Return to Oz (1985)

To celebrate the release of part two of wicked: the musical edition: the film edition, we watched the true best wizard of oz sequel film, which i have watched once before, in middle or first school. Having watched more eighties fantasy films since then, i know feel able to confidently place it as part of the eigthies fantasy film genre, complete with janky robot suits and humanoid bad guys with tinsel glued all over them.

It seems that this film has quite a committed fan base, and i wouldn’t consider myself to be a part of it. But i enjoyed watching it more than i expected, and more than i enjoyed watching other staples like the never ending story. The plot is reasonably compelling and has a touch of edginess to it which is quite refreshing, especially after sitting through the complete lack of edge that wicked part one remembered to bring over from the book it’s ostensibly based on. The nice thing about the eighties was that a lot of cgi was still a bit too expensive to put it in any old spinoff film, so we get a lot of puppetry and stop motion effects to fill in the gaps, and while it doesn’t look totally convincing, it at least doesn’t look dated in the way that early cgi does.

On top of that, the plot hinges on the nome king taking control of oz and turning everyone to stone. Why? Because the city was built with emeralds that were stolen without consent from his kingdom. But as dorothy argues, they were already stolen when the scarecrow became king of oz, so he shouldn’t have to be punished or give them back. And that’s the end of that, no more nuance is necessary. As a proponent of museums returning their exhibits that the countries they stole them from want back, this logic doesn’t sit so well with me. Then again, it’s an american fantasy film from the eighties, based on an american fantasy novel series from the early twentieth century, so cultural nuance is not to be expected.

The film was okay, and for a lighthearted film fared better than a lot of disney’s modern output. That said, i probably will not be revisiting it again, at least for another decade or so.