My Wizard of Oz rant

I have a confession to make. I'm not actually a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz movie. In fact, I'm reasonably sure I don't like it.

Or rather, I like it while I'm watching and seeing the colors and hearing the songs, but then when I stop to think about it...

It makes no sense!

Okay, so the ruby slippers can take Dorothy home. But instead of telling her that, the "Good Witch" makes sure she goes off to the Wizard, who's just some dick in a balloon, who decides to send her on what amounts to an assassination mission against an opponent who seriously outmatches her and in all likelihood will kill her.

And these are the good guys. "Yeah, you could go home all the time, but instead, I'm going to turn you into my pet assassin!"

As for the Witch, how do we even know she was evil? Okay, she was green and cranky and threatened the dog.

But her sister got crushed by a house and those callous munchkins were celebrating. And even if the death itself was an accident, the little brat that killed her stole her prized possession!. Which, probably, assuming the East Witch died intestate, legally ought to belong to the Wicked Witch anyway.

I'd be pissed too!

But really, the only real evidence we have to her evil is 1) what the munchkins say, which is awfully one-sided and they cheer when someone is crushed to death in front of them. 2) She's got winged monkeys and a seekrit hideout. As opposed to some carnival guy who lives in an Emerald castle with weird underlings inclined to give people makeovers who he rules via trickery with giant machines. 3) She attacked her sister's killer, which okay, really isn't kosher, but obviously given the ruling people of Oz, she wasn't going to get any sort of justice. And 4) She's ugly.

Whereas, in the movie, Glinda and the Wizard convinced a young girl that the only way she could go home was to KILL SOMEONE. When she had the way home all the time.

To be fair, if I recall the book correctly (I haven't read it since I was a proto-Kalinara) the Witch of the North wasn't the same woman who came at the end to tell her that the shoes could take her home. But in the movie? Definitely questionable.

Personally, I'd like to think the Witch faked her death. Because otherwise a) she's a moron for keeping a bucket of the one thing that can kill her in her hideout (and seriously, what was she using it for? Ever splashed someone with a bucket? You get fucking wet. Even at the age of eight I knew that that was the stupidest means of crisis resolution ever next to the genius evolutionary device that allows a bee to sting its captor and DIE) and b) the Good Witch and Wizard are too fucking incompetent to be able to kill someone so stupid that she keeps a bucket of the one thing that can kill her in her house!!!

I think in the end, this is why I don't have any interest in Wicked. I mean, it's an interesting story (from what I've been told), but ultimately, I tend to think there's more than enough support for a pro-Wicked Witch, re-viewing the movie at least, without changing or adding a lot of things out of nowhere.

The Wizard is skeevy enough without making him a rapist And why the heck does the Wicked Witch of the East have to be without arms to be sympathetic? I mean, all we really know of her is that she's possibly the bitchy woman on the bike (if that's not the Wicked Witch of the West), and she gets squished by a house. And of all the things to make "Elphaba" sympathetic, including a dead sister, a thieving killer and no hope for justice, they went with animal rights?!

That just strikes me as lazy. I usually love the idea of revisiting fairy tales and the like for sympathy for the villains. (Especially since class struggles and the like tend to feature so heavily, with any attempted change in status quo treated as evil. Call me crazy, but I don't actually have a lot of sympathy with the princess who gets bossed around by the servant girl despite her loftier birth.) But if you're not going to use things that are already there, why bother?

Meh, I still love my waaay too pretty green Wicked Witch doll though. <3 (My witch totally faked her death until the idiot Wizard went away in the balloon and the stupid girl went home. Then she went and zapped that bubble-head Glinda something good. Hmph.)