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Before Wicked, Let's Look Back at the Dark Weirdness of 1985's Return to Oz
As Wicked takes over theaters, let’s look back at the Oz-inspired flick that really walked on the dark side.
In a way, the 1939 movie classic The Wizard of Oz holds far more influence over present-day audiences’ love for L. Frank Baum’s fantastical storybook world than Baum’s dozen-plus Oz books themselves. Almost everyone has seen The Wizard of Oz (and even more may end up seeing Wicked this weekend). But far fewer have read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel on which the film is based — and fewer still have read much of Baum’s work beyond that.
One filmmaker who definitely did read lots of Baum’s famous Oz lore is legendary movie editor and sound designer Walter Murch. Iconic within the film industry for his groundbreaking work on classics like THX 1138, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The Godfather trilogy, and many more, the three-time Oscar winner only ever tackled one movie as an actual director: Disney’s star-crossed, tepidly-received dark fantasy Return to Oz (1985), a strange semi-sequel to the original The Wizard of Oz.
Revisiting Return to Oz, Disney’s 1985 Dark Fantasy Semi-Sequel to The Wizard of Oz
These days, not too many fans have encountered Return to Oz — a movie that’s enjoyed far less pop-culture staying power than many of last century’s children's films. The movie tanked at the box office, drew mixed reviews from critics, and — perhaps most important of all — dared to hew to the darkly unnerving and creepy side of Baum’s surreal fantasy realm.
That dark side was always present in the book-based source material that inspired the wider Oz story-verse — though MGM’s upbeat, musical-minded 1939 movie classic set a mostly upbeat early tone for how most future adaptations of Baum’s work should appeal to fans. Closer in spirit to the treacherous children’s tales from the Brothers Grimm than to the treacly, reassuring comforts of the next big G-rated kids’ flick, Baum’s emerald-hued parallel world contained genuine dangers and horrors to match even its happiest endings.
Murch managed to preserve a lot of that uneasy spirit in Return to Oz, much to the confusion of contemporary moviegoers expecting a blithe 1980s refresh of familiar and happy themes. With its lore-appropriate evil Nome King, the dementedly vicious Wheelers, and through more benign (but less kid-friendly) characters like Tik-Tok the “mechanical man” and a Jack Pumpkinhead puppet (portrayed in the movie by none other than Brian Henson), Return to Oz wasn’t necessarily an unhappy movie — just a pensive and edgy one in places — and it all put real stakes to Dorothy’s hopes of ever making it home safe and sound.
Drawn mainly from Baum’s second and third Oz books (1904’s The Marvelous Land of Oz and 1907’s Ozma of Oz), Return to Oz does include plenty of recognizable Oz things: Fairuza Balk (who grew up to play Nancy Downs in 1996’s The Craft) struck a Judy Garland-adjacent vibe as Dorothy, flanked by a gregarious supporting cast of established British and American actors in both live action and in voice roles (as with Dorothy’s chicken sidekick Billina, voiced by the late Denise Bryer).
In an odd bit of Hollywood filmmaking ephemera (fun fact!), Disney even had to pay MGM to use Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the original The Wizard of Oz, though it fully owned the overall rights to Baum’s catalog at the time of Return to Oz's release. Why? Because the slippers were themselves a more recent MGM invention, a screen-friendly enhancement on Baum’s magic “Silver Shoes” — which is what Dorothy actually wore in the books.
Ready to ride back to the Emerald City? Score your tickets here for Wicked, arriving in theaters everywhere beginning Friday, November 22.
