some stuff that I love/think is neat in The Wizard of Oz book, that was left out of the movie/almost every re-make
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the 1939 movie cause it’s colorful and pretty, the songs are awesome, and it’s a hollywood classic. However, these are just some things that I loved in the book, but everyone ignores since they weren’t in the 1939 version.
In the book she’s a very little girl, around 8-10, and I always liked that, and I’ll always see her as a little girl. Judy Garland was a really good Dorothy, but she was still a teenager. I know it was made over 70 years ago but I still think they should have cast Shirley Temple like they were planning.
In the original book, The good witch of the north, and Glinda the good with of the south, are two different characters. The witch of the north is the one who gives Dorothy the silver slippers, and all she knows is that they’re magic. It’s Glinda who comes in at the end and tells Dorothy she can use them to get home. It makes a whole lot more sense than Glinda knowing what they can do the whole time.(Also I really like Wicked and want to see it live eventually, but in my mind it’s basically it’s own thing)
The tin woodsman has a backstory! A really good one that ties in with the rest of the story. He used to be a regular man named Nick Chopper and he was engaged to a munchkin girl, but the lady who the girl worked for didn’t want her to get married. So she made a deal with the witch of the east and she enchanted his axe. His axe ended up cutting off each of his limbs but he was helped out by Ku-Klip the tinsmith and he kept replacing his limbs. Eventually the axe cut off everything and he became the tin woodsman. He was so upset that he didn’t have a heart anymore that he felt like he couldn’t love his fiancee without one.
His backstory is really cool and (won’t apologize for the pun) heartbreaking. It’s lame to me that it’s never really used, and it’s a shame because it gives him motivation to want a heart again.
These are super horrifying beasts that live in the Kalidah forest, and they litteraly kill and eat anything they can. I see people adding in a lot of beasts and characters into Oz to make it more scary and grown up, and I don’t see why you’d do that but leave these guys out. The run in with them is how we learn that The Cowardly Lion has courage, because he crosses a log bridge to get away from them even though he’s scared.
The Emerald City isn’t made of Emerald:
Okay so this is way easier to do in a book or black and white comic than it is to do in a movie or tv show. But, in the book before anyone can see inside the city, they need to put on green glasses so the brightness of the emeralds won’t “hurt their eyes”. Then at the end when we find out about the Wizard, they take the glasses off and they(and the audience) learns that like the Wizard, the whole city is a sham. It’s not made of emerald, it’s all just white and plain. That part of the book had a really great lesson to /litteraly/ not look at the world through rose colored glasses. It’s probably one of my favorite things that get left out.
Ozma and Dorothy are gay as hell:
Lookit these lesbians. Bein lesbian... Ozma(a cannon trans girl btw) doesn’t come into the picture until later books, and it takes a few years for Dorothy to come back to Oz but lookit these 1900s gays in these official illustrations.
Oh, and Dorothy and the gang get rescued from the poppy field by a gang of field mice this is their queen:
Anyway, I do like the movie, and I love the Muppets version since they got a lot from the books. I just wish there was an adaptation that used the cannon stuff that’s neat instead of trying waaaayyyy hard to not be the 1939 movie. But it seems like the adaptations are just adaptations of the movie and don’t take anything from the books. Cause L Frank Baum wrote 14 of them with trolls, wheelers, frankenstein monsters, princesses, endless deserts where if any part of you touches it you turn to sand, more witches, sky fairies, and most importantly lesbian princess girlfriends!
