters who adore Dorothy, follow her lead throughout, and fulfill their potential because of her. Dorothy saves herself in the end when she becomes aware that she has held the key to self-transformation all along. Oz, the Great and Powerful is a very different kind of story.

In Oz, the Great and Powerful the witches are well acted by the three female leads. They are beautiful, visually bewitching, but each is a one dimensional version of what I had hoped she would be. Glinda is good, yes, but she seems unable to use her power until the wizard gives his permission. (Bubbles are her specialty.) Theodora’s power emerges from her rage at being a jilted lover (her belief that she is the wizard’s lover is embarrassing). Evanora comes on strong but then seems hesitant, weak, frightened of her sister’s raging, not fully capable of applying her own powers.

The most memorable character in the new film, in my opinion, is the China Girl, who is strong and brave but whose literal fragility makes the soulful observer frightened for her, knowing full well that her life amongst non-China beings must end tragically one day. Dorothy’s fragility, on the other hand, is illusory: she is independent and determined, and she becomes more aware of this as she puts more and more yellow bricks behind her. In the new film, The wizard, too, takes the yellow brick road, but his journey is a reversal of Dorothy’s as he travels from the Emerald City toward the Dark Forest. It is not the only thing that is backward about Oz, the Great and Powerful.