Return to Oz
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- For other uses, including the 1964 film of the same name, see Return to Oz (disambiguation)
| Return to Oz | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Walter Murch |
| Produced by | Paul Maslansky |
| Written by | L. Frank Baum (novels) Gill Dennis Walter Murch |
| Starring | Fairuza Balk Nicol Williamson Jean Marsh Piper Laurie Matt Clark |
| Music by | David Shire |
| Cinematography | David Watkin Freddie Francis |
| Editing by | Leslie Hodgson |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 1985 (USA) |
| Running time | 113 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25,000,000 |
| Preceded by | The Wizard of Oz |
| Followed by | Lost in Oz |
| IMDb profile | |
The 1985 film Return to Oz is a motion picture arguably created as an unofficial sequel to The Wizard of Oz. It was made by Walt Disney Pictures and has no approval by MGM, the company that made the classic 1939 film (although MGM owned film rights to Wizard, Disney owned rights to most of the later Oz books). The film was directed by Walter Murch.
It was not well received, box office wise, but gained generally positive reviews from critics. Perhaps the reason for the film failing at the box office was particularly because of those whose prior assumptions about Oz were based on the MGM film, however it has become a cult classic to many adults and children, and has earned high VHS and DVD rentals and sales.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The movie's plot is a combination of L. Frank Baum's novels Ozma of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz, which were written as sequels to the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Dorothy (played by Fairuza Balk) cannot stop thinking about the Land of Oz and her friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. One night Dorothy sees a shooting star, and the next morning, while checking for eggs from the hen Billina, Dorothy comes across a key that appears to be from Oz. Dorothy shows the key to her aunt while adamantly proclaiming its origins. Her worried aunt takes Dorothy to a doctor who wishes to "cure" her of her dreams and delusions by using electro-shock therapy. Dorothy is left in the care of the doctor and his sadistic nurse. That night, when Dorothy is scheduled to undergo her therapy, there is a violent storm. As the medical staff is preparing Dorothy, the electricity goes out, and she is left alone as the doctor and his nurse go to check the hospital's generator. While they are gone, Dorothy is freed by a mysterious girl, and they begin their escape from the hospital. The doctor and nurse return shortly to find Dorothy missing, and they begin to hunt for her throughout the clinic. Dorothy and the mysterious girl make it out of the hospital but end up falling into the violent waters of the river nearby. The mysterious girl helps Dorothy pull herself up onto a wooden box, but the girl appears to drown as Dorothy faints while floating down the river.
Dorothy and Billina the hen awake to find themsleves at the edge of the Deadly Desert. They make it to safer ground where they pick something to eat from a lunch-pail tree. Dorothy guesses that they're in a "fairy country" because lunch pails don't normally grow on trees and animals like Billina don't talk, but it's not Oz because that country has no seashore. From there, Dorothy finds the remnants of her old house and the Yellow Brick Road, which appears to have fallen into disrepair. They follow the road to the Emerald City which is equally derelict. They come across a message inscribed in the sand: "BEWARE THE WHEELERS!" Soon the pair meets these gaudily-dressed, loudly-yelling creatures who have wheels instead of hands and feet, and roll around on all fours. Dorothy and Billina climb a rocky mountain to escape the Wheelers and find a door carved into its side. Having found the key by the door, they open it and find Tik-Tok, a round copper mechanical man whom they activate with the key like a wind-up toy. Tik-Tok tells Dorothy and Billina about the land of Ev, where he is from, and he takes them to safety from the Wheelers to the royal residence, where the head-exchanging Mombi (a composite of two characters from the books: Princess Langwidere and the witch Mombi) lives. Mombi refers to herself as a princess in front of the Wheelers. Mombi tells Dorothy of the Nome King and how he took the emeralds from the Emerald City back to his mountain and turned everyone else to stone. Mombi then imprisons Dorothy and Billina in one of the castle's towers, as she plans to take Dorothy's head as her 32nd (Mombi already has 31 heads that she can alternate, the 31st being her original head). Tik-Tok attempts to save Dorothy, but his action winding runs out. In the tower, Dorothy meets a talking dummy named Jack Pumpkinhead. After Jack tells her about his fate, and how he was brought to life with a magical powder called "Powder of Life" (-You sprinkle it over something, and the thing comes to life-), Dorothy devises a plan to escape from Mombi's castle.
Dorothy, Billina, and Jack manage to free themselves from the tower and make their way to where Tik-Tok stands frozen. They wind up Tik-Tok again, and Dorothy goes to get Mombi's ruby key in order to steal the Powder of Life, which Mombi keeps in the cabinet of Head 31. In the meantime, Jack and Tik-Tok go back to the tower to build Gump. Dorothy successfully obtains the ruby key from around Mombi's wrist as she was sleeping, but as she grabs the powder from the cabinet, Dorothy accidentally wakes up Head 31. This wakes up Mombi's body (who slept headless) and the other 30 heads. Dorothy takes the powder and runs back to the tower. When she arrives, she finds that the others haven't finished building the Gump yet, because Tik-Tok's thinking winding ran out, which made the process slow due to his nonsensical directions. Dorothy re-winds Tik-Tok, and he and Jack hurriedly finish their construction as Dorothy sprinkles the powder all over the Gump. The powder doesn't work, and Billina advises Dorothy to read the directions. Dorothy does this and utters the magical words, "Weaugh, Theaugh, Peaugh." The Gump awakens, and Jack and Dorothy help Tik-Tok get in. Just then, Mombi arrives in the tower, and the Gump begins to fly away.
As they fly toward the Nome King's mountain, the Wheelers follow them below, but soon stop as they reach the Deadly Desert. When the Gump finally lands, it's more of a crash, casued by the Gump falling apart. The Nome King becomes aware of Dorothy's presence and is afraid of her power. When Dorothy and her crew meet up with the Nome King, he decides that Dorothy is not very dangerous at all. He then shows Dorothy that he now possesses the Ruby Slippers (which fell from Dorothy's feet when she left Oz the last time), and with them he conquered the Emerald City and turned everyone there to stone. He then laughs, and a hole opens in the ground into which Dorothy, Jack, Billina, Tik-Tok, and the Gump fall. When they reach the bottom, they find the Scarecrow there (who had been crowned King of the Emerald City), but he suddenly vanishes. The Nome King explains that he has transformed the Scarecrow into an ornament (the more people he transforms into ornaments, the more human he becomes). He justifies his actions by stating that all the emeralds in the city originally belonged to him anyway and were stolen by the scarecrow and the people of Emerald City. He then challenges Dorothy and her friends to a game in which he allows each of them to see his ornament collection and guess three times (by placing their hand on an ornament and saying, "Oz") which is the Scarecrow. They all agree to the rules, and the Gump is the first to enter the room. Since he is unable to find the Scarecrow, the Gump is then turned into an ornament himself, which was a rule the Nome King failed to mention beforehand. Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and Billina enter the ornament room one at a time, and none return. In the meantime, Mombi arrives at the Nome King's mountain in order to warn him that Dorothy is coming that way. The Nome King is informed by a servant that Tik-Tok has stopped guessing and is just standing motionless. Dorothy assumes he has wound down so the Nome King allows her to enter, wind him up, and then take her turn at guessing after he does. Dorothy then enters the ornament room to find that Tik-Tok has not actually wound down but was hoping Dorothy would think so and enter with him. He reasons that if his last guess fails, Dorothy will see what sort of ornament he turns into and be better prepared to guess herself. Tik-Tok fails his final guess but Dorothy is unable to determine what he has been changed into. Dorothy makes two failed guesses but is able to find the Scarecrow with her last guess, realizing that the Nome King has enchanted them all into objects colored green. Using this information, Dorothy and the Scarecrow then manage to find and rescue the others.
The Nome King suddenly realizes that Dorothy figured out his trick. Furious, he begins to cave in the ornament room. Dorothy and her friends are blocked into the room by the Nome's minions as he proposes eating all of them. First he eats the Gump's sofas (but not his head). Then Jack is picked up by the Nome King, who hangs Jack upside-down over his mouth, threatening to eat him. Billina, who was inside Jack's head, lays an egg, which falls into the Nome King's throat. This destroys the Nome King, as eggs are poisonous to Nomes, in Oz. The Ruby Slippers are left behind, and Dorothy uses them to wish, "All of us from Oz to return there safely, and for the Emerald City, and all the people in it to be restored to life." Mombi is then jailed, and a huge celebration takes place. The citizens of Oz then ask Dorothy to be the Queen of Oz. Dorothy regretfully declines their offer and says that she must go back home. The citizens continue to beg Dorothy to be their Queen, and as Dorothy says, "I wish I could be in both places at the same time," the Ruby Slippers reveal behind her a girl in a mirror who was not Dorothy's reflection. The girl is actually Ozma, who was the girl who freed Dorothy from the hospital and who is the rightful ruler of Oz. She had previously been trapped in a mirror by Mombi. Dorothy hands over the Ruby Slippers to Ozma and asks her to wish her back home. Ozma agrees, but with one condition: that Ozma could visit Dorothy from time to time, and that if Dorothy ever wanted to come back to Oz, Ozma would make it so. Ozma then clicks her heels three times, and Dorothy is spirited away with no time to say goodbye to all her friends.
Soon afterward, Dorothy is found in Kansas by Toto. Later, Aunt Em tells Dorothy that the clinic caught fire during the storm, and the doctor was killed while attempting to save his machines. Just then, a paddy-wagon passes by with the sadistic nurse behind bars. When Dorothy gets home, she goes straight to her mirror and says Ozma's name while touching it. She is able to see Ozma, along with Billina (who stayed in Oz). Dorothy begins to tell Aunt Em about this, but Ozma tells her she should keep it as a secret. The girls smile, and the movie is over.
[edit] Comparison With The Wizard of Oz
Return to Oz is often referred to as a sequel to the 1939 Wizard of Oz, but this is only partly true. Some ties to the 1939 MGM musical were deliberately kept. The silver shoes in the Baum story remain ruby slippers in Return to Oz as they had been in the MGM film. Also, the MGM movie's concept of Dorothy imagining Oz based on people she knows in the real world - which is not present in the original story - is mostly kept intact in Return to Oz. However, this is where the similarities end.
Besides being more realistic, considerably darker and not a musical, the movie is overall truer to the original concept of Oz as described in Baum's books. Certain key elements of the books, such as the Tin Woodman's name, which was shortened to "Tin Man" for the 1939 film, as well as his back story, which isn't even mentioned in the original, are restored. Also, Fairuza Balk was nine during the filming of Return to Oz, which is much closer to the age of Dorothy in the books than that of Judy Garland, who was 16 when she starred in The Wizard of Oz. The movie is also full of disturbing situations and scenes of violence. Although this is one of the chief complaints from those unfamiliar with the books, this is again truer to Baum's vision: it was common for the books to contain such scenes, although they were arguably more whimsical than scary.
Oddly, Glinda the Good Witch is absent from the film. She plays a major role in the 1939 movie, and almost all the books. In Ozma of Oz, she gives Ozma a magic carpet on which to cross the deadly desert.
Many Baum concepts not from the Land of Oz or Ozma of Oz do appear in the film:
- The Patchwork Girl, The Shaggy Man, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, The Frogman, Tommy Kwikstep, The Braided Man and Ojo are all background characters in the final scene. Arguably, Jellia Jam, General Jinjur and the Captain of the Guard are in the scene too.
- The unsuccessful attempt by the Nome King to invade the Emerald City by tunnel occurs in The Emerald City of Oz.
- Although maps of Oz vary, especially the east/west controversy, it is possible that Dorothy lost her shoes "in flight" over the Nome king's domain after her first visit. If the tornado approached Oz from the east it is possible that is the direction to which Dorothy returned to Kansas. In Baum's Oz Canon, the silver slippers are never recovered.
- Uncle Henry and Aunt Em's financial woes (the loss of the house due to the tornado and the bank forclosing on the farm) are a strong theme in The Emerald City of Oz.
- The "Powder of Life", rampant in many books, is manufactured in The Patchwork Girl of Oz
- The Nome King kidnapping someone by means of an seemingly-endless tunnel through the center of the earth takes place in Tik-Tok of Oz.
- The Nome King's plot to become human is only wildly approached in "The Magic of Oz".
[edit] Reception
The movie was expensive to make and went overbudget, yet did poorly in theaters. The PG rating was likely a major cause of the box-office failure, and many critics denounced the film as too disturbing or scary for young children. For example, Princess Mombi is a headless creature with a collection of the severed heads of the most beautiful women of Oz, and at one point the movie shows her swapping these heads to and from her severed neck stub. Despite this, some critics praised the film for its originality and visuals. Those unfamiliar with the Oz books also found the characters and scenes to be bizarre and unfamiliar, since few characters from the first film appear other than Dorothy. The Scarecrow makes a brief appearance and the Cowardly Lion and Tin Woodsman are seen but don't have speaking parts.
Problems namely were the darker side of Oz and how it was presented in the 1939 movie as being a fairyland, orignally being Baum's goal; only with dark elements. The film is often called "ahead of its time", due to the fact that it was so far advanced as far as the 1980's standards for fantasy films. The film as close as it was to the Oz novels was usually put aside by fans of the books; but also set aside by people who had not read it, because of its dark anticts.
According to Harlan Ellison in his book Harlan Ellison's Watching, the studio deliberately sabotaged the film's success. In a process called dumping, they discouraged positive reviews of it, and limited its theatrical release to less than a week. At the time of its release, Ellison published a review in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, urging readers to "go see it, before it disappears". He describes the reasons for dumping this film as having to do with the 1984 shakeup in Disney management, in which the new man (Michael Eisner) may have wished to justify his presence by making his predecessor's work look bad. He believed the film would have succeeded if viewers had been allowed to see it.
Despite the film's poor reception it was not forgotten by Walt Disney Imagineering. The film's interpretation of Oz is featured in the Storybook Land attraction at Disneyland Paris.
In 2005, American Pop Band The Scissor Sisters, fans of the film, published an unreleased single on their debut album, Scissor Sisters, called "Return To Oz". Although about the effects of crystal meth, it contains many of the images and themes covered in the film.
[edit] Problems
It can be argued that the attempts to maintain continuity with the 1939 MGM musical (e.g., the treatment of Dorothy's experiences in Oz as dreams and/or delusions, as well as the decision to not only retain the "ruby slippers," but combine the Nome King's magic belt with them) were major sources of this film's problems because they only further confused viewers. Other likely sources of the film's problems included the decision to combine The Marvelous Land of Oz (the only Oz book that didn't include Dorothy) with Ozma of Oz, and to combine (as in Mombi and Langwiedre) or eliminate (as in Tip, and the entire Royal Family of the Land of Ev) characters, as well as other, more general departures from the books.
[edit] Awards
Received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
[edit] External links
- Return to Oz : The Unofficial Site - A site devoted to the 1985 movie Return to Oz in all aspects, includes pictures, interviews, behind the scenes, collectibles, and more!
- Returning To Oz: An Audio Documentary On Walt Disney Pictures "Return To Oz" - A online Internet radio show, on the history and behind the scenes look of the classic 1985 Disney movie, "Return To Oz". Produced & Hosted by Aaron Pacentine of VideosForFamily.com and Celia Foster of ReturnToOzTheMovie.com.
- Return to Oz Myspace - A myspace acct dedicated to Return to Oz
- Return To Oz at the Internet Movie Database
- Unofficial Music Videofor Scissor Sisters' Return To Oz on YouTube
