L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was published in 1900, but was such a modern fairy tale that it’s still read today — and still watched, in the 1939 film version starring Judy Garland as the plucky young Dorothy. It’s the character of Dorothy that made the novel such a contrast to traditional fairy tales. Baum, who married the daughter of a suffragette, hewed to tradition in putting a girl at his story’s center, but eschewed it in having the girl work to solve her problem herself — showing up a great wizard in the process.

The new film “Oz the Great and Powerful” claims to be “based on the works of L. Frank Baum.” But it clearly takes inspiration more from the 1939 movie than the original novels. That movie and, unfortunately, the type of traditional stories Baum completely upended. The problem of “Oz” is not the debt it owes to previous storytellers. It’s one thing to remake, or reimagine, a fairy tale. It’s quite another to trade in the tired tropes of centuries.