I guess I was in an Oz mood lately, since I watched Wicked: For Good a few weeks ago, then found Oz the Great and Powerful last weekend. Now I want to go back to the original books.

I’m in the generation that grew up with the 1939 movie being on TV around Easter every year. We didn’t get a color TV until I was seven, so you can imagine the shock the first time I watched it on a color TV when Dorothy arrived in Oz and everything turned Technicolor. I hadn’t realized that the whole movie wasn’t black-and-white until then. My main memory of watching the movie as a very small child was being afraid of the tornado. I don’t recall being afraid of the witch, but I’d hide during the tornado scene, probably because I’d experienced real tornadoes (though, fortunately, not enough to have been close to more damage than our backyard fence getting clipped while the house remained unharmed).

I started reading the books in elementary school and was surprised and delighted to find that in the books it wasn’t just a dream. Oz was a real place, Dorothy really went there, and she went back, then eventually moved there with her family permanently. This was my first real experience with portal fantasy — though it’s vague as to whether Oz exists in some other realm or if it’s a place on our world that’s hidden and that has its own rules. It does seem to require some magic to get in and out, though it’s also possible to get blown there by winds.

After reading the books, I was less enchanted by the movie, in part because they changed the timeline (the movie made it contemporary while the books were contemporary for the time they were written, in the early 1900s) and largely because of the “it was just a dream” ending, which turned the story into Fake Fantasy, which I hate.

Oddly, I didn’t like Wicked the first time I saw the musical on stage. I tend to dislike stories that make the villain into the real victim and the good guys into the real bad guys. In the Oz stories, the witch really did bad things that hurt people. I read the book and disliked it enough that I sold my copy to a used bookstore. When the musical came back through town, I almost didn’t go (I had season tickets to the musical touring shows series) but went and ended up loving it. I’m not sure what changed my perspective, though it’s possible the cast helped. I recall that Glinda pretty much stopped the show a few times from being so hilarious. I don’t still have that Playbill to see who it was, but I’ve looked up who was in the touring cast at that time, and there’s a good chance that Megan Hilty was playing Glinda then, which would explain it. I ended up buying the cast recording. I treat the musical as being in its own universe and disconnect it from the other versions of the story and then it becomes more about how those who are different get treated like villains and less of a “the villain is the real victim” story. I enjoyed both movies and plan to get them on Blu-Ray if I can find a place that still sells physical media.

As for Oz the Great and Powerful, this is a prequel/origin story that’s entirely different from Wicked’s take, and I’m not sure it entirely works. This one centers the wizard, showing how a carnival conman ended up becoming the Wizard of Oz and also how the Wicked Witch of the West became what she was. The witch part was less successful than the rest of the story, since it boils down to jealousy over a man (ugh).

The other thing that doesn’t really work is the way it doesn’t appear to take place in the 1939 movie universe — which would be difficult because Oz was a dream there, and it would be weird to give a backstory for events that were a dream, plus there’s no indication that the wizard’s adventures are a dream in this movie — and incorporates some elements from the books, but it also contains a lot of nods to the 1939 movie. It does the Kansas in sepia, Oz in color thing, and it has the same actors playing roles in both Kansas and Oz.

That’s the part that broke my brain. The dual roles in the 1939 movie were because of the “it was just a dream” narrative — the “you were there, and you and you.” The idea was that Dorothy put the people from her life into the dream. But if it’s not a dream, there’s no reason for the same people to be in different guises in both Kansas and Oz. The Oz characters represent Kansas characters the wizard let down, and he essentially gets a do-over once he gets to Oz, but they’re different people played by the same actors. With two of them, it’s just the voices with CGI characters, but then there’s the woman who loves him whom he rejects because he doesn’t want to be tied down (there’s a hint that she’ll end up being Dorothy’s mother) who is also Glinda, and he even comments on the resemblance, asking if she’s ever been to Kansas. It’s one of those things that’s a way of winking at the 1939 movie without doing anything that would get into a copyright/trademark issue with that movie (the concept of Oz is fair game because the books are public domain, but anything created specifically for the 1939 is still protected, so no ruby slippers because they were silver in the book and changed for the movie to take advantage of color film). It was something purely for viewers that doesn’t track within the story.

For a totally different take on the Oz story, there was a one-season TV series (now available on Peacock) called Emerald City, which is a modern, rather freaky, somewhat steampunky take on the story. Dorothy is a nurse in modern Kansas (played by Adria Arjona from Andor), Toto is a German shepherd police dog who gets sent to Oz with her because a cop is with her with the tornado hits, the scarecrow is a badly injured amnesiac soldier, and the wizard is trying to control all magic in the realm. It incorporates a lot of book elements, including some from later books, and it can be a bit on the disturbing side of things, but if you’re an Oz completist and like weird fiction, it’s worth a look.

Part of my birthday celebration last week was taking myself out to a movie — for the first time since the pandemic began. I went to the movie theater downtown to see Superman. This theater is vintage 1930s Art Deco, though with upgraded seating (recliners with footrests) and modern digital projection and sound. It seemed apt for Superman, like the kind of place Clark Kent would have gone to a movie in the earlier incarnations of the character.

Anyone who’s read my books would probably have guessed that I loved it because Clark/Superman here is basically an Adorkable Wizard. I’m naturally going to love a dark-haired guy with superpowers who’s still a bit dorky and awkward and generally good.

I’ve never been a huge superhero fan, mostly because I never got into comic books (no snobbery, I just never encountered them other than compilations of newspaper comics). I only knew superheroes through TV and movies, but occasionally really got into those. I remember running home from the bus stop every afternoon to get home in time for the daily Batman rerun, I watched the 1970s Spider-Man and Hulk TV series and the various superhero Saturday-morning cartoons. I saw the 1978 Superman movie and some of the sequels, then the Lois & Clark series in the 90s.

Out of all that, I’ve always been fond of Superman because I like the idea of the guy with great powers who isn’t dark or edgy and who uses his power to help other people. I tend to prefer the presentations with the idea that Clark is who he really is and Superman is merely an identity he puts on for his good deeds in order to protect his family and himself so he can have something of a normal life. I’m intrigued by the conflict inherent in that, when he gets all kinds of recognition as Superman but is ignored as Clark.

So, basically this movie was all the things I like about the idea of Superman, put together in one story, with Clark struggling with identity and purpose while remaining a ray of sunshine and an absolute cinnamon roll of a guy. I also love this version of Lois Lane and her being smart and snappy, the kind of dame you could imagine being in a 1940s movie. This version of Lex Luthor was a little eerie given what’s been going on with billionaires. You could think of him as Elon Bezos, though I think it would have been more realistic if he’d bought the Daily Planet so he could control the messages about both Superman and himself.

The way they used the 1978 John Williams Superman theme woven into the score brought goosebumps every time. That’s become such an iconic piece of music, so I couldn’t have imagined Superman without it, but it’s interesting seeing how they updated it. I just wish they’d also woven in the love theme from the 1978 movie because it somehow became an earworm after seeing the movie, possibly because I’m most familiar with the Superman March arrangement that incorporates it, so hearing the main theme without the love theme made it feel unresolved, and that made my brain try to resolve it. Oddly, it was the pop ballad version that really got stuck in my head, so I had to track that down on YouTube.

I don’t know if this is going to be a buy it on Blu-Ray kind of movie for me, but it was good for a smile and some inspiration. It was the kind of story that made me want to be better and do better. I don’t have superpowers, but what do I have the power to do?

A few weeks ago, I watched the recent Wonka movie that’s a prequel to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (if you’re talking movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in book form, unless you’re talking about the Tim Burton version, which I kind of try to ignore).

I really enjoyed the movie and found it utterly delightful. My face hurt from smiling by the end of it, and there were a few moments that brought tears to my eyes. They did a good job of making it look like it took place in the same world as the 1970s movie, where it was ambiguously sort of European, but also with American touches, and no firm European setting. And I could see this Wonka as a younger version of Gene Wilder’s character. I could see this becoming a comfort movie (I need to get the DVD) because it definitely made me feel good, and there were parts that made my heart soar.

I have an odd history with this story world. The original Willie Wonka film remains the only movie I ever had to be carried out of because it scared me too much. I made it through all the Disney films fine, but when I was about 4, the scene where the girl turned into a blueberry freaked me out to the point my parents had to carry me out of the theater (ironically, I now eat blueberries just about every day). I didn’t see the whole movie until I was in my 30s. I wasn’t avoiding it or afraid of it. It had just never occurred to me to watch it until I was visiting my parents and it came on cable, and we all watched it (since my parents hadn’t seen the rest of it, either).

I had, however, read the books. My fourth-grade teacher had a routine of reading a chapter of a book to us every day after recess as a way of getting us settled down, and I think she must have been a fantasy fan because most of what she read us would fall into the fantasy category. She really must have liked Roald Dahl because she read a lot of those to us, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I did my usual thing of getting impatient with the one chapter a day pace and checked the books out of the library to read for myself. I don’t think I knew there was a sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory until she started reading that one.

So by the time I finally saw the movie all the way through, I knew the story and had my own mental images based on adding the parts I’d seen of the movie (and clips I’d seen over the years) to the imagery in the books, which made the movie weirdly familiar.

I’ve seen the Tim Burton one, but found it unsettling and not very much fun.

Now I kind of want to watch Wonka and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a double feature and see how they fit together, but I have to admit that I still find the original movie a bit unsettling. It might be even more unsettling with the whiplash from the much sweeter and less freaky prequel.