Wolf of Words

I was listening to the recent episode of the How Did This Get Made? podcast on Return to Oz, and it stirred up a lot of thoughts about the adaptation of books into movies or television shows. I have historically been a reader in my life, and I support other readers, but some book fans want adaptations to be exactly like the book. I felt this way at one point, but I have changed my mind. Exact adherence to the source material is not always the best way to adapt something. To me, it is not a binary choice. Sometimes, sticking closer to the source material is better, but sometimes changing elements is better. I often appreciate deviations, especially if I have already read the book, because I get a product that is similar but excitingly different. Let’s look at a few examples.

The Oz Book Series (1900 – 1907), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Return to Oz (1985)

The Wizard of Oz is one of my all-time favorite movies since I saw it as a small child. It is a musical romp through a fantasy land that is mostly benign, with only a few scarier moments. The visuals are iconic and impressive for a movie of its time period. The music and acting especially hold up.

I later read the books in my twenties and realized how different the first movie is as an adaptation. It certainly covers a lot of major points, but it is not a faithful adaptation.  

Return to Oz came out when I was two years old, so I could have seen it, but it was not nearly as popular as The Wizard of Oz. I did not watch it until 2020, well after I watched the books. As such, I could more directly compare the books with this movie in real time. 

Kansas

The books are set in the early 1900s and do not focus much on Dorothy’s home life except as a setup for her multiple journeys to Oz..

The Wizard of Oz is set in the late 30s  but it does not authentically show the hardships of depression era living at the time. I think this was a good choice. Audiences in the late 1930s were just coming out of the depression and did not necessarily want to relive any of those moments on screen. Fantasy movies are meant to be an escape, and that meant that Dorothy’s farm life was relatively happy, even though they were probably struggling. Also, (spoiler) the movie was going to end with Dorothy being returned to Kansas, so it could not be portrayed too badly or else it would have made for a downer ending. (By the way, I still see the ending of this movie as a cop out).  Dorothy’s problems needed to be enough to be troubling but not enough to actually despair over. The movie needs her to want to return to Kansas, and a more realistic and grounded portrayal of Dust Bowl Kansas is not something that somebody in lush Oz would want to return to.

Return to Oz depicts Dorothy’s farm life more accurately to the 1930s. Her distraction and obsession with the world of Oz is keeping her from her chores on the farm. She is brought to an accurate 1930s mental institution to cure her of her fantasies. Her pet chicken is in danger of becoming dinner if it does not start producing eggs. I feel that this sad beginning was a mistake, as we do not need to pity Dorothy when she returns to her hardships. She does escape the institution, and the corrupt staff is arrested or kille,d so there is that. This was during the tail end of the Dark Age of Disney, when they wanted to put out more experimental kids’ movies with a darker edge. This version of Kansas felt too real and too scary for what they were going for. It was entirely invented as it was not in the books. This was part of trying to haphazardly bridge the two movies, which was a mistake. 

Oz

The original movie had a lot of the fantasy and foreign nature of Oz as a land, but it also lacked a lot of the really weird and quirky elements from the books. It felt like a more streamlined version than what was written in the first book. They cut a lot of lore out and minimized certain roles to clean things up and make room for the songs. Oz feels less like an alien world and more like another version of our world with a few strange elements. Almost all characters are humanoid and easy to understand. Of course, the first book is the most straightforward of the series so that helped.

Return to Oz strived to make Oz as weird as it was in the books. It was a mashup of the second and third book so they had plenty of stranger characters to choose from while also touching on characters from the first book. They were put into a rough spot when it came to portraying The Tin Man and The Scarecrow. The original film had portrayed those (and other characters) with just the use of heavy makeup but their human facial features could still be seen and moved like flesh moves. Because of rights issues, Return to Oz portrayed the two characters more like their illustrations in the books. This was jarring to fans of the original movie, even if it was technically “more accurate”. They portrayed a lot of other characters with more inhumanity because of advances in puppetry and animatronics. Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and The Gump are decidedly less human than Dorothy’s original companions.

Return to Oz also decided to make Oz scarier, an element that was not really in the books. The books did not shy away from violence, what with the Tin Man’s origin, the Scarecrow snapping the necks of crows, and the Tin Man’s murder of 40 wolves. However, there was not as much of a pervasive feeling of horror in the books. There was a lot of whimsy but not as much horror. For example, the Wheelers are more annoying and silly in the books than the frightening freaks they are in the movie. The movie also makes Oz post-apocalyptic, an element that is definitely not in the books. This partially comes from mashing the lands of Ev (the setting of the second book) and Oz together. The visuals are very much in line with movies like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. It makes sense that both Brian Henson and Henry Selick were involved with this movie.

The mashup of two books made Return to Oz have two villains. The first villain encountered is Princess Mombi, a sorceress who is vain. In the books, Mombi is a recurring villain who is a hag who knows magic. Stealing her magic and escaping from her starts Tip’s story. In the movie, she is combined with Princess Langwidere from the third book, who is able to switch out her head for other heads in her collection. Much later, we are introduced to The Nome King, who is depicted largely as a face on a rock wall. In the books, he is part rock but not to the level in the movie. I feel like both of these adaptations are fine with just a few tweaks. The part of the adaptation that I do not like is that these two roles are played by the same actors who portray the staff of the sanitarium back in Kansas. If Oz is real, why do these characters look the same? Only because the first movie did it.

Which brings me to the one part of The Wizard of Oz that I do not like. In the books, Oz is real, and Dorothy’s journeys to and from actually happen. Eventually, Dorothy’s family members also visit or live permanently in Oz. For that reason, I hate that the original movies have it all being a coma dream. It feels like it negates a lot of the movie.

Dorothy

In books, Dorothy’s age is not stated outright, but the understanding is that she is somewhere around the range of 10 and 12. Most likely, she is eleven years old. 

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is supposed to be twelve years old, but the actress (Judy Garland) was sixtee,n going on seventeen. While Garland did her best to portray the character with wide-eyed wonder and more youthful energy, she is definitely visually almost an adult. Obviously, her talent (especially her singing talent) led people to overlook this and embrace her in the role over time. This was the way that Hollywood cast a lot of younger roles for a long time. People watching expected this. 

In Return to Oz, Dorothy is supposed to be eleven years old, but the actress (Fairuza Balk) was only ten. This was a more accurate portrayal as Balk looked a lot like the original book illustrations and was a better fit for Baum’s descriptions of her. However, putting a tiny girl in such scary conditions did not feel great. Being more book-accurate did not serve the story here. Also, having such a small child being institutionalized for her imagination (even though Oz is real in the movie) is a pretty dark idea. 

Somewhat related is the loss of the character of Tip, who is possibly the first trans character in children’s literature. A lot of Tip’s role is given to Dorothy in Return to Oz. While I do not like this change, I can understand it. Audiences may not have been ready for a trans character in 1985, but studios were definitely not ready to portray one. Instead, Princess Ozma becomes more of a cameo than the important character she was in the books.

Conclusion

I feel like The Wizard of Oz benefits from its changes from the source material, while Return to Oz suffers from its deviations from the source material. Both movies mostly benefit in the places where they follow the source material. Both movies feel like they were playing to the audiences of their time. The Wizard of Oz was playing to an audience that just wanted to go to the theater and be happy. Return to Oz was a reflection of a desire for darker tales. Both movies actually did not do well at the box office. The Wizard of Oz became more popular and iconic by becoming a yearly tradition, while Return to Oz has become more of a cult classic, beloved by fewer people because of its darkness. As a side note, I feel like Return to Oz was harmed by trying to be a sequel to The Wizard of Oz. I still love both movies.