July 25, 2002

BID #3 - PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT FAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (Aug. 10, 1990)

digress (26k image)

What I really want to discuss is The Wizard of Oz, but if I just do that, Don and Maggie Thompson will croak, because it's not comics-related. So we'll start with comics and wind up with Wizard. I tell you now, because, unless you know where I'm headed, this column will seem to ramble even more than it usually does.

The most frequent types of letters we get to The Incredible Hulk (from Hulk to Oz-- how will he do it? Stay tuned.) are villain letters. For every letter that asks when Betty will return or when Rick Jones is coming back or whatever happened to Thunderbolt Ross' body-- for every one of those letters, we get 10 or 20 saying, "I want to see The Hulk fight the Abomination/Rhino/Absorbing Man/fill-in-the-blank."

I always read these letters (I read all fan mail to all the comics I write) and at first I wondered, "Why? Why do readers ask for that?"

For example, The Hulk has fought The Rhino in the past and beaten him. And you know what? If he fights him again, he'll beat him again. You know he'll beat him again and again and again, because it's The Hulk's book. When someone shows up in The Hulk's comic book, The Hulk beats him. It's written in stone. It's a given.

Who likes reading a story where they know what's going to happen? Comics readers, apparently. I couldn't understand what the big attraction was. Certainly there was always the question of How Would The Hulk Beat The Rhino This Time? There are infinite variations on that, and I thought perhaps the attraction was that readers wanted to see what new and interesting ways the writer could come up with to beat up villains.

But that sounded limiting and dull. And besides, let's face it, no matter how you dress it up, all hero-villain fights are going to boil down to one thing: The hero hits the villain until the villain stops moving. The end.

Where is the commentary on the human condition in that? Where is the dramatic tension? Where is the passion? Where are the sales? Well-- through the roof, actually, at least in regards to that last question. Which means that not only do the fans know what thev want, but they're laying down serious bucks to get it.

In later years, however, my opinions have changed somewhat, as fans are no different than anyone else in their tastes.

As I write this, movies with Roman numerals in their titles seem to outnumber non-numeraled films. Sequels, all over the place. Even non-sequels are sequels; every critic in America is under the impression that Dick Tracy is a sequel to Batman. Certainly they've been comparing the two, as dissimilar as they are, as if the same creative personnel were involved.

It's the comparison, I've come to realize, that makes things fun for the comics fan. This time The Hulk beat The Absorbing Man by doing this; last time he beat him another way. Fans gets a kick out of it.

Movie critics (and, to an extent, movie audiences) get a sinister kick out of it, however. Comics fans seem satisfied with fundamentally the same story, with only the most minute of twists and turns. That's why it'stempting for writers to get lazy and why we have to keep trying not to.

Moviegoers, however, are rarely, if ever, satisfied. Moviemakers find themselves in a bind: If they do a film that's just like the first one, they get slammed for rehashing. If they do a film that's drastically different in tone and style-- which is creatively more satisfying-- then they get slammed because the elements which attracted viewers in the first place are no longer there. And they refuse to judge the film on its own terms.

Occasionally, moviemakers luck out. Lethal Weapon II, everyone loved. But Back to the Future II was panned as was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-- films which had many merits, the greatest of them being that the filmmakers had the guts to try something different from the parent film. And, boy, did they get ripped. Made money-- tons-- but got ripped.

Curiously BTTF III and Last Crusade were well-received precisely because they were very similar to the fiat ones. I tend to think that the darker middle films were there to break ground and give a more serious underpinning to the characters.

But no sequel, to my knowledge, has ever been as lambasted, torn to shreds, and generally villified as Retum to Oz.

What? Never heard of it? Only vaguely familiar with it? I'm not surprised.

Probably one of the best live-action FX film Disney ever made, Return to Oz was mercilessly shredded in the press. Critics actively warned parents not to let their children see it, to stay away from this damaging film.

Reviewers said it was much too terrifying for small children, apparently oblivious of the fact that Margaret Hamilton had been scaring the stuffings out of two generations with no discernable damage. There were even loopier critiques than that. Return was attacked because it didn't have Judy Garland. Because there were no songs.

What did it have? Well, a Dorothy who was the right age, for one thing. Brilliant and seamless special effects (no visible strings holding up the lion's tail here). Dazzling clavmation by Will Vinton. Dozens of positives, all overlooked, because of the Garland film.

Virtually all of the film was drawn from the Oz books, as well as the entire visual look, as Return chronicled Dorothy's struggle against the Nome King. The only holdover from the Garland version was having parallels between Oz and the real world.

In Return, the Nome King has a parallel in a psychiatrist who (paralleling the King's motives) is out to "help" Dorothy to forget Oz. The doctor's head nurse becomes, in Oz, the evil Mombi. An ethereal, mysterious patient becomes Ozma. Orderlies who wheel a hospital gurney become the dreaded Wheelers.

But they take it further than the first film's simple "this person is that person." The doctor's shock therapy machine (with which Dorothy is threatened but from which, ultimately, she escapes in the nick of time) becomes Tik Tok of Oz. Dorothy's room in the hospital is #31, the same number as the door behind which Mombi keeps --

Never mind. Effects and subtleties aside, Return is, in every way, superior to Wizard of Oz. Even the story is far superior. In Return, Dorothy is a mover and shaker. She makes plans and strategies, executes them, outthinks extremely formidable adversaries, and is, in every way, a superb and admirable heroine.

By contrast, Dorothy in the first film is a perpetual victim. She is swept along by the tide of events. She counts on her friends to protect her. She never plans, merely cries and desperately wants to return to a land where she can live in black-and-white and be assaulted by pigs. Oh, sure, she defeats the wicked witch, but it's by accident. She was trying to extinguish the Scarecrow.

And that water bit! Talk about deus ex machina! In Return, the Nome King's defeat is excellently set up. In Wizard, there is no hint whatsoever that the witch is vulnerable to water. Sure, we all know it now, but, boy, is that a bad piece of storytelling.

Let's face it. The Wizard of Oz makes no sense at all. Of course, neither does Total Recall, but no one's ever going to release a special 50th anniversary videotape edition of Total Recall (call it a hunch).

Who's the worst witch in Wizard? Not the one from the West. At least she's upfront. She wants to kill Dorothy and get the slippers. You know where you stand with her.

It's the one from the North: Glinda the bubblehead, who pretends to be Dorothy's friend. A careful viewing of the film reveals Glinda either is a total moron or simply a nasty customer.

We know Glinda's a few yellow bricks shy of a load from the moment she shows up. Her first words to Dorothy: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" All right, a fair question. But when Dorothy says she's not a witch, Glinda then addresses the same question to the dog. This woman can't recognize a dog? You can't be serious. And don't say there are no dogs in Oz, because The Witch of the West knows Toto for what he is immediately.

It gets worse. The Wicked Witch shows up, and Glinda removes the formidable ruby slippers from the dead witch. Does she put these magic talismans on herself to battle The Wicked Witch? No! She puts them on the non-witch from Kansas!

Why? The only reason I can think of is this: Have you ever rented bowling shoes? They always feel creepy, and sometimes there's stuff growing in them. And that's shoes worn by mortals. Can you imagine shoes worn by a witch, for who-knows-how-long? We know witches aren't big on personal hygiene; if they wash, they'll melt. The only way I'd put on those ruby slippers is if they came with industrial-strength Odor Eaters.

So Glinda sticks these disgusting, unclean pumps on poor, helpless Dorothy. And then Glinda delivers the strangest line of the movie to the Wicked Witch: "You have no power here. Begone," etc. This statement is not refuted by the evil one.

I don't get this at all. She has no power in Munchkinland? She's surrounded by 3 million Munchkins who have just learned this bit of information. Barn. Film's over by reel two, as this powerless, green-skinned crone is battered to death by the Lollypop Guild and danced on by the Lullaby League.

But no, the Munchkins are in on it with Glinda-- either stupid or vindictive. Probably stupid. Dorothy is given simple traveling instructions: "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." She even says it to herself a few times to get it down. What happens? There's a damned Munchkin stopping her every two feet repeating it to her, apparently concerned she can't remember five words in sequence. They think she's as stupid as they are.

Probably she is, because she never realizes that the whole film is an arbitrary, pointless exercise on Glinda's part. Why didn't Glinda tell her the shoes would bring her home? "Because she wouldn't have believed me."

Was anyone besides Dorothy taken in by this? I mean, come on. She was standing in Munchkinland, in color, surrounded by little people and witches, having been swept there by a tomado. Does anyone think that if Glinda had said, "Try banging the shoes together," Dorothy would have said, "Hah! You expect me to believe that! I'll walk, thanks?"

I think not. I think Dorothy's suspension of disbelief was pretty much over the rainbow by that point, thank you very much. Call me crazy, but I think she would have given it a whack.

No, she wanted Dorothy to learn a lesson. What was the lesson? This: Never dream. Never travel. Never envision that which you do not have or strive to acquire more than is immediately available, because, if you don't already have it, maybe you didn't need it to begin with.

Right. We don't need to travel to the stars or seek new technology or dream of going over the rainbow. Stay at home, dwell in sepia tones, and be content in a colorless world where an old bat can come along and have your dog gassed. What a great message.

The message of a benevolent person? A sane person? No. Glinda was demented at best or at worst just plain buck-stupid.

In Return to Oz, Dorothy dreams of another land, learns it exists, and at the end of the film is a whole, confident, and happy individual. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy dreams of a better place, learns that her dream is a pointless exercise in futility-- that maybe she didn't really need it to begin with-- and goes back to dwell in a dreary land that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, much less a beloved heroine.

You tell me which film is better.

See? From The Hulk to The Wizard of Oz. It was easy. All I had to do was click my Reeboks three times.

(I feel constrained to point out that there are all kinds of real reasons why the script for Wizard is the way it is. Multiple drafts by half a dozen writers, for one thing. Also many people, far more scholarly than I, have written all kinds of interpretations-- such as that the "own back yard" speech was actually a cloaked plea for isolationism, since the United States was contemplating entering World War II. This column is not out to explore any of that, but merely to entertain. For those interested in pursuing the matter, there are a number of excellent books on the subject, including the actual script complete with excised scenes. And while you're at it, rent Return to Oz on tape. Don't watch it on the Disney Channel. The morons edited out the really scary parts.)

(Peter David has never missed an airing of The Wizard Of Oz for two decades and yet saw it through entirely new eyes, when his 9-year-old daughter asked why Dorothy didn't simply turn the stupid hourglass over to buy herself more time. And he realized that, not only didn't he have an answer, but it had never occurred to him before. If anyone out there has an answer (aside from the obviously lame "It was too heavy" or "It was stuck"), send it to him c/o CBG. That and any other questions, except for when is The Hulk going to fight The Rhino?)

Posted by Peter David at July 25, 2002 12:27 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commenting
Comments