I’ve watched the movie three times.
It’s a beautiful, entertaining piece of filmmaking.
The lead character is supposed to be questionable as a hero. That’s the story. He’s not presented as heroic and admits that of himself.
But at the end he decides to devote himself to one woman, who is not an evil witch but a good one.
And he saves an entire people by his ingenuity and tenacity. And he allows the good witch to influence him to do this good thing, whereas in the movie’s beginning she (her other self back in Kansas) was unable to do so although she tried.
As for the evil witches, you have to credit that they deserved everything they got because they weren’t simply flawed characters as he was, but truly evil.
Now one of the sister witches wasn’t nearly as evil as the other, but neither was she as good as the first glimpse of her character seemed to project. As the story progressed her inherent weaknesses and susceptibilities to self-deception and impulsive, self-pitying actions drove her to become the most evil of all.
You both make this movie sound very interesting and entertaining. I’m not a big Wizard of Oz fan, but I’ll check it out.