Stunning opening titles of Oz, the Great and Powerful

A few weeks ago I went to see Oz the Great and Powerful and being a fan of the original, I had high expectations. It follows quite a different story, which was not a bad thing coz I didn't end up spending the entire movie comparing it. My overall opinion is that it was beautifully done, all the scenery was fantastic and the Emerald City looked like a piece of vintage jewellery I'd love to own. I felt like it lost the plot a bit at the dramatic end scene, it got a bit hectic and it somehow felt a bit cheap and old. 

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging about it is not to tell you about the movie, but the opening title sequence, which was exquisite and blew me away. It was done in a vintage paper-theatre style, deeply layered to create the scenes with seemingly hand-painted artwork sliding in and out of the frame to create the animation, and was created by Garson Yu. Unfortunately they didn't actually create the real thing, which would have been cool, but made it all up digitally and did it fantastically well. It was truly a work of art, and although the movie was good, it was nowhere near the standard of the opening titles. Here's some of the inspiration they used...

Check out the video of it below. 

It doesn't really do it justice, it looked so much better on the big screen with the 3D effects.
This is the movie trailer...

And a clip from the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland...

And the silent movie created in 1910!

The original story by L. Frank Baum was published in 1900.