Movies: Return to Oz
Dec. 20th, 2008 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amediaWell, as with most things in Tin Man fandom, this is all Erin's fault - IIRC, it was her post about Return to Oz when that movie meme was going around that made me curious. TODS and I watched the movie in segments as a break from grading.
DISNEY made this movie for KIDS????!!!!! I can just imagine them sitting around and saying, "Hey, where are those guys who scared the poop out of toddlers with the Heffalumps and Woozles sequence in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day? Let's give them some more LSD and see if they can scare the poop out of eight-year-olds!" I mean, dude, this movie would have TOTALLY spooked me if I'd seen it as a kid.
But as an adult, I really enjoyed it a lot. It was very creative and clever; I recognized a lot of plot elements from the various books, and I thought they brought things like Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump to movie-life quite well. I liked Fairuza Balk as Dorothy a lot, and she managed to sound a lot like Judy Garland without sounding as if she was imitating her. Jean Marsh had WAY too much fun as the beautiful evil Witch-Princess in the tower with the over-the-top costumes (Azkadellia inspiration, anyone?).
Miscellaneous observations: I thought it was very intriguing how the Nome King's spies were basically faces that appeared in rocks, and at first, he too was a face appearing from rock; it reminded me of the beginning where, as the doctor, he pointed out to Dorothy that the controls on the electroshock machine resembled a face. (Starting off the movie by putting a child in a 19th-century mental hospital for electroshock treatment - oh yeah, there's wholesome family entertainment for ya!) The decapitation motif, which appeared frequently, made me shudder. The Wheelers looked like something out of Cirque du Soleil. The scene where Dorothy holds out her hand to Ozma in the mirror to save her from the Witch's control reminded me a LOT of little DG holding out her hand to little Az to save her from the Witch's control.
DISNEY made this movie for KIDS????!!!!! I can just imagine them sitting around and saying, "Hey, where are those guys who scared the poop out of toddlers with the Heffalumps and Woozles sequence in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day? Let's give them some more LSD and see if they can scare the poop out of eight-year-olds!" I mean, dude, this movie would have TOTALLY spooked me if I'd seen it as a kid.
But as an adult, I really enjoyed it a lot. It was very creative and clever; I recognized a lot of plot elements from the various books, and I thought they brought things like Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump to movie-life quite well. I liked Fairuza Balk as Dorothy a lot, and she managed to sound a lot like Judy Garland without sounding as if she was imitating her. Jean Marsh had WAY too much fun as the beautiful evil Witch-Princess in the tower with the over-the-top costumes (Azkadellia inspiration, anyone?).
Miscellaneous observations: I thought it was very intriguing how the Nome King's spies were basically faces that appeared in rocks, and at first, he too was a face appearing from rock; it reminded me of the beginning where, as the doctor, he pointed out to Dorothy that the controls on the electroshock machine resembled a face. (Starting off the movie by putting a child in a 19th-century mental hospital for electroshock treatment - oh yeah, there's wholesome family entertainment for ya!) The decapitation motif, which appeared frequently, made me shudder. The Wheelers looked like something out of Cirque du Soleil. The scene where Dorothy holds out her hand to Ozma in the mirror to save her from the Witch's control reminded me a LOT of little DG holding out her hand to little Az to save her from the Witch's control.
