Review: Return to Oz (DMC #76)
Did you know there was a sequel to The Wizard of Oz? We sure didn’t! (And maybe for good reason?) Last night we watched Return to Oz, the 76th film in our Disnerd Movie Challenge. If you’ve seen this film before, feel free to skip over our synopsis and jump straight to our review.
Synopsis
In 1898 Kansas, Dorothy Gale hasn’t been able to sleep since returning from her adventures in Oz. Aunt Em worries about Dorothy’s lack of sleep, and what she believes to be Dorothy’s delusions about Oz. When Dorothy’s chicken, Billina, shows Dorothy a key with the Oz symbol on it, Dorothy tries to show it to Aunt Em as proof that Oz exists, but it has the opposite effect. Aunt Em decides to take Dorothy to see a doctor for experimental electroshock therapy, despite Uncle Henry’s protests about it being too expensive. At the clinic, Dr. Worley tells Dorothy and her aunt that he can use his machine to zap away Dorothy’s unpleasant dreams and memories. Aunt Em leaves Dorothy with the doctor and Nurse Wilson, promising to return the next day to bring Dorothy back home. Nurse Wilson takes Dorothy to a sparsely furnished bedroom to wait for the doctor. A blonde girl seems to magically appear in Dorothy’s room and gifts her a jack-o-lantern. The girl knows Dorothy’s name, but Dorothy doesn’t know the girl’s name. Outside, a storm begins, and while Dorothy turns to look out the window, the girl vanishes just as mysteriously as she appeared. Nurse Wilson returns with two orderlies who’ve brought a squeaky-wheeled gurney. Dorothy is strapped to the gurney and wheeled to the doctor’s exam room, where he readies his machine to pull the unpleasant dreams from Dorothy’s head. Just as he’s about to use the machine on Dorothy, lightning strikes and the power goes out. As the adults leave to investigate the power outage, the blonde girl slips into the room and releases Dorothy. The girls make a run for it, eventually running through the surrounding woods and falling into a river as Nurse Wilson pursues them. The blonde girl disappears from view, but Dorothy manages to climb onto an old crate washed into the river by the storm and falls asleep in it as she drifts downstream.
Dorothy is awakened by the voice of Billina—who now can talk—as they find themselves still in the crate, but in the middle of a quickly-receding pond in the middle of the Deadly Desert of Oz. The Deadly Desert kills anything living that touches its sand, so Dorothy carries Billina safely across a pathway of stones to the safety of a grassy field full of lunch pail trees. Meanwhile, the stones watch Dorothy’s progress. One of the stones reports to the Nome King that Dorothy has arrived—and she has a chicken with her—a fact which greatly distresses the Nome King. Dorothy and Billina continue on their way, but Oz is strangely empty. Dorothy soon discovers the yellow brick road has been destroyed, and she follows it all the way to what remains of the Emerald City, which now sits in ruins, with all its inhabitants turned to stone. Graffiti on one wall says “Beware the Wheelers,” and Dorothy soon discovers who the Wheelers are—creatures with wheels for hands and feet who torment Dorothy and Billina. Dorothy uses the key Billina found back in Kansas to open a secret door to escape from the Wheelers, and inside she discovers Tik-Tok—one of the robotic soldiers of Oz. She winds up his thinking, speech, and action to activate him, and he tells Dorothy how the Scarecrow locked him in there and instructed him to wait for Dorothy. The Scarecrow must have sent Dorothy the key. Tik-Tok reveals that everyone living was turned to stone, but since he’s technically not alive, he avoided the same fate. After leaving the secret room, Tik-Tok battles the Wheelers who run from him, but he holds onto one of the Wheelers and makes him talk. The Wheeler reveals that the Nome King stole all the emeralds of the Emerald City, and that only Princess Mombi knows where the Scarecrow is. Though the Wheeler is terrified of Mombi, Tik-Tok makes him take them to her palace, after which he leaves them. Once inside, Dorothy, Tik-Tok, and Billina encounter Mombi. She leads Dorothy into a room full of living heads on pedestals. Mombi takes off her current head and swaps it for one from the cabinet. She tells Dorothy the Nome King took the Scarecrow back to his mountain. Mombi admires Dorothy’s head and decides to lock Dorothy away in a tower until she’s older and prettier so she can add Dorothy’s head to her collection. Tik-Tok and Billina try to save Dorothy, but Tik-Tok’s action runs down and he’s unable to move. Dorothy and Billina are locked in Mombi’s tower where they meet Jack Pumpkinhead. Jack asks if Dorothy is his mom, but Dorothy says no. He was built to scare Mombi, but instead Mombi used her powder of life on him to make him alive and she locked him up here. Jack reveals that Mombi’s powder of life would likely be in cabinet 31 with her original head. This gives Dorothy an idea. Jack uses his stick arms to unlock the door to the tower room. Dorothy leads them back to Tik-Tok, who she winds back up and sends upstairs with Jack and Billina to begin preparations while she sneaks into Mombi’s room to steal the powder of life. Dorothy steals the key from a sleeping Mombi and heads for cabinet 31, but upstairs, Tik-Tok’s thinking begins to wind down, confusing Jack and Billina’s efforts to build something. Dorothy manages to steal the powder of life, but she accidentally wakes Mombi’s original head (which looks just like Nurse Wilson) along with all the other heads and Mombi’s headless body. Dorothy sees a ghostly figure behind a mirror that points out an exit to her. Dorothy follows it and runs back upstairs where she winds Tik-Tok’s thinking and hastily helps finish the contraption before sprinkling the powder of life all over it. The contraption, a couch with a Gump head and palm frond wings, comes to life and flies the heroes out the window, just before Mombi can reach them. Mombi sends her Wheelers after them. The ghostly figure appears to Mombi, and Mombi taunts her, saying nobody knows who or where she is, though she reveals her name is Ozma. Meanwhile, the Wheelers pursuing the heroes fall into the Deadly Desert, and several die. However, the ropes on the Gump begin to break apart. Jack falls while trying to repair the ropes and his pumpkin head falls off. The heroes manage to fly through the air to catch Jack, but the whole contraption falls apart, dropping the heroes onto the Nome King’s mountain, with Billina landing inside Jack’s pumpkin head.
One of the Nome King’s stone spies reports Dorothy’s arrival on his mountain. The Nome King reveals himself to Dorothy on the cliff face. Dorothy asks him to release the Scarecrow, but the Nome King laughs, creating an avalanche that splits the mountain. Dorothy falls inside and meets the Nome King face to face. The king tells Dorothy that he was the one who made the emeralds, so by stealing them he was only taking back what was rightfully his to begin with. Dorothy is briefly reunited with the Scarecrow before the Nome King whisks him away and turns him into an unseen ornament. The Nome King insists the Scarecrow stole his emeralds, but Dorothy, through her tears, argues the emeralds were there before the Scarecrow so he couldn’t have stolen them. The Nome King takes pity on Dorothy and delivers her other friends to her (Tik-Tok, Billina, Jack, and the Gump). He offers Dorothy a game to get her Scarecrow friend back. Meanwhile, the Wheelers report back to Mombi that they were unsuccessful, but they need to warn the Nome King about the chicken. Back in the Nome King’s mountain, the Nome King describes the game—each of them will have three chances to correctly identify which ornament in the Nome King’s palace is the Scarecrow. If they guess correctly, they get the Scarecrow. However, it isn’t until the Gump fails all three of his guesses that the Nome King reveals they’ll be turned into ornaments themselves if they guess incorrectly. Jack goes next, with Billina still hiding inside his pumpkin head, but he fails. Tik-Tok takes the next turn, while the Nome King reveals to Dorothy that he’s wearing Dorothy’s ruby slippers—they fell off her feet and landed on his mountain when she returned to Kansas, and they made it possible for the Nome King to conquer the Emerald City. Meanwhile, Tik-Tok pretends to freeze up as if his action has run down to trick the Nome King into allowing Dorothy into the room. Tik-Tok suggests Dorothy pay attention to Tik-Tok’s choice, so that if Tik-Tok guesses wrong and becomes and ornament, it might give Dorothy a clue. Tik-Tok guesses incorrectly, but he instantly vanishes, leaving no clue for Dorothy. Meanwhile, Mombi reaches the gates of the Nome King’s mountain just as Dorothy begins her guesses. The Nome King makes Mombi bow before him. The Nome King gloats that once Dorothy guesses incorrectly, there will be no one left who remembers Oz, and the Nome King will become completely human. Back in the room of ornaments, Dorothy chooses an emerald and shouts “Oz!” to reveal the Scarecrow! She realizes green ornaments are people from Oz, so she and the Scarecrow quickly search for green objects. They find the Gump just as the Nome King traps Mombi in a cage and creates an earthquake. The ornament room begins to fall apart as Dorothy hurries to turn another green object into Jack (and Billina, who’s still inside his head). The Nome King appears to end the game. He grabs the Gump’s sofa body and eats it, leaving just the Gump’s head. The king’s stone minions block the exits. The Nome King is about to eat Jack when Billina lays an egg that falls into the king’s mouth. Chicken eggs are poison to the Nome King and his minions! The Nome King crumbles, and Dorothy rescues her ruby slippers from the rubble. She uses the ruby slippers to return everyone to Oz and restore everyone to life. Once safely in Oz, Dorothy finds a small ornament on the Gump’s antlers and shouts “Oz!” to turn the ornament into Tik-Tok.
The Emerald City celebrates Dorothy’s victory, and they ask her to be queen of Oz, but she declines, saying she must return to Kansas, though she wishes she could be in both places at the same time. Then, Ozma appears in the mirror behind Dorothy—it’s the same blonde girl who helped Dorothy in the doctor’s clinic! Dorothy helps Ozma step through the glass, and Jack cries out that Ozma is his real mom. Ozma is the rightful queen of Oz who was trapped by Mombi. She forgives Mombi, for Mombi no longer has any magical power. Ozma promises to look in on Dorothy from time to time. Bellina decides to stay in Oz rather than go back to Kansas. Dorothy says goodbye to her friends and is sent back to Kansas, where she wakes up on the muddy banks of the river. Toto finds her and leads Uncle Henry and Aunt Em to Dorothy. The adults reveal that the clinic was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Everyone survived except for the doctor who ran back in to save his machines. Back at the farm, Dorothy has her own room in her family’s newly built house. She looks at her reflection in the mirror and finds Ozma there. She shouts to call Aunt Em to see, but Ozma places a finger to her lips, telling Dorothy to keep it a secret. As the film ends, Dorothy runs outside to play with Toto.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: I’ve never seen this one before. In fact, I’ve never heard of this one before it came up in our challenge. And maybe there’s a good reason for that… I mean, judging solely off the preview image from Disney Plus, this has the potential to be pretty bad. Also, why is Disney “returning” to Oz when they never went there in the first place?
Kevin: Well, to answer that question, this movie was apparently intended to be an “unofficial” sequel to the beloved 1939 film starring Judy Garland. By the time Disney got around to making Return to Oz, the Oz books were in the public domain and Walt Disney Studios was free to produce a film without involving MGM, who made the first film. I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz a few times, but have never read any of the books. I think the original film is great and deserves to be watched at least once, but it’s not at all something I would go back to over and over. I much prefer several of the modern retellings of the story, such as Wicked (the musical, haven’t read the novel) and the 2007 television mini-series Tin Man, which was sort of a reimagining/sequel hybrid. Anyway, I’m not going into this Disney sequel with any high expectations; in my own experience, unofficial sequels to stories that were made by different studios don’t tend to do well.
Thoughts After Watching
Not completely terrible…
Megan: Having gone into this movie expecting it to be a total train wreck, I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was somewhat better than I expected. Sure, the characters still need further development (more on that later), and the emotional storytelling is missing, but I did find myself becoming engaged with the plot. Was it because I was taking notes on the plot while watching the movie? Or was I actually engaged by the story? It’s hard to say, but I can say that the story did manage to surprise me on one or two occasions by taking a direction I hadn’t anticipated. There’s also some pretty cool worldbuilding that went into this story, what with the villain and her closet full of many heads, the Deadly Desert, and the Wheelers. However, I believe most of the credit for that probably goes to L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz book series, not the filmmakers behind Return to Oz. Though I can’t say I was blown away by this film (pun intended), I was at least relieved that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared it would be.
…but it lacks character.
Megan: The one thing Kevin and I were able to pin down about why this movie didn’t quite work is character. The characters in this film don’t have enough development. They feel as hastily thrown together as the Gump, a jumbled up pile held together with nothing but a bit of poorly secured rope. For instance, let’s look at our protagonist, Dorothy. Most protagonists have some flaw or wound that is “healed” by the journey of their story, but it’s unclear what that flaw or wound is for Dorothy. Is it really the same as in The Wizard of Oz? That she still hasn’t learned to appreciate home? (To be fair, if I were about to be sent off to experimental electroshock therapy, I’d have a hard time appreciating home, too.) Dorothy’s Aunt Em would probably say that Dorothy’s flaw is that she can’t stop thinking about Oz, but at the end of the film, Dorothy doesn’t stop thinking about Oz—if anything she’s returned with a stronger connection to Oz. I’ve gone through several other possible flaws in my head, but there is no single, stand-out flaw I can point to, and that’s a bit of a problem from a storytelling perspective. It makes it harder for us to understand the character and the significance of her journey—especially since her external “want” and internal “need” are also hazy. In the beginning it’s clear that her “want” is to return to Oz (and to maybe get a good night’s sleep), but she very quickly gets her wish when she (and the chicken) are whisked off to Oz. At that point, Dorothy’s “want” is to rescue her friends and all of Oz, and once that is accomplished, she wants to go back home to Kansas. That’s all fine seeing as those are the external “wants” that drive the plot, but the internal character journey is still missing. It’s hard to identify what it is that Dorothy really needed all along. Was it simply to have a way to communicate with her friends in Oz? If that’s the case, it’s still a bit more of an external change, symbolized by the mirror, rather than an internal change within Dorothy as a character.
Because the characters aren’t as well developed, the emotional arc of this story (the internal character journey) falls flat. It’s hard for us as the audience to be invested in Dorothy’s character when it’s so unclear what she really wants, or how her internal flaw is going to stand in the way of that want. Even after Dorothy’s extended adventure in Oz, she isn’t all that different from when we met her at the beginning of the film. Only Dorothy’s external world has changed. She still seems like the same Dorothy, and that ultimately makes for a rather unsatisfying story.
Kevin: I completely agree on all of this. This is partly why this film doesn’t seem to work very well as a sequel (I go into much further depth on this below). It feels like we’re expected to think this Dorothy is supposed to be the same Dorothy from the MGM film, but the on-screen representation was far from it. This Dorothy feels like an entirely separate character, and since we do not understand what is really driving her as a character it becomes hard to root for her as our protagonist.
A very odd and out of place sequel
Kevin: I seriously had a difficult time being engaged with this story. Look… I’ll admit that I made a mistake—I was comparing this movie far too much to the original film. But I really could not help it! I think Disney relied too much on the audience being familiar with MGM’s classic movie in order to tell their version. Although The Wizard of Oz isn’t one of my favorite movies, it’s a classic that is hard to top. I get that the movie MGM created so long ago wasn’t faithful to Baum’s novels; where the novels feature a lot of dark and heavy themes, the 1939 feature film is a musical full of vibrant colors and occasional over-the-top cuteness. Anyone who is familiar with and loves L. Frank Baum’s original stories would probably take issue with The Wizard of Oz. Now, I’m not saying that the sequel needed to be 100% similar in tone and style. However, it seems clear to me that Disney was definitely attempting to make a film that could follow the original movie’s plot, while simultaneously also realizing that it had a slim to none chance of being as big as its predecessor. The problem is that writing a sequel depends on your audience’s familiarity with the story that came before it. Does Return to Oz follow the story established in the 1939 movie? Technically, yes. It starts off with Dorothy having returned home to Kansas, only have a longing to make it back to Oz and prove to her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry that she isn’t crazy. That’s a great jumping off point to begin a second film. As the film gets going, though, it becomes readily apparent that this is not going to be anything like the original story, and I’m not just referring to the obvious lack of musical numbers or that Kansas wasn’t shot in sepia tones. Return to Oz is so wildly different from The Wizard of Oz in tone and style that it was off-putting. It seems to me that the best way for someone to appreciate the tone of this movie would have been for them to be familiar with the original novels in the first place. For the average movie-goer, however, I would bet that their only knowledge of Oz came from the 1939 musical. That’s certainly the case for me, so going from that to this pseudo-sequel is jarring. It would help if this movie worked as a standalone adventure, but it really doesn’t. True, there isn’t too much mention of the eponymous wizard of the original story, nor any mention of the Wicked Witch of the West. But, by including elements like the Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, and even having the Scarecrow be a source of motivation for Dorothy, Disney’s film still relies on its audience being somewhat familiar with the original movie. As a sequel, it also just doesn’t work since it doesn’t match up with the filmmaking styles of what came before it. Couple all of this with what we said above about the characters and I couldn’t enjoy this adventure into Oz as much as I otherwise would have. This film is an odd one in Disney’s catalog. I think if Disney had decided to remake The Wizard of Oz in a style similar to Return to Oz, and then released this one, it could have worked out better. Sure, they still would have been completely unlikely to match the enduring legacy of the 1939 classic, but at least the tone would have made more sense.
For those folks who genuinely enjoyed this movie, I’m glad you appreciate it! I think I will just have to give this one another try some day and not let my brain compare it too much to the original movie. I also realize that I’m just not much of a cult film fan in general, nor do I care much for darker elements. It’s great that Return to Oz was able to appeal to lots of people, but it definitely isn’t for me.
At least it passes the Bechdel test
Megan: The one absolute positive about this story is that it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors! From beginning to end we see named female characters talking to each other about a wide range of topics—very few of their conversations revolve around male characters. We have Dorothy and Aunt Em talking about Dorothy’s inability to sleep and her adventures in Oz (even though Aunt Em doesn’t believe Dorothy, she does at least show concern for Dorothy’s health). We have Ozma coming to Dorothy’s aid in the real world to save her from the doctor, and then Dorothy coming to Ozma’s aid in Oz to rescue her from behind the glass. We even have Billina, a talking hen, having full on conversations with Dorothy about themselves, Oz, the Emerald City, and everything else they encounter on their adventure. That’s three female allies for Dorothy to talk to, in addition to the one female villain, Mombi (well, really two, if you count Mombi’s “real world” counterpart, Nurse Wilson). This may not seem like a lot, but considering several of the last films we watched only had one female character throughout the entire movie, this seems like an abundance! Perhaps that’s why I found the story so much more interesting—because it was dealing with female characters and their stories at its center.
The animation is another positive
Kevin: By no means was the animation fantastic here or anything like that, but I very much enjoyed seeing what the filmmakers did in order to accomplish some of their more technically challenging sequences. The stop motion animation looks dated to be sure, though I thought it had a charming ‘80s aesthetic to it. It reminded me a lot of some of those really old Christmas specials, like Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (though without the joyful Christmas spirit, obviously). Interestingly enough, though I wasn’t much of a fan of the darker tones this movie went with, I think the stop motion animation just helps with that tone. It’s jarring and it’s weird, and it goes perfectly well with the style the filmmakers used for this.
