Return to OzComing back to a beloved place can be surprising--even startling--when you discover it to be radically different than when you left it. In Return to Oz--the sequel to the beloved classic, The Wizard of Oz, made almost a half a century earlier--Dorothy Gale (Fairuza Balk), in fact, returns to Oz following an escape from a sanitarium, only to discover that her "somewhere over the rainbow" has become a desolate husk of its former self, with the Emerald City in ruins and all of her former friends incapacitated or absent. Dorothy embarks on a perilous quest to discover the source of the calamity, and restore Oz to its former glory.
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Return to Oz exists seemingly in spite of its precursor, which has often cited as one of cinema's greatest and most nostalgic films. This film is regarded as being more "faithful" to its source material than the original, and is something of a semi-sequel. But Return to Oz is a whole different breed of film than The Wizard of Oz; it is not a musical, although it possesses a lovely, rich score by David Shire, and the tone of the movie is far more bleak--even creepy in nature--compared to the luminescence of its predecessor. While The Wizard of Oz was easily identifiable as being shot almost solely on a sound stage, Return to Oz features many scenes out in the open air. The film also depicts Kansas on the cusp of the 20th century in a more realistic light, where the roads on the outskirts of Dorothy's home near Franklin were no more than worn-down earth, and vast tracts of land stretched outward for miles without a sign of civilization. Set approximately six months after the original journey to Oz, Dorothy now suffers from insomnia, still overwhelmed from her trip to another dimension filled with magic and mystery. Her obsession with this fantastic land has given her Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) and Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) cause for worry about her mental health, and they take her to a specialist in a seemingly revolutionary form of treatment via electrotherapy. But before the condescending Doctor Worley (Nicol Williamson) and his icy Head Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh) can administer the "treatment", this so-called "miraculous modern technology" fails in a terrible storm, and Dorothy escapes, ending up back in Oz. The Emerald City now resembles a kind of run-down urban wasteland, complete with graffiti warning about "the wheelers", decorated with the petrified statues of citizens of the city--a bad neighborhood to get lost in, and definitely "no place like home".
This anxiety-inducing tension was not found in The Wizard of Oz; even in that film's most climactic of moments, there remained a kind of innocent comfort, but not so in Return to Oz. As in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's return is peppered with beings that resemble people from her world in Kansas. Doctor Worley becomes the craggy "Nome King" who attempts to justify his subversion of Oz under the auspices of reclaiming his "stolen emeralds". The Nome King is the true antagonist of Return to Oz, and is made all the more unsettling by depicting him and his minions through stop-motion claymation. He is ominous and imposing, twisting logic to get his way; he is also well-spoken yet prone to wrathful outbursts. The Nome King pursuit to become "more human" comes with intensive makeup, recalling Tim Curry's turn as Darkness in Legend. The menacing "Head Nurse" becomes the shrieking Princess Mombi (rhymes with "zombie"), who swaps her own head with a series of stolen heads of lovely maidens she keeps. Even an orderly who transports Dorothy to receive her shock treatment becomes one of the raptor-like, cackling maniacs that peddle around on all fours known as "wheelers". These bizarre and threatening figures contribute to making Return to Oz a far more unnerving experience than its predecessor; some critics considered it "too dark" for child audiences, and the film did not perform commercially well upon release. On the other hand, Return to Oz has gone on to become a "cult favorite", defying easy classification as a children's movie, and it did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Return to Oz boasts some ingenious special effects at times, including highly sophisticated animatronics reminiscent of Jim Henson. His son, Brian Henson, operates and voices one of Dorothy's new companions--Jack Pumpkinhead--who one suspects must have inspired Tim Burton's own A Nightmare Before Christmas. In lieu of Toto, Dorothy is reunited with her pet chicken, Bellina, who unlike her quieter pooch, is a bit of a sassy bird, who balks at dangerous encounters (or should that be clucks?) Another new ally of Dorothy in her crusade to save Oz is the automaton and "Army of Oz" called "Tik-Tok". While Tik-Tok is voiced by Sean Barrett, it was actually animated by a couple of men, including a gymnast who was reported to have to perform the role inside the robot-like suit while standing on his hands, bent backwards within the metal armor. These technically complex elements contribute to the sense of wonder and fantasy in Return to Oz; ironically, the predominance of puppetry and costumes used to depict the monsters in the film speaks to a more visceral kind of fear--as if the monsters were actually there--and others like the Nome King exist in a kind of hyper-real form. In a way, Return to Oz feels as though it were designed to be a "scary story"; it is set near Halloween, and events unfold during a dark and stormy night. Jack Pumpkinhead, while a surrogate for the Scarecrow, looks unmistakably like a Jack-o'-Lantern. When Dorothy and company attempt to escape Mombi's tower, they construct a flying creature from parts around the room, animating it with Mombi's stolen "Powder of Life", thus giving life to "The Gump" (Lyle Conway), a veritable "Frankenstein's Monster" hybrid of assembled parts. Even Mombi herself, also a wicked witch, keeps thirty-one different heads in numbered cases, with her original kept in the final drawer, coinciding with the last day of October--Halloween. But another terror which Dorothy confronts in Return to Oz deals with the potential loss of her childhood innocence. This comes in the brief visit she has with Doctor Worley and Aunt Em, when the "good doctor" describes how his machine and the power of electricity heralds a "new age", one devoid of magic or "dreams", like those of Oz. Thus her return to Oz is a kind of rebellion, both against the advent of maturity, as well as the "new century" on the horizon, which literally threatens to obliterate her fantasies and imagination with the brutal, destructive force of a proverbial lightning bolt. Return to Oz captures the fears and anxieties which plague children as they feel their sense of wonder being bled away, forced to come to terms with the realities of a new age and how it alters their world.
Recommended for: Fans of an original and radically different follow up to The Wizard of Oz. Return to Oz may unnerve its audience, but it sets an important tone for underscoring the parallels between holding on to one's dreams and advancing into maturity. The film also boasts some impressive visuals and has been compelling enough to make it a "cult classic".
This anxiety-inducing tension was not found in The Wizard of Oz; even in that film's most climactic of moments, there remained a kind of innocent comfort, but not so in Return to Oz. As in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's return is peppered with beings that resemble people from her world in Kansas. Doctor Worley becomes the craggy "Nome King" who attempts to justify his subversion of Oz under the auspices of reclaiming his "stolen emeralds". The Nome King is the true antagonist of Return to Oz, and is made all the more unsettling by depicting him and his minions through stop-motion claymation. He is ominous and imposing, twisting logic to get his way; he is also well-spoken yet prone to wrathful outbursts. The Nome King pursuit to become "more human" comes with intensive makeup, recalling Tim Curry's turn as Darkness in Legend. The menacing "Head Nurse" becomes the shrieking Princess Mombi (rhymes with "zombie"), who swaps her own head with a series of stolen heads of lovely maidens she keeps. Even an orderly who transports Dorothy to receive her shock treatment becomes one of the raptor-like, cackling maniacs that peddle around on all fours known as "wheelers". These bizarre and threatening figures contribute to making Return to Oz a far more unnerving experience than its predecessor; some critics considered it "too dark" for child audiences, and the film did not perform commercially well upon release. On the other hand, Return to Oz has gone on to become a "cult favorite", defying easy classification as a children's movie, and it did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Return to Oz boasts some ingenious special effects at times, including highly sophisticated animatronics reminiscent of Jim Henson. His son, Brian Henson, operates and voices one of Dorothy's new companions--Jack Pumpkinhead--who one suspects must have inspired Tim Burton's own A Nightmare Before Christmas. In lieu of Toto, Dorothy is reunited with her pet chicken, Bellina, who unlike her quieter pooch, is a bit of a sassy bird, who balks at dangerous encounters (or should that be clucks?) Another new ally of Dorothy in her crusade to save Oz is the automaton and "Army of Oz" called "Tik-Tok". While Tik-Tok is voiced by Sean Barrett, it was actually animated by a couple of men, including a gymnast who was reported to have to perform the role inside the robot-like suit while standing on his hands, bent backwards within the metal armor. These technically complex elements contribute to the sense of wonder and fantasy in Return to Oz; ironically, the predominance of puppetry and costumes used to depict the monsters in the film speaks to a more visceral kind of fear--as if the monsters were actually there--and others like the Nome King exist in a kind of hyper-real form. In a way, Return to Oz feels as though it were designed to be a "scary story"; it is set near Halloween, and events unfold during a dark and stormy night. Jack Pumpkinhead, while a surrogate for the Scarecrow, looks unmistakably like a Jack-o'-Lantern. When Dorothy and company attempt to escape Mombi's tower, they construct a flying creature from parts around the room, animating it with Mombi's stolen "Powder of Life", thus giving life to "The Gump" (Lyle Conway), a veritable "Frankenstein's Monster" hybrid of assembled parts. Even Mombi herself, also a wicked witch, keeps thirty-one different heads in numbered cases, with her original kept in the final drawer, coinciding with the last day of October--Halloween. But another terror which Dorothy confronts in Return to Oz deals with the potential loss of her childhood innocence. This comes in the brief visit she has with Doctor Worley and Aunt Em, when the "good doctor" describes how his machine and the power of electricity heralds a "new age", one devoid of magic or "dreams", like those of Oz. Thus her return to Oz is a kind of rebellion, both against the advent of maturity, as well as the "new century" on the horizon, which literally threatens to obliterate her fantasies and imagination with the brutal, destructive force of a proverbial lightning bolt. Return to Oz captures the fears and anxieties which plague children as they feel their sense of wonder being bled away, forced to come to terms with the realities of a new age and how it alters their world.
Recommended for: Fans of an original and radically different follow up to The Wizard of Oz. Return to Oz may unnerve its audience, but it sets an important tone for underscoring the parallels between holding on to one's dreams and advancing into maturity. The film also boasts some impressive visuals and has been compelling enough to make it a "cult classic".