Well, I Wanted an "Oz" Franchise

"Oz, The Great and Powerful" is the first big hit of 2013, grossing over $80 million at the American box office over the weekend. Disney has indicated that they're working on sequel plans already, so it looks like we have a real Oz film franchise on our hands at last. On the other hand, as a fan of the Oz books and the earlier Oz films, this isn't quite what I had in mind. Up front, I want to be clear that I haven't seen the new movie yet, but I've been reading copious spoilers and taking notes. This is one of those cases where I don't think knowing how it ends is going to impact the viewing experience much, and I've got a lot of concerns to address. Minor spoilers ahead.

L. Frank Baum's Oz books were fantasy stories written for children, and their main characters were children, usually girls like Dorothy and Ozma, but not exclusively. What Disney has done is to make an action-adventure film centered on a grown-up male protagonist, the Wonderful Wizard, played by James Franco. "Oz: The Great and Powerful" is positioned as a prequel to "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," detailing how the Wizard first came to Oz and became its ruler. Assuming Disney plans to continue in the same vein in future movies, this changes the dynamics of Oz stories considerably. An adult hero means an adult POV, different goals and a different approach to the fantasy world. You lose the child's-eye view, and a lot of the sense of danger and wonder that go with it. Many of the fantasy elements and characters originally created to appeal to children have to be adjusted for the sensibilities of adults. For instance, the Wizard gets a winged monkey sidekick in the new movie who is not scary at all. He can talk, and is voiced by Zach Braff. Meanwhile, Glinda and the other witches are set up as potential love interests for the Wizard as well as antagonists.

Looking ahead, even with the Wizard as the lead character, Disney wouldn't have to depart too far from the books for future installments. The plots are simple enough that you could substitute the Wizard without much trouble. As we all know, the Wizard was eventually revealed as a humbug and departed from Oz, ceding leadership to the Scarecrow. However, in the books he found his way back to the Emerald City eventually and decided to stay, becoming a recurring character for the rest of the series who often came along on various adventures. You could transplant many of these stories to the period of time when the Wizard ruled Oz.. Also, while there was no mention of Glinda and the Wizard being romantically involved, they were good friends, and it's not out of the question that a deeper relationship could have grown out of that.

However, the most famous Oz material would be off limits if Disney wanted to stick with prequels. Anything involving Dorothy or Ozma or the characters closely connected to them would require the ousting of the Wizard from power. That's a route I'm not sure Disney is too eager about taking, considering the intellectual property issues with MGM. Then again, since the Wizard's power is based on a lie, according to the usual rules of Disney movie morality he has to come clean eventually. Remaking "The Wizard of Oz" would almost certainly go badly, but I wonder if you couldn't do a sort of "Rosencranz and Guildenstern" version of it, showing what the Wizard was doing behind the scenes during Dorothy's famous adventure. The biggest danger with this approach is that the Wizard might end up usurping Dorothy's place as heroine of her story.

That brings us to the gender problem that "Oz, the Great and Powerful" has created. There's a good article over at Jezebel about why positioning the Wizard as the hero and co-opting what was originally a very female-centric series is highly problematic. There's also been significant criticism about the characterization of the witches, which according to many reviews leaves a lot to be desired. In a prequel situation I think there's some wiggle room, but the Wizard muscling in on Dorothy's turf is definitely not acceptable. At the same time, keep in mind that Disney won't want to decrease the role of James Franco in any way, since he's the big headliner of the new franchise, and the company has a strong interest in brands that would be accessible to teenage boys. The last thing they want is to position the new Oz movies as girls' entertainment. That reduces the chances of getting major female characters with real agency front and center.

However, you could probably sneak in a young heroine or two by just keeping Franco's face on the posters, the same way Disney did with Johnny Depp and "Alice and Wonderland." Going back to a potential "Wizard of Oz" related project, you can't have the Wizard secretly saving the day without marginalizing one of the iconic girl heroes of American literature. But an entirely separate Wizard-centric story that supplements what Dorothy is doing? That could work. Then the following sequel could do an adaptation of "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz," book four of the Oz series, where the Wizard and Dorothy appear as co-leads trying to get back to Oz, and you could delve into the rest of the series from there.

I've been waiting a long time for new Oz films, and I'm not too picky about what we end up with. But Disney has a chance to do something very special here, depending on where they decide to take the series. The Oz universe is a vast one, and I've only touched on a few possible options.

Hoping for the best.
---

Read More

The Forgotten Oz Masterpiece

"Return to Oz" was released in 1985 by the struggling Walt Disney Company, and was a notorious flop. Based on the second and third of L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books, it bore little resemblance to MGM's famous "Wizard of Oz" musical, and was so dark in tone that it alienated many potential viewers. Critics were mostly hostile, and "Return to Oz" won an ignominious place on Siskel and Ebert's list of the worst films of 1985. However, I grew up with the film through regular television broadcasts in the 90s, which for a time were at least as frequent as the ones for "Wizard of Oz," and it's one of my childhood favorites. And after nearly thirty years it still holds up remarkably well as a fantasy feature.

We meet Dorothy, who is about ten years old and played by Fairuza Balk. She suffers from insomnia after returning to Kansas from her adventures in Oz, and her Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) and Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) are worried by her tales of tin men and talking lions. She's sent to the sinister Doctor Worley (Nicol Williamson) to try a new cure for melancholia - electroshock therapy. However, before the treatments can take place, a mysterious girl (Emma Ridley) helps Dorothy to escape during a storm. They're separated and Dorothy is washed away in a river. She wakes up back in Oz, but not the peaceful, happy world she remembers, that was ruled by the Scarecrow. Instead, she finds that Oz has been conquered by the Nome King (Nicol Williamson), and its inhabitants turned to stone or otherwise enchanted. However, Dorothy finds new friends, including a talking hen, Billina (Denise Bryer), a mechanical soldier, Tik-Tok (Sean Barrett), and Jack Pumpkinhead (Brian Henson), who of course has a pumpkin for a head.

I can imagine fans of "Wizard of Oz" being dismayed by the scenes at the mental hospital, and becoming downright upset once Dorothy finally got to Oz, and it was not the Technicolor wonderland that they were expecting, but a ruined, crumbling place where creepy villains like the wheel-limbed Wheelers held sway. First time director Walter Murch, best known as the sound designer and sound editor of a slew of classics including "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather," struggled through an arduous production that coincided with changing leadership at Disney. He was committed to bringing a very personal, darker vision of Oz to the screen, an idea that was met with considerable skepticism when it became clear what the film was shaping up to be. He was even fired briefly, before George Lucas and other major directors interceded. Murch's approach was daring not only for departing almost entirely from the mainstream public's understanding of Oz, but for introducing a psychological complexity to the story in the way that he treated Dorothy's depression, and how he mirrored the characters from each world, including Dorothy and Ozma (Emma Ridley), one of the book series' most beloved characters.

You can see this particularly in Murch's approach to the villains, who are really effective, frightening nightmare creatures, but their power comes from the fact that they are grounded in potent real-world fears. We first meet the crooked Doctor Worley and his nurse, who are truly a threat to Dorothy's well-being in the Kansas scenes. In Oz, Worley becomes the Nome King, a creature of cold stone who gains life as others lose theirs. His cohort Mombi (Jean Marsh) is a vain, malevolent witch with interchangeable heads, and there is a particularly traumatic sequence where she chases Dorothy through her chambers while headless. However, I don't think either of them are so scary that they're inappropriate for children. I saw "Return to Oz" as a kid and enjoyed the frights immensely. And of course, generations of tots were similarly frightened by Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys. In my own experience, grown-ups seem to have more trouble with "Return to Oz" than kids.

And though it may lack in whimsy and delight, I always found the movie to be utterly gorgeous. The production design takes its cues directly from the delicate John R. Neill illustrations of the Oz books, and this version of Oz feels far more immersive and immediate. It's an older, richer, stranger Oz that yields its best wonders slowly. Visually, it reminds me of "Pan's Labyrinth," full of hidden perils and symbols of the unconscious. The courtyard of statues, Mombi's mirrored throne room, and the Nome King's underground domain stayed with me for years. The effects work is even better. Teams from Jim Henson operated Dorothy's companions, and Will Vinton Studios did Claymation sequences for the Nome King and his minions. And playing a significant role in establishing the mood is the haunting score by David Shire, that has themes for each major character, and features a series of magnificent violin solos.

Sadly, the negative initial reaction resulted in Walter Murch never directing another film. Producer Gary Kurtz all but quit Hollywood in its wake. The new Disney leadership tried to disown the movie, and "Return to Oz" didn't have any kind of home media release until the late 90s. These days it's very much a cult film, still polarizing in certain circles. I don't agree with those who claim it's so much more faithful to Baum's Oz books, because it wasn't. Baum's work was darker than MGM's "Wizard of Oz," but was a far gentler, more pastoral kind of fantasy than "Return to Oz." No, "Return to Oz" had its own vision and its own take on the land of Oz, one that deserves to be recognized on its own merits.
---

Read More