The
1985 film '' is a motion picture which is the
Sequel to ''
The Wizard Of Oz ''. It was made by
Walt Disney Pictures without the involvement of
MGM , the studio that made the classic 1939 film, or
Warner Bros. , which today owns the rights to it. However, no approval was necessary, because by 1985 all of the Oz books on which the film was based were in the
Public Domain . A large fee was paid, however, to use the ruby slippers, which are still the intellectual property of Time Warner. The film was directed by
Walter Murch .
The film was not well received at the box office and gained mixed reviews from critics. Perhaps the reason for the film underperforming at the box office was that most viewers' prior assumptions about Oz were based on the MGM film; however, it has become a
Cult Classic to many adults and children, and has earned high
VHS and
DVD rentals and sales.
The movie's plot is a combination of
L. Frank Baum 's novels ''
Ozma Of Oz '' and ''
The Marvelous Land Of Oz '', both of which were written as sequels to the novel ''
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz ''.
Dorothy (played by
Fairuza Balk ) cannot stop thinking about the
Land Of Oz and her friends the
Scarecrow , the
Tin Woodman and the
Cowardly Lion . One night Dorothy sees a shooting star; the next morning, while checking for eggs from
Billina , her yellow hen, Dorothy comes across a key that appears to be sent from Oz by the shooting star.
Dorothy shows the key to her Auntie Em while adamantly proclaiming its origins, but is disbelieved. Her worried aunt has scheduled Dorothy to see a doctor in order to "cure" her of her dreams and delusions by using
Electro-shock Therapy , and they depart that day. During the consultation, Dorothy sees another girl's reflection in a mirror in the doctor's office. Auntie Em departs and Dorothy is then left in the care of the doctor and his sadistic nurse.
That night, when Dorothy is scheduled to undergo her therapy, there is a violent storm. As the medical staff is preparing Dorothy, the electricity goes out, and she is left alone as the doctor and his nurse go to check the hospital's generator. While they are gone, Dorothy is freed by the mysterious girl she had seen earlier, and together they escape from the hospital. The doctor and nurse return to find Dorothy missing, and begin to hunt for her throughout the clinic and surrounding grounds. Fleeing the nurse in the storm, Dorothy and the girl fall into the violent floodwaters of a neaby river. The girl helps Dorothy pull herself up into a wooden chicken coop; Dorothy attempts to do the same, but the girl loses her footing, slips, and presumably drowns. Dorothy then loses consciousness while floating down the river.
Dorothy awakes to find the floodwaters gone and the chicken coop stranded at the edge of the
Deadly Desert in the Land of Oz. She also discovers that Billina the hen - who has suddenly developed the power of speech - is a fellow passenger. Together they abandon the chicken coop and make their way to safer ground, being careful to avoid contact with the Deadly Desert, as any living thing that touches it turns to sand.
A hungry Dorothy discovers a "Lunch Pail Tree" growing nearby and picks a ripe lunch-pail to eat.From there, she and Billina find the remnants of her old house (which was carried by the
Tornado to Oz in the first film) in the run down ruins of Munchkin City.The Munchkins are nowhere to be found and it is implied that some terrrible fate befell them.Nearby she also discovers the Yellow Brick Road, and is horrified to see that it is broken and in disrepair.
They rush down the road to the Emerald City, which is also in ruin. All its inhabitants have been turned to stone, including the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion.Horrifyingly ,she discovers all of the women's heads have been removed, and all of the city's namesake emeralds are missing as well. They come across a message scrawled on the city walls: "BEWARE THE WHEELERS!" Soon after, the pair encounter the Wheelers: menacing
Humanoid creatures with wheels instead of hands and feet. Dorothy and Billina flee down an blind alley to escape the Wheelers. At its end they find a keyhole; using the key Dorothy found on the farm in Kansas, they open the door and find
Tik-Tok , a round copper mechanical man whom they activate with a wind-up mechanism.
Tik-Tok tells Dorothy that he was left there by the Scarecrow to wait for her when the populace began inexplicably turning to stone. The trio then emerge from Tik-tok's chamber. Tik-Tok defends them from the Wheelers, and forces the lead Wheeler to take them to the royal palace, where mysterious Princess and the witch Mombi) now resides.
Princess Mombi reveals herself to be a vain witch who owns a collection of 31 heads - 30 beautiful ones, plus her own original ugly head - that she changes in much the way normal women change their clothes. She tells Dorothy that the
Nome King took the Scarecrow and all the emeralds from the Emerald City back to his mountain, and turned everyone else to stone. She then imprisons Dorothy and Billina in one of the castle's towers, planning to take Dorothy's head as her 32nd. Tik-Tok attempts to save Dorothy but his clockwork action runs down, rendering him immobile.
In the tower, Dorothy meets a talking dummy named
Jack Pumpkinhead , another of Mombi's prisoners who had been forgotten. After Jack tells her about his origins and how he was brought to life with a magical "Powder of Life" ("you sprinkle it over something, and the thing comes to life"), Dorothy devises a plan to escape from Mombi's castle.
Jack manages to unlock the tower door and the captives make their way to where Tik-Tok stands frozen. They wind up Tik-Tok again, and Dorothy goes to steal the Powder of Life, which Mombi keeps in Cabinet 31 (which also contains her original head). In the meantime, Jack and Tik-Tok go back to the tower to build the
Gump out of sofas, palm fronds, and a stuffed Gump's head. Dorothy successfully unlocks Cabinet 31 but, as she takes the powder from the cabinet, she accidentally wakes up Head 31. This in turn wakes up Mombi's body (which was sleeping headless) and the other 30 heads.
Dorothy flees with the powder and runs back to the tower. When she arrives, she finds that the others have not yet finished building the Gump: Tik-Tok's "thinking" gear ran down, and his nonsensical directions disrupted the construction process. Dorothy re-winds Tik-Tok, and he and Jack hurriedly finish the Gump as Dorothy sprinkles it with the powder. When Dorothy utters the magical words, "Weaugh, Teaugh, Peaugh" written on the label, the Gump is brought to life. Just as Mombi arrives in the tower, the Gump and its passengers fly away.
As they fly toward the Nome King's mountain, the Wheelers follow them on the ground below but are forced to stop when they reach the Deadly Desert, The Wheelers retreat back to Mombi's palace and Mombi yokes them to her chariot, heading through an underground passage to the Nome King's mountain in an attempt to intercept Dorothy and her friends.
Although they fly through the night without incident, the hastily-built Gump falls apart in mid-air that morning and crash-lands on the slopes of the Nome King's mountain. Remembering that the Wheelers had told them of the Nome King's hatred of chickens, they decide to hide Billina inside Jack's hollow pumpkin head.
The Nome King becomes aware of Dorothy's presence; though initially afraid of her, he soon decides that she is not very dangerous at all. His laughter causes an cave-in on the mountainside and Dorothy falls through a sinkhole. She falls further and further down a gem-encrusted cavern until finally skidding right into the missing Scarecrow - but before either has time to speak, the Scarecrow vanishes in a flash of light. The Nome King then emerges from the rocky walls of the cavern and explains that he has transformed the Scarecrow into an ornament, and that he had decimated the Emerald City and its citizens because he felt its emeralds had rightfully belonged to him and were therefore "stolen."
Dorothy begins to weep, which momemtarily softens the Nome King's heart. He then whisks Tik-tok, Jack (with Billina still hidden inside his pumpkin), and the Gump down into the cavern, and together challenges Dorothy and her friends to a high-stakes game of chance. He will allow each of them to wander about his ornament collection; each will get three chances to guess which of the ornaments is the Scarecrow (by placing their hand on an ornament and saying, "Oz"). They agree to the rules, and the Gump is the first to enter the room. When he is unable to find the Scarecrow after three guesses, the Gump is then turned into an ornament himself--a condition that the Nome King failed to mention beforehand. Jack Pumpkinhead (with Billina) and Tik-tok both take their turns entering the ornament room, and none return.
The more Oz people he transforms into ornaments, the more human the Nome King becomes. With Dorothy alone, the Nome King muses aloud if she came back to Oz - and now risks her life - over a mere "scarecrow." Lifting up his robes, he asks her if she didn't really come back for the Ruby Slippers - which he now wears. He informs Dorothy that they "just fell out of the sky one day" (having fallen off Dorothy's feet when she left Oz to return to Kansas); by wearing them and harnessing their power, the Nome King was able to conquer the Emerald City.
The Nome King is then informed by a servant that Tik-Tok has stopped guessing and is standing motionless in the ornament room. Dorothy assumes he has wound down, so the Nome King allows her to enter, wind him up, and then take her turn at guessing after Tik-tok does. Dorothy enters the ornament room to find that Tik-Tok has not actually wound down but was hoping Dorothy would think so in order for her to gain entrance to the ornament room. He reasons that, if his last guess fails, Dorothy will see what sort of ornament he turns into and be better prepared to guess herself. After a tearful final embrace, Tik-Tok indeed fails his final guess, but Dorothy, much to her dismay, is unable to determine what he has been changed into.
Meanwhile, Mombi arrives at the Nome King's chamber, where she is swiftly put in her place by the latter, who is furious that she had allowed Dorothy to escape from her castle. The Nome King then reveals to Mombi that when Dorothy - the last person alive with any knowledge of Oz - is transformed, he will become completely human.
Dorothy makes two failed guesses and decides to leave her final guess up to pure blind luck. She closes her eyes and grabs the first ornament she bumps into, a large single emerald, cries "OZ!"... and is delighted to find the Scarecrow standing before her; she has undone his transformation. Realizing that the Nome King has enchanted all people from Oz into objects colored green, Dorothy and the Scarecrow hurry through the ornament room to find and rescue the others.
As more of Dorothy's friends are restored to their normal forms, the Nome King reverts back into his old rocky form. Realizing that Dorothy has solved the riddle, the Nome King traps Mombi in a cage and begins to demolish the ornament room. Dorothy and her friends are then trapped in the rubble by the Nome King's minions. A furious Nome King picks up Jack by the feet and holds him upside-down over his mouth, threatening to eat him. Billina, however - who remained hidden inside Jack's head all along - lays an egg, which falls into the Nome King's throat. This destroys the Nome King, as eggs are poisonous to Nomes; his minions vanish, while the Nome King himself disintegrates into a pile of lifeless rock.
Dorothy finds the Ruby Slippers amid the remains of the Nome King. As the palace collapses in on itself, she puts the slippers on; clicking her heels three times (as in the first film), Dorothy wishes for "All of us from Oz to return there safely, and for the Emerald City, and all the people in it, to be restored to life." This is accomplished, with the party from Oz (including the captive Mombi) teleported safely onto a hillside above the rebuilt Emerald City, as all of its petrified citizens are restored to normal.
A huge victory celebration is thrown inside the royal palace. The citizens of Oz cheer for Dorothy's success and ask her to be their Queen. Dorothy regretfully declines their offer, telling them that as much as she loves them all, she must go back home. As Dorothy says, "I wish I could be in both places at the same time," the Ruby Slippers reveal in the mirror behind her a girl who, though positioned directly opposite Dorothy, is not Dorothy's reflection. The girl is actually
Ozma , the rightful ruler of Oz, and the girl who freed Dorothy from the hospital at the beginning of the film. She had been trapped in the mirror by Mombi (on the Nome King's orders) but, with Mombi and the Nome King both deposed, she can now be restored to her proper place.
Dorothy hands over the Ruby Slippers to Ozma and asks her to wish her back home. Ozma agrees, but with one condition: that Ozma may visit Dorothy from time to time and, should Dorothy ever want to come back to Oz, Ozma will make it so. Ozma then clicks her heels three times, and Dorothy is spirited away in a blinding light.
Dorothy then awakes lying in a muddy ravine in Kansas. Toto and her aunt and uncle soon find her, to everyone's great relief. Dorothy then learns from Auntie Em that the clinic caught fire during the storm, and the doctor was killed while attempting to save his machines. Just then, a
Paddywagon passes by with the sadistic nurse behind bars (much in the same way as Mombi was caged by the Nome King).
When Dorothy gets home, she goes straight to her bedroom mirror and says Ozma's name while touching it. The mirror then lights up and Dorothy is delighted to see Ozma, along with Billina (who stayed in Oz), smiling back at her. When Dorothy begins to tell Auntie Em about this, Ozma motions for Dorothy to keep it a secret. Dorothy does so, happy that she has finally found a way to be true to both Oz and Kansas simultaneously. The film ends with Dorothy and Toto heading outside to play in the yard.
''Return to Oz'' is often referred to as a sequel to the 1939 ''Wizard of Oz'', but this is only partly true. Some ties to the 1939 MGM musical were deliberately kept. The silver shoes in the Baum story remain ruby slippers in ''Return to Oz'' as they had been in the MGM film. Also, the MGM movie's concept of Dorothy imagining Oz based on people she knows in the real world — which is not present in the original story — is mostly kept intact in ''Return to Oz''; as in the 1939 film, actors in ''Return to Oz'' played dual roles as characters in the "real world" and the "Land of Oz". However, this is where the similarities end.
Besides being more realistic, considerably darker and not a
Musical , the movie is overall truer to the original concept of Oz as described in Baum's books. Certain key elements of the books, such as the Tin Woodsman's back story, which isn't even mentioned in the 1939 film, are restored. Also,
Fairuza Balk was nine during the filming of ''Return to Oz'', which is much closer to the age of Dorothy in the books than that of
Judy Garland , who was 16 when she starred in ''The Wizard of Oz''. The movie is also full of disturbing situations and scenes of violence. Although this is one of the chief complaints from those unfamiliar with the books, this is again truer to Baum's vision: it was common for the books to contain such scenes, although they were arguably more whimsical than scary.
Oddly,
Glinda The Good Witch is absent from the film. She plays a major role in the 1939 movie, and almost all the books. In ''
Ozma Of Oz '', she gives Ozma a magic carpet on which to cross the deadly desert.
Many Baum concepts not from ''
The Land Of Oz '' or ''
Ozma Of Oz '' do appear in the film:
- The Patchwork Girl, The Shaggy Man, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, The Frogman, Tommy Kwikstep, The Braided Man and Ojo are all background characters in the final scene. Arguably, Jellia Jamb, General Jinjur and the Captain of the Guard are in the scene too.
- The unsuccessful attempt by the Nome King to invade the Emerald City by tunnel occurs in '' The Emerald City Of Oz ''.
- Although maps of Oz vary, especially due to the east/west controversy, it is possible that Dorothy lost her shoes "in flight" over the Nome King's domain after her first visit. If the tornado approached Oz from the east it is possible that is the direction by which Dorothy returned to Kansas. In Baum's Oz Canon, the silver shoes were lost in Dorothy's passage over the Deadly Desert. The Nome King possessed a Magic Belt that Ozma later obtained and used for most of the purposes to which the Ruby Slippers were applied in the movie.
- Uncle Henry and Aunt Em's financial woes (the loss of the house due to the tornado and the bank foreclosing on the farm) are a strong theme in '' The Emerald City Of Oz ''.
- The "Powder of Life", rampant in many books, is manufactured in '' The Patchwork Girl Of Oz ''.
- The Nome King kidnapping someone by means of a seemingly-endless tunnel through the center of the earth takes place in '' Tik-Tok Of Oz ''.
- The Nome King's plot to become human is only mildly approached in '' The Magic Of Oz ''.
- In the 1939 film of ''The Wizard of Oz'', Toto is a Cairn Terrier . Here, he is a Border Terrier . In Baum's original books, Toto's breed is not specified; he is merely described as "a little black dog, with long, silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose." (Toto is brown in ''Return to Oz''.)
Budgeted at $35 million (an expensive sum for the time), the film went overbudget and encountered many difficulties during filming. Despite arriving amid much fanfare--the premiere was held at
Radio City Music Hall , and a "Return to Oz" float along with characters from the film appeared as part of
Disneyland 's
Main Street Electrical Parade --the film flopped at the box office.
The
PG rating was likely a major cause of the poor box-office performance. Many critics denounced the film as too disturbing or scary for young children. However, other critics including
Harlan Ellison praised the film for its originality and visuals. It is still referred to as being "ahead of its time" in terms of quality and special effects.
Viewers unfamiliar with
The Oz Books found the characters and scenes to be bizarre and unfamiliar, since few characters from the first film appear other than Dorothy. The Scarecrow makes only a brief appearance with limited dialogue; the Cowardly Lion and Tin Woodman are seen but don't have speaking parts.
Considering how terrifying many elements of the 1939 film were to previous generations, many critics and viewers seem to have misremembered it as presenting Oz as a fairyland. Baum's original goal had been to create Oz as a world having both paradisical and frightening features, and ''Return to Oz'' is perhaps closer to his original vision.
According to
Harlan Ellison in his book ''Harlan Ellison's Watching'', the studio deliberately sabotaged the film's success. Since they consider the film "underrated" or "underappreciated", they discouraged positive reviews, minimised advertising and limited its theatrical release to less than a week. At the time of its release, Ellison published a review in ''Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', urging readers to "go see it, before it disappears". He describes the reasons for abandoning this film as having to do with the
1984 shakeup in Disney management, in which the new man, (
Michael Eisner ), may have wished to justify his presence by making his predecessor's efforts appear inept. He believed the film would have succeeded had viewers been allowed to see it.
Despite the film's poor reception, it was not forgotten by
Walt Disney Imagineering . The film's interpretation of Oz is featured in the
Storybook Land Canal Boats attraction at
Disneyland Resort Paris .
) crosses the Deadly Desert]]
- According to IMDB, Fairuza Balk did all her own stunts, and the pair of slippers made for Dorothy had a special glue constantly sprayed on them to keep the rubies in place. Fairuza Balk kept playing with her feet; kicking her heels and dipping that the rubies kept falling off, the crew got so impatient they took them off her feet in between takes.1
- The colour of Dorothy's tights and shoes change constantly from white to blue and then to pink and her shoes go from black to brown and back to black again
- In the scene where the Strange Girl (Ozma in the Land of Oz) unties Dorothy from the Wheeled Bed when the Doctor and the Head Nurse go away, she is wearing no shoes, and when they escape from the Hospital, she is also wearing no shoes. But, during the scene where she and Dorothy accidentally slip down a small hill when the Head Nurse is chasing them through the woods, she is suddenly wearing white slippers.
- In an interview several years after production, Fairuza Balk mentions that she fainted during the filming of the last scene. It was extremely hot in the room from the lighting and the mirrors and she was overwhelmed by the heat. She adds she was very embarrassed that she was the only one who fainted. Fairuza also expressed pity for the actor in the lion suit and in Tik Tok's body, since both were also very uncomfortable in the heat, not to mention in heavy costume and (in Tik Tok's case) rather unnatural positioning.
In 2005, American pop band
Scissor Sisters , fans of the film, published an unreleased single on their debut album, ''
Scissor Sisters '', called "
Return To Oz ." Although the song actually pertains to the effects of
Methamphetamine (crystal meth), it contains many of the images and themes covered in the film (as well as referencing the
Skeksis from the
Jim Henson film, ''
The Dark Crystal '').
Received an
Academy Award nomination for "Best Visual Effects."
