Movie Substrate · Film
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
★ 5.9 · 6,780 ratings on TMDB
In Oz, nothing is what it seems.
Oscar Diggs, a small-time circus illusionist and con-artist, is whisked from Kansas to the Land of Oz where the inhabitants assume he's the great wizard of prophecy, there to save Oz from the clutches of evil.
DirectorSam Raimi
The emergence reading
Oz the Great and Powerful keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E12 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing power, deception, identity, politics, magic.
zero-distanceUSpowerdeceptionidentitypoliticsmagic
Also inFilms about identity
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)E8/E12 · rare rung · magic, politics
Hamilton (2025)E8/E12 · rare rung · identity, politics
Black Panther (2018)E8/E12 · rare rung · identity, power
Aquaman (2018)E8/E12 · rare rung · identity, power
Maleficent (2014)E8/E12 · rare rung · identity, power
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)E8/E12 · rare rung · identity, powerSame subject, different rung
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.
Wolfwalkers (2020)E7/E9/E10 · rare rung · identity, power
Blade II (2002)E4/E10 · rare rung · politics, power
The Odyssey (2026)E6/E9/E10 · rare rung · identity, power
Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010)E6/E11 · rare rung · identity, power
Return to Oz (1985)E10/E13 · rare rung · identity, magic
Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2 (2020)E9/E10 · identity, politics
