There were a lot of spectacular things on display in Oz the Great And Powerful, the giant fantasy movie that has ruled the American box office for the past two weekends. But with all credit to Sam Raimi and his amazing technical team, the film's most amazing moment might have come before the film even began, when the opening credits created by Garson Yu and his company plunge the audience directly into Oz's magical, old-timey world.
Now we can finally watch those credits online, and more importantly watch them alongside the interview with Yu that we published last week. He generously provided us with a lot of unused concept art that his company created for the film, and now you can compare and contrast them to what wound up in the final product. Michelle Williams's title, for example, was eventually moved inside a bubble, reminiscent of Glinda's magical means of transport. Mila Kunis's name still had a witch in the shadows in the concept art, but she was depicted as a ballerina, not a woman in a dancing couple, an echo of the scene she and Oz share early in the film.
Oz the Great and Powerful-- which also boasts some of the best 3D we've ever seen and a pretty good story too-- continues to be a major hit for Disney, having grossed $150 million already domestically plus another $136 million worldwide. It will probably lose the weekend box office to a handful of the weekend's new releases-- we've got families with The Croods, grownups with Olympus Has Fallen and Admission-- but that doesn't stop it from being one of the few bright spots amid the early 2013 box office. These great opening credits probably didn't make that happen, but they didn't hurt either.
