Return to Oz

Finally, a movie villain that Jason can get behind. We saw Return to Oz, so you know what that means. Hello people of Earth and welcome to How Did This Get Made. I am your host Paul Sheer and today we are talking about a little known sequel to the wizard of Oz. Yes, this was a big budget film made by Disney back in 1985. The IMDB logline says, Darcy saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl is somehow called Back to Oz when a vein which an unknown king destroy everything that makes the magical land beautiful and wow. Here to discuss it all, how am I to co-host? Please welcome Jason Manzookus and June Diana. I feel how are you both traumatized. Yes truly. Trauma truly. I found this to be. Have you guys seen this movie? No. Okay, okay, okay. I didn't know if this was a popular movie for like a younger generation. No, I am very familiar with TikTok, not the app, but the robot because that robot has been in a lot of like whenever they bring around like Star Wars stuff, like TikTok, the robot is out in the out and about. Oh, interesting. TikTok, the robot also looks exactly like, and I'm sure there's a reason for this. The robot in Gendi Tartikovsky's Unicorn Warriors Eternal has a TikTok robot character in it that's the same. I just thought he looked monopoly man. Oh, that too. That too. Man, what a pervasive image that is throughout so many like the upturned mustache, the monocle, all of that. A pot belly robot is an odd choice. It doesn't seem functional in any way to give your robot girls. Have you seen, and I don't know if either of you guys do this because sometimes I will when we watch a movie, especially if it's old, I will check in on where they are now. Yeah. TikTok, the robot is definitely on ozempik. Oh, good. He's skinny right now. It's crazy. He looks like C3PO. Well, now the mustache looks too big on him. It looks way too big. Okay, so you guys have not seen this, but was this, and Paul, maybe this is in your research. So forgive me. Was this a popular movie? Like what did this? Oh, no. Okay. This is in a moment, right, just to set the stage. Disney's like, uh-oh, what do we do, right? And they don't know which direction to go in because they kind of lost their younger audiences. And this is the moment where they go, okay, we'll do Star Wars and they make the black hole. And then they go, that didn't work. So we'll make, James Bond, they make this movie called Condor Man. Then they make Escape from Witch Mountain, which is great. Oh, yeah. I love that. I love that. Awesome. And I think this is kind of in that same vein of like, we're not the Disney that you know, we're the Disney. Yeah. What's interesting though? I just finished it. Same. I don't feel right. No. People, there's such, um, the Wizard of Oz is very important to me. And it's such a perfect movie that this return to Oz and what they did here is really distressing to me because I'm like, let's say you are Disney and you're going to go back into the property of Wizard of Oz and the books and all of it. Why would you choose to do this? Oh, yeah. I agree. This is not a children's movie. It's not, well, you know what it is though? It is. It's a children's movie when you think about maybe some of the other children's movies that are around it this time. This to me felt like Wizard of Oz meets the dark crystal. Yes. Like it felt like it was in a darker, scarier world, you know, like, and I don't know if this is in the books and they're just adapting the book. But this is two different books. You've kind of adapted and put together as one. So it is, and I will say that the bomb estate says, this is my Oz. Oh, I understand that. And I've heard that before. Oh, that's interesting. That's what I think the one thing I had heard about return to Oz, which is that like it is close to the source material in a way that Wizard of Oz is not. Her in terms of her age and also the darkness of it. Here's what I just wanted to say. And the reality of it. Like, that's this is my main, this is my main issue is that of course in the Wizard of Oz, she wakes up at the end. Right. And Oz was a dream. And in this movie Oz is not a dream. No, oddly the house did fly away. It is in Oz. But yet she also is a child that is going through at least it through her parents' eyes, a psychotic break. She's having like tornado PTSD. She's also institutionalized. And on the verge of getting 1930s electro shock treatment. That was that was the part of the movie that the movie opens. It's so in a parallel Wizard of Oz really well in the sense that like the Wizard of Oz starts off black and white. And then once you get to Oz, it's color in this version of it though. It's all in color. But the initial scenes are fully desaturated and it looks like they're in like days of heaven. I was going to say that it isn't color, but it somehow seems like it has less color than black and white. Like it is. It is. It looks like dust bowl era. Grape of rap. Yes. It's like I was like, this is so smart grapes of rap. We love it. But when you see the home life of Dorothy, I not to skip to the end, but why would she ever want to go back? The original Dorothy, I get why she wants to go like this. Your parents are putting you in an institution like a scary institution where they're strapping you down to a bit of a thing. But oh my gosh, this is why it's so emotional. There's no emotional connective tissue between the two films. I mean, this isn't a sequel to the Wizard of Oz as far as I'm concerned. This is sort of another telling of the book. This is more of a sequel to hereditary than it is with Oz. But like, but I guess that's why I'm just so confused because to when in the beginning of this movie, Oz is real. That wasn't a dream to her. She didn't really, but more than that, I mean, that's just dressing. But all of the deeply important lessons that she learned, that she taught herself through that dream about Oz, about what's important in life, about knowing what you already have and trusting it that it's going to come from you, about imagination, about all these things are completely like thrown away. She seems duller. Oh, like, and she's significantly younger. And here's here's which I'm okay with because I like that she is a younger, I like that a younger person is being put in this kind of incredibly fantastical world. But what is so difficult to reconcile as I'm watching this is that the events of the Wizard of Oz have already happened to this person, to this child. And that doesn't feel like what's happened. This feels like a prequel in many ways and it is a undeniable sequel. And so what's what I kept having a real trouble figuring out is she's already been through all this now, obviously, Oz is so different and you know, everything has changed. Like it is so it is so hard to keep track of it's so clear in the initial movie, who wants what, who needs what and what the journey is. It's a real, it's a real fellowship of the ring, Lord of the Rings. Like we're on an adventure. These it's a found family. These are my people. Each of us has these components and we're going to move forward in this movie. I didn't know who wanted what. I didn't know what role they were supposed to be playing. I didn't understand the one. The wise one step further. This is a sequel to a movie that we've not seen right because at one point she's flying over a place. Oh, well, this is the desert land. I remember I saw this when we were when we were. I'm like, wait, we don't know who this. And also when they say your shoes, your Ruby red slippers, when the king of gnomes or whatever he says, your Ruby red slippers fell off when you were flying back to. You said that. Did they? Let's give me a little like give me a look at like not a prequel, but give me like a last time on like I felt like that this entire thing. I was like, we are all being institutionalized. We are all our reality is being questioned just like hers. And I don't know what the answer is. It's a very it's go ahead Paul. I was going to tell you the most disturbing moment and it for me, it's right here in this part and tell me if this hit you in the wrong way that could hit me. Her brushing the hair of a jackal lantern that has no hair, but like her in that hospital room just pretend brushing. It's I was like, you know what this is the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. Okay. So for me in that same section, what I found absolutely bone chilling was that it was here is this doctor who is going to give her electro shock treatment and the way he describes it is to make the machine have a face. Oh, this electrical marvel will make it possible for you to sleep again. And it will also get rid of all those bad waking dreams that you've been telling me about. Now this fella here has a face. You see it? Here are his eyes and this must be his nose and this must be his mouth. What's this? Dorothy? Why it is. Come. Here's this machine that's going to rob you of who you are that's going to give you this barbaric treatment and it and here's its eyes and here's its nose and he's making it this cute. He's personifying it in a way that is so that has such insidious malice to it. It's like trust this machine that's going to destroy you. Yeah. Well, yeah. And by the way, I mean, I guess that's supposed to be TikTok or another question for you both is this a dream? It feels like it has elements of a dream and then elements that it's not because at the end, it could have been a dream. This is better if you put a fucking mouth shut though. So that's the lesson though. Paul, that is the lesson of the movie. Yes. Yes. Keep your dreams and your imagination and your thoughts private. Well, when it's like when it is whatever 1930, whatever, you know, like kids weren't nobody wanted to hear from these days. It's bad. No, that's that's the moral of the story. But this is a movie made in 1985 as a children's film. Like it's like, like it does feel like I mean, just I want to put it out there that this is directed by Walter Merch who wrote this as well in Walter Merch if you don't know, one of the legendary editors of our time. I mean, just like a true responsible for so many of the movie. Doc Lips now, the conversation, the English patient, like the Godfather, like he's like done it all. You know, so like he is wrote a book on editing, like definitely gets it and it wouldn't say the movie is poorly edited. It just is like, it doesn't feel like this is a faithful adaptation. I think this is a faithful adaptation of whatever they were adapting. Those two books put together the darkness of it, the childhood trauma, their age. I think this is all clearly it's faithful. There's no songs that was not written as a musical. There's no joy. There's no joy. It is just a very, very dark tale about industrialization, I guess, but it's so grim. But I do think it's it is exactly what those books are. Now, it will say though, this is an example of why it is important sometimes to not at all be faithful to the original source material. I mean, really like, let go. You know, you know, I just want to give you one little tip here that he wasn't just faithful to Frank L. Bombsworth. Walter Merch says that he used a lot of inspiration from a book called Wes Conson Death Trip, a 1973 historical nonfiction book about like dip theory in Black River Falls between 1885 and 1910. What the? So I mean, I will say there's this is a movie that has a lot of craft. You know what I mean? There is a lot going into this. It is well made. It's not like I have to say the hallway of heads or whatever that was. The detachable heads. The detachable heads I thought was amazing. Yes. I thought, well, many scary. Unbelievable. And once you realize like what's going on with those heads and what she's doing and Princess, I thought it was really, really incredible. Head's that different. I mean, later in the movie, we find out that the gnome king had gave her a bunch of heads. So she would do his bidding. And I was like, it didn't seem like she was really exploring how many different faces she could possibly have. A lot of those heads seemed very like, you know, let's get a shaved head. Let's get a cool, you know, like, let me give you a couple. Give me a guy's head. Oh, there's a pile of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Like with Mohawk. Um, I felt like what's so true is I believe. Do I believe this? Maybe not. What I was going to say is this is clearly a sequel to a book. The book was not what the Wizard of Oz was. Right. You know what I mean? Like, so what's curious to me is that they, a boy do I wish they had started with in 1985. What if we did a faithful to the book adaptation of the Wizard of Oz? No songs. None of that stuff. We're just going to do that in hopes of it working and them getting to then do this book to continue the world of the way that, um, and, and forgive me. This is not exactly a one to one, but the Arnold Schwarzenegger running man is barely an adaptation of the Stephen King story. Versus Edgar writes, which is a much more faithful adaptation and the movies are quite different as a result in a way that is totally give us the darker version of Wizard of Oz. That's I'm saying give us a yes. An overture just even give us a 10 minute thing like, okay, we got it. But, but what we're even seeing because we're supposed to feel connection when she meets the scarecrow. I'm like, that's not my scarecrow. That scarecrow. My scarecrow. And by the way, I'm also feeling like, well, my scarecrow is now my pumpkin jack, which by the way, Tim Burton has admitted he has used inspiration for Jack Skellington. Uh, you know, you got it by me. I mean, one of the most chilling moments to me, my scariest moment was when pumpkin jack started calling her mom. Dorothy, may I call you mom, even if it isn't so? Oh, thank you. Oh, no, no, no, that was throughout. Throughout. Oh, really, really distressing. And then even worse, she started responding to it. I couldn't deal with it because because she is, I'm going to say, oh, this is Faruza Balk. Uh, yes, in this performance. And it is young. You will say, I mean, she's got to be like nine years old. How old is she? 10 years old? Yeah. She's very, very young. Child when she's doing, I think this is a fantastic performance because in every single scene, but a handful, she is acting alone against inanimate objects. There is, there's, it's a pile of rocks. It's a pile. It's like, she's doing a great job in service of scenes where she has no scene partners. It's very. Okay. I do agree that she's great. And the portrayal of Dorothy Gale. Um, I mean, Judy Garland's performance is one of the, you know, one of the best performance ever on film, but it's so childlike and it's so innocent and beautiful and joyful and you mean Judy Garland's. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So buoyant. And so I think vulnerable to, I think it's so beautiful and alive. Um, but there's something about Dorothy Gale and the return to Oz that feels even though she's significantly younger, playing an eight year old or nine year old, she feels much older. Oh, she feels like her. Yeah. If Judy Garland's playing like a 12 13 year old. I have nothing to say about the performance. It's, she is, she looks like she got the treatment, the shock treatment that she does not look happy. Well, she doesn't like, yeah, she looks like she looks like an actual 10 year old from that era. Like Judy Garland's skipping around with baskets and todo and having fun and it, that's not her life in like, she's the indescribable, indescribable era like this little girl is how she before she's gone to bed hungry many, many nights. And the movie is done to disservice by purporting to be a Wizard of Oz sequel only because yeah, don't call it. It's call it anything else. And we would have enjoyed it. It looks, it has more in common with pans labyrinth than it does. Oh, yes. You know, then it does the Wizard of Oz. Now here's what I will say just, and I don't like to always do this in this show because it's not always about this, but I do want to call this out. Fruza Balk, who is in, you would say like 98% of the film, right? She was not permitted to work more than three and a half hours each day. And she could only work between nine and four thirty and that had to include breaks and education in there. So to think about the production of this movie on top of that, like, and you're right, she's in season all of it. She's in all of it. It's like, what are they getting? Like what are we? What are we shooting at? And how long did it take? Oh, like, and it's not like, oh, well, when she is, when we, when we lose her for the day early, at least we can shoot, you know, like this happens on Percy Jackson because there's all the so many of the kids are young, young kids and you also become a pumpkin. Yes. I am a pumpkin headed man on that as well. Half hours. Yeah. But all the kids that when they have to leave, we basically then turn around and shoot all the adults coverage once the kids are gone, but there are no adults in this. There are no other people in this. They're not like, Oh, okay. Now that door is in here, has to go. We're going to just shoot the chicken. Look at that chicken by the way. The worst, the worst and the, you go from to a fucking chicken. And she wipe her eye with that chicken when she's crying at one point. I felt like what she tears up and she lifts the chicken and I'm like, you can't wipe your eye with the chicken's fat. There is a question about the Wizard of Oz. And I'm going to admit something here that is perhaps an insane statement. I haven't watched the Wizard of Oz since I was a kid. This is not a movie that I rewatch or that I have any, any real like affinity for other than when it was on TV as a kid. I watched it and I watched it a handful of times. I don't remember. Toto didn't talk, did he? Oh, no. Oh, okay, okay. Okay. Because she has a chicken at home and then when she's in Oz with the chicken, the chicken talks. Oh, boy. It's for a chicken call. When did you learn to talk anyway? I thought hands could only click and cackle. Bum. I'm trying to drink it. How was my grammar? If we were in the land of Oz, you're talking wouldn't be strange at all. Bum. And she's like, well, we must be in Oz because now you can talk. But then I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Did Toto talk when they went to Oz and I, okay, good, thank God. Also, thank God, but best Paul said that the downgrade, the fucking downgrade. Yeah. You did a chick from the old age. Whoa. I mean, can you imagine being there for the first one and getting the lion, the, the, the toe, you've got Toto, you've got the, the 10 man, you've got all these great characters. And the B team that shows up in this movie, I was like, oh, this is like a Tiktok. This is like a Tiktok. Seven. Like this is like a, I wonder if, if my character from John Wick three, the TikTok man, is it anyway related to the, I feel like they have to be. I mean, I do want to talk about TikTok because I do think there is something going on about like machinery and, but I couldn't, I don't have, I don't, I didn't really like understand it. Like I know that they'll be aware of the wheelers and wheels and the industrial world. I like them as a villain. Yeah. Me too, but then there was TikTok. Yeah. And I was like, he's, yeah, but he's not the tin man. Nope. You know, who's worried about not feeling, who's worried about only being sort of, you know, metal and scraps and not being human, but that's not, I couldn't understand like, what is TikTok's story? Well, to me, what to me, I think that TikTok is like, chill the fuck out. You can't be excited. Like TikTok is that, that machine, right? So I think it's about controlling her emotions. But then at the end, he kind of gets emotions. Like, yes, right? Like, or I think it's yes, yes to what we're talking about. But the movie is not doing us any favors to foreground it and say, this is the search that this, that this character is on or this is the same, you know, in a, in a way that I found just confounding. Yeah. And this is like, we're, the TikTok pumpkin man and the couch to be honest have all the same emotional like interior. I just, I couldn't like, and what's such a bummer about that is her friends on the yellow brick road and how beautiful, rich, important, those performances, my God, like to be saddled with not a single one of them has a human face. No, no, which felt very pointed. I didn't know if it was like, oh, those characters are so iconic. Like, they're so physical and beautiful from Wizard of Oz that we're not even going to try. No, they went to like a, like I feel like again, it's the, if you look at the images on the Wizard of Oz books, they are, they look similar to that. Like the way the Tin Man, I was like, oh, this doesn't even feel right here. I do want to bring up one. What we're up against is the decision to make the Wizard of Oz so much different from the books means that by, by participating in any future storytelling based on the books, it almost is unrecognizable to the movie Wizard of Oz. And I, and I, I'll tell you one thing. I saw the original Wizard of Oz recently and the scarecrow, not that handsy with Dorothy originally. When he first wakes up, he's like, oh, I'm like, he's like, what's going on here? I'll tell you this much with the same exact beat. Like when she's stuffing the scarecrow with his hay and like when she's doing the exact same thing with Jack the Pumpkin and this. Can I, the character that bums me out is gump. The animals having this crisis of conscious being like, was I alive before this? Yes. I remember a life before being a mounted animal. I'm like, oh, what is that? Like, like everybody in the movie. With the exception, actually, no, including Dorothy are having existential crisis. Oh, yes. Yes. All in like deep psychic distress and it's, it's very uncomfortable to watch. Yes. Oh, and there's something about the changes to the Wizard. My guess is, well, no, books are, wait, tell me again, 1939 for the movie, film is 39. And what were the books? The books 1890 is where 1890 is. Okay. Something about to me 1939, like the movie being like a post depression era movie. So to make it as bleak as what these books must have been, this is a bleak movie. You know what I mean? This is one of these. It's awful bleak. It's bleak in the middle and it ends in a pretty bleak manner. So I can see them in the 30s being like, okay, we have just come out of one of the most awful periods of time. Yes, this source material, but let's plus it up with some salt. Yeah, let's make it fun. Absolutely. That's why people responded to it. Absolutely. Not like let's bum people. It's like, I don't see a better version. It's like, I don't want to be in Oz. I don't want to be in Kansas. I don't want to be here. I kind of want to go back to that machine or race it all. I'll be happier. I let me just, and the girl who's living in mirrors. I'm like, I don't need any of this. Oh, at the beginning, I was like, I'll think I'm going to be in Kansas. She has a friend and I was like, oh, no, nope, nope. No, no, no. I think the thing that's also just so disappointing about this one is her journey in the Wizard of Oz is so clear and so relatable, that idea that there's someone's coming to save us, that if we could just get this one thing, if we could just figure this out, if we could just get this one job or whatever that that our lives will be unlocked and things will be so much easier and that someone outside of ourselves is going to make that happen. The moment in the Wizard of Oz, when it reveals that there's just no, not, you know, tiny man behind the curtain, is so incredibly powerful for her emotional journey. And in this movie, her journey, I think, is to prove, first starts off to prove Oz is real, but then to restore it. For what? I guess that's it. Like, for what reason? How does that, like, how is that paying off anything that the movie began with? Like where, like, any of the established wants or anything that the movie begins telling us is not even part of the resolution or where or her pursuit of a resolution, you know, she is so much more of a passive character inside of this movie. The movie is happening to her, whereas in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is inexplicably driving them forward towards the Emerald City. And in this one, she is just reactive. It is just like, oh no, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. And it feels like in a way, it's like she's remembering the Wizard of Oz. It's just a traumatic event, like, like, post her mind right because it's like, she's not really on a journey here. She's not really, I guess she is trying to find the scarecrow, but she's really just kind of, like, looking at what happened before, right? I mean, she's also not trying to because there's the, you could easily say, like, oh, she's back. Nobody believes her. Yeah. She's older. She's like, oh, I need to be able to, for my own sake, like, I, like, I'm not going to get it right. I need to see it for myself again. I need to prove to myself that this is real. If not to the people around me. So as, so as to not be perceived of as needing electro shock treatment, you know, but that's of course that's confusing. It all falls apart when, what, what we like confront the fact that it wasn't real. Yeah. No, I do want to say one thing. I want, like, when our son talked a lot about Pokemon, we did get him electro shock therapy because he just was talking about this nonsense. We didn't understand it and it was like, and we just like, get it out. We have to get it out. And that, you know, that's fine to do. But I mean, but besides that, I think back then it's part. I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like she only is showing imagination. She's not even depressed about being away from us. She's excited to tell people, because she's staying up salating. Can't sleep. She's not able to wake up early and tend to the farm. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that is how the movie all. It starts off. She's not, that's why Anna takes it. She's got to work. She's got to work. She's got to work. Otherwise, she's going to get left at the asylum. 1000% you can actually in the world of Oz be mentally insane as long as you wake up early and can help Anna out with the farm. Big time. Whoa. Big time. Yeah. No, I think that's it. And again, this exists in a time when children worked, when children, there are no child labor laws. There is no, you get to be a teenager and go to college. That kid is going to work that farm now, you know, at whatever, 10 years old. That's why you have kids. That is why you have kids. And that's why you have a lot of them because you got a lot of farm to cover and some of them aren't going to make it. And she's doing a damn bad job because you know what? She, by the way, the mom is threatening Bolina, right? She's like, if you don't shit another egg, like, you're, we're going to eat you. I mean, that's the other thing too. So she's like, I would love it if she said, if you don't shit another egg. I mean, that's, I mean, basically that is like what she's worried about is mom's like, we're going to eat your pet. The only thing that you have here, your only connection to life, we're going to eat that thing. And she's like, yes, the total. Yes, total. Yeah, total is still rocking around. Yeah, I guess, yeah. The total is still rocking around. But boy, if I'm total, I'm like, come on. Hey, guys, can I get some action? Like, how come she gets to go back and I don't? Like the movie from Toadows point of view is like, hey, I'd like to go back to Oz as well. The total that I know would have followed that horse and carriage and jumped in the back. Yes, I felt that too. I felt that too. Do you guys think, and maybe this is for the later in the episode, but if this, I can't even, if this had no relationship to the movie, the Wizard of Oz, but was just a 1980s, like, like, like I'm saying, like, pans, labyrinth, dark crystal, labyrinth, regular labyrinth. I might feel the movie. Would you enjoy a movie in which a little girl descends into a fan? Yeah, like I like a pan-large land type of a story that's dark and scary. I mean, I still agree this is so aimless and I don't quite know who wants what and how and I'm not tracking if we're getting closer or further away. But I liked a lot of the movie if I'm being honest watching the movie. I liked quite a bit of it. Once I let go of the fact that any of it was going to somehow be related to the movie that I remember as the Wizard of Oz. Well, I let go of that and I was simply disturbed. Yeah. Like that was the thing. Like I was disturbed by... But that's what I didn't mind. I was like, oh, I don't mind, like dark kid, kid, like dark. This is scary. This is, I didn't mind that as much. I guess if I took it away from the fact, well, then this isn't Oz. This is, you know, I kept kind of bumping out by being like, oh, this is not the Wizard of Oz. This is like the dark crystal, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that it was very hard for me to divorce from the Wizard of Oz. I just, I couldn't even though there were things that I really loved too. There, I loved that hallway of heads. I loved, you know, her trying to get the key or whatever it was from the headless, from Princess Mumbai. And there were moments that were so great. But it also, to not have any of the beauty of Oz or even to not have like the beauty of Gullinda or this Princess Oz and the Mirror to not have any of like the magical beauty will really hard for me. And even the way Dorothy was dressed, I actually took, I actually need to speak about this for a while. It's great. Let's go. Clear the deck. Hold on. I will, excuse me, I'm going to mute my, but she's muted. You know, I understand that you're not going to ever just replicate or reach the height of like what that iconic blue and white kingdom dress was. And I get that. So don't even, so don't try to do that or a version of that, but to do what they did to put her in that white, weird white dress, which I can't even track did it change from the asylum to us exactly the same. And it's like, it was so not that it needs to be flattering on a nine year old child, but it was so sort of shapeless and strange. Billowy is all sleeves. It wasn't there was nothing about it. Like if I'm a kid watching this movie, I don't feel connected in any way. That's exactly my point. There's nothing for me. And by the way, I think her bows are too big in her hair. Her bows were too big. Right. It felt to me like they were trying to be, I wouldn't be surprised if they were like, oh, no, no, we did the research. This is what a 10 year old girl would have worn. And that's what killed this movie these years. And so that is the movie we're making is a more grounded, more faithful representation. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like when I tell you Jason, when those Ruby red slippers came out, I just was like, thank you for giving me something to look at. Yeah. To feast my weary eyes upon. And I did love. I thought it was like a wonderful little gender bending moment when the king, no, or whoever he was, like pulled up his at all, pulled up hit that fabric that he was wearing to reveal those slippers. Yeah. Get there were moments I liked in here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think if you're right, Jason, if you change your point of view on it, there's something very like weird. It's like it is so much of what's weird about it is that it's a Wizard of Oz movie. Right. I mean, now here, you know, it's like there are these things about it. That are very specific. It doesn't feel like what they were trying to do, right? It feels marketed to a kids movie. Here's the thing that upset me though, which is, I'm okay. I'll take the dress. I'll take the little, like the less likable characters. I'll take all of that. But when you turn Oz back, like let me see something and it looks like the shittiest wedding venue. Like the outskirts of New Jersey that you could possibly get to. I was like, this is not Oz. This is not my Oz. This is not my Oz. Actually, it's not my Oz. Not my Oz. The hashtag not my Oz. My Oz is Dr. Oz, whose I haven't checked in with a number of years, but it's, no, it's no, no, no, no, no, no, that's it. Oh, it's a line of soft skin. You wait, you want to get yourself on, you want to go, Dr. Phil, that's one that you want to know. Oh, yeah, yeah, Dr. Phil, he's the one. Oh, man, Oprah picks terrible doctors. I think is the, is the note there? I mean, or the power goes to their head. We already know that doctors have, you know, they already have a God complex. You put them with Oprah, then they got to go to the next level. I'm going to be thinking about this movie more than I should because there are images in it. And I need to talk about a character that's near and dear to you, Jason. Which is the known, the rock monster, the dome who does not want chickens in Oz. We don't know why he doesn't want chickens. And at the end of the movie, yeah, Belina, the chicken, shits an egg, down his throat, and kills him. Yes. Oh, no, dear. Oh, no. I'm a little like an egg. Don't. You know, Ben and eggs are poison. Poison poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Poison. Okay, wait a second. Does she know that that's poison? I think the chicken was just a scared. And is that how you should an egg? Like that's what happens physiologically. You get really scared. My assumption was that the chicken knew that the egg would kill him because it's only visible slightly in one scene. He's wearing a medical art bracelet that says severely allergic to eggs. Stop it right now. Well, she did. Which is a bracelet, which is a bracelet that my mother made me wear for my entire child. Oh, man. Jason, but you had to wear it. Oh, no, no, without a doubt. It was essential. Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no. Essential. But it met me wearing a little silver bracelet that just said severely allergic to eggs on the back of it engraved. Oh, my gosh. It breaks my heart, but I'm also like good. Yeah, hey, thank God. Good. Good. Good. Like, you know, I do, you know, I thought that there was something really odd or interesting about the fact that instead of just, well, he just wanted chickens gone. Like he had like a chicken genocida in Oz in a way, you know, it's like, he like, and only because the fear that that might happen. I mean, and he got it good. He got it. God, did he ever, I mean, did that feel healing to you in some way, Jason? It really, yeah, it really brought something home for me, you know, it really, I felt as though all of my angst and anxieties with my allergy, really this, this was a, a, a sale. It really helped you. Could you have been this person, you know, Jason, if your mom didn't make you that bracelet, could you have, could you have become a gnome night, you know, gnome king and freezing everybody? Oh, if, if my parents had simply, if my mother had simply said to me, chickens are the threat. You know, I mean, instead of people are the threat, people are going to give you eggs so that my trust, my, I learned to not trust people. But if I had been told, don't trust chickens, much different, much different. And frankly, maybe we wouldn't have the podcast. Maybe like we can't go through those sliding doors because set, you know, everything kind of happened for a reason as well. Sure. How I think of it. Oh, yeah. And let's me be very clear. There would be no chickens on earth because the last 45 years of my life would have been spent just murdering chickens. Oh, God. I mean, yeah, they don't really get into why the chickens are outlawed or how we got rid of the chickens. No, I'm going to say it definitely was not, it was not pleasant. I mean, he is, he tortures. I mean, the fact that he does that little game with them, you turn them into ornaments. Yes, to ornaments. Yeah. To ornaments. And by the way, like, but then when we see them, they're not ornaments as we know them. Although, they're just like, they're like all them ornaments. To call them ornaments rather than like, chachkis. Yes. I would have loved it if everybody got curious. Curios. Curios and chachkis. But I, but I actually, I will say that was one of the things that I actually liked, which is when she goes into that room and that room is, you know, that there are these elements that they're playing with that I thought were fun at times where it's like, they're in the stone cave and it's all, it looks like a stone cave and he's made of stone. He's part of the cave. Blah, blah, blah. And then when she goes through the thing into like an opulent, beautiful city, like castle level sitting room, you know, it, it, it has a lot of things that are in the room. And it has like it, there are, there are visual things that I felt like were like, Oh, this is cool. And then all the ornaments around that you realize, Oh, these were people or these are people are things, I guess that he's changed into these ornaments. And, and I dug that, you know, there's, there was stuff in here that I liked. I just wish I understood the why, you know, right. Yeah. In service of one. And they're about the earth's resources. Yep. And it's him feeling like they were stolen, but that sort of fell apart for me too, because of her argument, which was like, well, the scarecrow, it was already Emerald City. Yeah. Right. When he started to rain there. Right. So there's a world in which he was also like that the Wizard of Oz was all powerful, but then the gnome night was as waiting in the wings. Well, no, it's interesting is the Wizard of Oz was not powerful. He was just revealed to be a man, but what then this movie suggests is, but don't worry, that lesson don't learn it because there isn't all powerful bad guy. And that is this guy. Yeah. But what I'm saying is like in the world of Oz, people were scared of the Wizard because he had betrayed himself as the all powerful, but yet and with a big crazy face, but yet there was a man with a big crazy face. And that's the thing. If you're going to make a sequel to the Wizard of Oz and maybe that's where I'm coming down in this whole movie, it's like, why are we doing the same? Why is she have three companions? Why does she swap out the dog for the trick? We just do a whole different event. Not every journey to Oz needs to go on a trek to a place and then a, you know, a coronation at the end. It's so interesting because it's like we have and it's different because it's a retelling, but let's just use as an example of the Wiz as another installment in this story's evolution because the Wiz is a riff on the Wizard of Oz, the movie, obviously not the book. So, so like, and that is unquestionably incredibly successful and an amazing movie, you know. So to me, to get from there, I'm like, we've now had multiple generations where we have institutionalized the version of these characters and these stories where they sing and it is colorful. I make this so drab wipe and I get it. It's the books and you can say that all you want, but you're really, I think. I'll never say it. I'll never say it. No, no, I mean them. I'm sure that was their thing, you know, they'd been like, well, no, we're taking it back to the books, you know. But then why if the books are so much less visually enjoyable, I guess? I mean, look, it's a real big switch. That's what we're saying here. It's a real bait and switch. Now, put Tony Collette in there, you know, give me the again, I do want her editor. I'm all for love and Ari. Ariaster needs to start making the rest of the Elf rank bomb books. Oh, yeah. Let's get it. Let's start from the beginning. I want to see it from his perspective all the way through, but because I do think this is a horror movie. It's about a girl who is about to go through very traumatic electro shock therapy. She escapes through her imagination, but which is not actually her imagination. I mean, I think the ending of this movie, and I think that they pulled away from it, is she wakes up and you see the doctor pulling the two things away from her head. And she's like, she's like, where am I? And he's like, you're home. Yeah. And then they wheel her back. And that's it. And that would be great. That would be great. And what if he was like, you know, he said something to the effect of like, like, what do you think about Oz? And she was like, what's that? You know what I mean? Because is that what they say in the beginning is you won't remember it? Or like, they go, here's your key back. She's like, what is this? Yeah. And then she just starts blood just comes out of her nose. Yeah. Throw this one on. Yeah. And she starts to float in the air. Okay. But in this movie, return to Oz. Yes, too. It's the woman who, like the head nurse at the institution. Is she in jail at the end? She is. She is horse carriage. Apparently. So apparently there's a lot of deleted scenes that are not making it into this film. There's like a work print that people have seen. And so much so that I found them to be like, there's a through J of deleted scenes here. What's the law? But the idea of being that she basically was there are other prisoners, not prisoners patients that were abused and mistreated and kept in the basement. You know what this is like? Sucker punch. Oh, yeah. Oh, interesting. Remember because there is a world in which the first Oz is she's in a coma from, you know, the tornado. And there's a world in which this one is the entirety of Oz is during her electroshock treatment. Like it is always a trip inside the mind rather than a real trip into a different world. There's a Jacobs ladder scenario potentially happening here. You know, like there's just boy, I just wish the movie because that would be a fun scary movie, little kids scary movie. Yeah. To descend into a world that isn't joyous and full of song, but is nonetheless full of characters that you need to befriend and help them on their journeys. And you know, Jason, you know, and you know, and you know, I apologize for saying this right now. I don't like to get into politics, but I did not like the fact that they elected the scarecrow as the king of Oz. I felt like where did we decide that? How did like he was a week? He was a straw man literally. Literally. A straw man. You know, and we see what happens. We can't put scarecrow in power and the entire he spent all of the emeralds and the country fell all of us fell into complete disarray. The infrastructure is out of control. The yellow brick road is all torn up. There's no infrastructure going on. There's no hell. So is there's out there to clean it up. You know, this is what I'm saying. The wheelers are unchecked. They don't have badges. Oh, the wheelers. I thought the design of and the execution of those wheelers was cool as hell. Very good. I like that. The wheelers were incredibly unsettling in a great way and in a very compelling way. They were I think scarier than the monkeys because I think that's their response to be. Now I will say this. There were some monkeys but they were scarier because they were human and they were scarier because they were chaotic. In a way that the monkeys seemed ruled by something like the wheelers had an energy to them. That was just so. They seemed completely out of control. Well, their movements are so far in. You know, those big long front arms ending in wheels like monkeys flying or just monkeys flying. Everything in the Wizard of Oz kind of went normal. These guys looked like it felt like like body horror. You know, yes, exactly. This felt like David Kronenberg's return to. Crash. I would like to see crash with the wheelers. Now here's the thing when Oz turns back, the wheelers are still wheelers. I thought the wheelers would be like normal people but they are just still wheelers. They're just nicer wheelers because here's the thing they weren't the wheel. I actually I don't remember where even the wheelers came from but I didn't get the same thing. From the gurney. What do you mean? Oh, I think if we're trying to find like the connection of like the wheelers are the guys pushing the gurney when she's strapped down to the gurney in the real world. Okay, but it didn't seem like they were like the people who were transformed into stone like other members of emerald city like they had different things before. The ornaments had all been different thing like the wheelers just seemed to exist there as we agree. I agree. Yes, they seemed like a gang, you know, and they and not for nothing. They did and I know this is I said they were cool and I really liked them but they also had a bit of a starlight express element. Oh, big. I mean, that felt like they just grabbed them off the set. This was shot in the UK. I bet you they say, guys can come over for a day. Yeah, you guys can come do this. And they're like this. And we're going to rough. Andrew Louis give you the day off. This is I mean, so much here. Obviously, we have opinions about this movie, but you'd be suppressed to find out that they're not there. I'm not surprised. I am sure when I was watching this, I was like, I bet there's actually a lot of people that I this is going back many years. I do the taste. Yes. I dated a woman who this was one of her favorite. Yes, yeah, I'm not from from her child. Like from her era of well, I know why she dated you now because you reminded her of her favorite villain of all the movie. Yeah. She was she kept calling me her rock king. Now but she and she did travel with skates on her hands and feet and feet. Yeah, not skate single wheels. Okay. I will say this. You didn't know this. I'm sorry. This movie being your favorite movie is a red flag for me. Yeah. That's a red flag. All right. But you know, it's also like that peanut butter solution movie. Sometimes you get traumatized by a movie very young. It can like seep in because it's like it's almost like a right of passage, you know, a badge of honor. I think and I would wonder and if you're listening to this and you are that generation for whom this movie was writing your sweet spot, I bet this was a good good in quote. Yeah. Scary movie for kids that wasn't so scary. You know, I mean, I really wanted to show it to our kids. I was going to suggest that to you tonight, June. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. So now I will say this. Obviously, there are people out there with a different opinion. It's now time for second opinions. You're on day. You're on day. You're on day. You're on day. You're on day. You're on day. The movie was a piece of shit. Yeah. Yeah. This person recommends it. Tell me what is the message. Maybe that art is subjected. I need to second opinion. Now hopefully one of these is written by your ex-girlfriend Jason. Oh, that would be great. But I will tell you this much. There are 5,634 reviews for return to Oz. And 80% are five star reviews. Holy shit. Okay. 80%. Now some of these are written by the wheelers, I think. Because it's a lot of skid marks around here. It says this. Sean Plorty says, make your kids watch this. Give my daughter nightmares 10 out of 10 approved five stars. We got to check on Sean Plorty, please. I don't think that's the way to parent. This one is an interesting one because all of these are odd. KLW's title is I enjoy being able to share childhood memories with my children. Okay. Great. I bought the digital copy instead of the actual DVD only because I didn't want to wait the two days for shipping. And I love that it is on our TV, computer, tablets and phones. We can watch it no matter where we are. Now I do remember being a little creeped out by some of these characters that hasn't changed. Luckily my children aren't creeped out. They can watch this movie multiple times a day. The wheelers and the headless queen are disturbing to me, but it's still a great movie. Just don't overthink it. It doesn't add up. Just go along with it five stars. I don't disagree with some of those sentiments, not five stars, but like just go along with it is a good because there is stuff in here that's interesting to watch. Just don't if you're trying to find story in here, it's just not there. I want to say that while we have pointed out that there's not much here a viewer who titled their review, most underrated major studio film from 1950. I don't know if that is right. It is about this movie. It says, a strong statement on modern commodification, social alienation and the ethical courage to pierce through it, which may appear tantamount to insanity, truly underappreciated classic five stars. So it's saying in a world where insanity is being creative. Which I don't get because at the end she's not creative. I bet she's just going to work on that fucking farm again. Oh, yeah, she can't do it. It's, I mean, it would be so hard. The gravitational pull for somebody on a farm in Kansas to get away from that in 1930, whatever. I mean, impossible. It's about it. No, I'll tell you this much. The final scene of the film that was cut out is a minute and a half long scene of Dorothy and Toto playing in a field. Wow. And then here's my final review, because I know you have to wrap it up. My final review is simply this from the title, you know, review. You know if you like it or you don't, so I don't know why you're reading a review. Maybe you like it. Maybe I won't. Five stars. Wow. That's great. So there we go. I mean, I guess that's true. It is. I mean, I get, I mean, I don't know how to feel. Would you recommend it? I kind of, from, I'll just jump in first and yes, because it's so odd. It's so weird. It's worth a watch. I don't think it flies quickly by, but it is almost hours as well. Yes. Long. It's long. And A through J is cut out, by the way. You should see the amount of scenes that are cut out of this thing. That's an editor. That's an editor's movie. He's willing to cut out all those scenes. Well, I guess he, I have a certain point. He's going to be making like a four hour opus over here. But I think that if you can like really go into it, putting the Wizard of Oz aside. Right. I mean, an almost impossible ask. But I think that there was a lot of parts of this movie that I had fun just watching, just because it was Gonzo Nutso stuff. You know, and lots of what we haven't talked about, obviously, is this is an era where, in 1985, all of these fantastical elements, the pumpkin guy, the TikTok, all the, these are practical elements. Yeah. These are puppets. There is a lot of cool stuff here to look at and be inside of. Is it a good story? Does it make sense? No. But is it like boring or uninteresting? No, I don't think so. I just think it doesn't hold together as a movie and it really doesn't feel like it's any kind of continuation of what I understand to be the Oz saga, even though I know it is. But so yeah, I would say watch it. But if you can, I think you'll enjoy it more if you just are like, oh, I wonder if I can watch a 10 year old girl be surrounded by horrors for two hours and still keep going. Yeah. I bet there's like, there's not really an overlap between people who love the Wizard of Oz and I consider myself one of those people, love the movie and who love this movie. I think there's probably a lot of people who love the books deeply and like are huge fans of the series and then love this movie returned to Oz and didn't had issues with Wizard of Oz because it's not really faithful. Well, I bet that's true. And I bet the other thing that's true is I bet there's a lot of people for whom this was a movie that was constantly available to them to watch all the time, anytime, like on cable or on Disney channel or whatever. Like I bet this I mean, I have never seen any of these images before. I have seen these characters. I definitely, but maybe that's because I trolled video stores as a kid. Like it was one of those one. This was one of those things that like people saw more of this because it was more available and the Wizard of Oz felt like, well, that's so old. That's from old in days. You know, this is yet this looked so much older to me. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I'd be curious to hear from actually, I'm not. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I'm not curious to hear from fans and I don't want to hear from fans. So, you know, don't be curious. Cut that straight out of the podcast. All right. Jason, June, I almost just made a. Yeah, you really opened yourself up to a lot of conversation. Wow, I stopped myself midway through to be like, what are you doing? Don't be so serious. This is the invitation I've been waiting for. I've already said it. People who love this movie, that's a red flag. Yes. And, you know, the song I'm going to say is that I hope that this brings you back together with your ex Jason, that you should finally understand that you have some appreciation for what she liked. Oh, I did. Anyway, I did texture to say we are doing return to Oz on the podcast. Jason, June, do you want to promote anything? Let anybody know what is out there, what they should be looking for? Sure. Percy Jackson, season two is going on right now. A man on the inside. And if you're hearing this and you're in the New York area, I will be on Broadway in the show All Out at the Neeterlander Theater. You can get tickets now. Oh, exciting. A sign of June. Nothing for me. All right. There you go. And I'll tell people, I released this little mini documentary where I talked to Taylor Swift Dads. And it's, you don't have to be a Taylor Swift fan. You don't have to be a dad. You just have to be a human. If you're a child, you have a child. You've ever been to a concert. I think you might like it. 15 minutes. You check it out. It's so great. And just to be clear, you mean dads of Taylor Swift fans, not Taylor Swift's dad. Yes. That is. I did not get to talk to all of her dads. That is another documentary I'm working on. And a lot of people say, well, you're digging. There's only one that we know of them. I know there's more. And I know there's more. It is. I'll get to the bottom of it. Thank you to be done. I will get to the bottom of it. All right. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate and review us. Also, make sure you're following us and have automatic downloads turned on. It helps the show when we appreciate it. And a big thank you to our producer, Scott Sonny, Molly Reynolds, and our engineer, Casey Hoeford, as well as our social media managers, Zoe Applebaum. And of course, we'll forever be grateful to the one and only Avril Halley. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time. Remember, give us your corrections and omissions, but not your opinions.