The Steam Engines of Oz

The Steam Engines of Oz (2018) is the final movie of my binge section before I watch Wicked: Part 1 (2024) later this month and it was horrendous.

Positives for The Steam Engines of Oz (2018): THERE ARE NONE!!!!!

Negatives for The Steam Engines of Oz (2018): The animation in this movie looks absolutely atrocious and it is among some of the worst-looking animation I've seen in either movies or television. The story is a mess and it doesn't feel like it's going anything with the characters. The voice acting is horrendous and no one is even trying at all. And finally, the movie doesn't come close to being "So bad, it's good!", it's just plain boring.

Overall, The Steam Engines of Oz (2018) is the worst of the Wizard of Oz movies that I've seen during my binge section and it is one of the worst animated movies of all time.

The animation is clunky, ugly, and looks at least 20 years older than its 2018 release date. But that's not the worst thing about this steaming (?punking) pile of garbage. It has a ridiculous plot riddled with non sequiturs, awkward and unnatural dialogue, a cheesy soundtrack that sounds at times acoustically unbalanced, and one of the worst attempts at a British accent ever recorded. We watched it as a family and really wanted to give it a chance, but by the end we were all laughing and shooting at the TV about how awful it was.

At least it brought us together! United in shock and revulsion that this film was ever given the green light.

OK, first of all this is based on a comic book series of the same name. Now there difference is that while the comic book contains fantastic illustrations and art-style, this film opts to uses horrendous CGI that looks like a series of cut scenes stitched together from a bargain bin Playstation game in the 90s. There are barely any textures or proper lighting used in the animation and the characters move very awkwardly, and to be honest, even the character designs themselves are ridiculously ugly. I get that they tried to make this cuter than the comic book so that it attracts a younger audience but it reflects no artistic skills, attention to detail, or even creativity and imagination. It's like they just slapped this project together with the goal of making money. It looks and feels so uninspired. It's quite sad and pathetic. Even the storyline is boring and uneventful. The saddest part is that this film was produced by Arcana Studio, the company that makes the comics...and the writers and artists were totally on board for it. How they agreed to release this abomination is beyond me. In conclusion: Sit this one out; it's not worth your precious time.

As mentioned in other reviews, amateurish animation, but not so nearly amateurish as the script. The saving grace of the film was making the point "War is not the solution to our problems". Beyond that the concept was bland, characters cliche, and voice acting only as good as the script allowed. It's not a "bad" movie, just not good enough to call tolerable. Not even good as a children's film, as much of the morality-play aspect will be beyond their understanding. The ending (just after the credits start to roll) is incomprehensible and without point.

Basically, this is an unbelievable tale that really seems to make no point other than "Don't be the bad guy". Yeah, we get that much. How about the point, "If you're going to make a movie, make a good one"?

Watching this abomination with my daughter tonight and it made me feel so angry. I can't believe that this came out only a couple of years ago because it looked worse than toy story one, which came out more than 20 years ago. Unbelievably boring plot and terrible script and dialogue. This is not so much a movie as it is a torture device. Ron Perlman being involved is the icing on the cake, he'll clearly lend his voice for anything, this was probably the worst thing I've ever watched.