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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9464031" data-attributes="member: 11760">This probably merits being in its own thread, but the musical (of which this movie only adapts the first half) actually improves on the last 25% of the novel, IMO, when Maguire kind of climbed up his own butt when he realized he had a chance to get this reviewed by the New Yorker and other literary critics.I love the original Baum books and the Shanower comics from the 1990s (and not so much the Thompson novels that followed Baum's), but I think they'd need a lot more added into them to be a satisfying movie nowadays. Characterization is limited, the language is dated (the first Oz novel was published 124 years ago) and a lot of the world-building might seem a little strange to today's audiences. There are just random isolated societies living over the next hill from each other, per the maps even from Baum's time and plenty of powerful witches, even after Ozma returns to power and theoretically restores order to Oz.I thought the musical did a great job of giving a more modern take on things while still being extremely respectful and loving of the source material, as opposed to a lot of the cynical cash-ins in film, novel and comic form over the last decade. (Sexy Oz or slasher Oz aren't shocking or clever, folks. Doing something new and great while still fitting in the world Baum created is a lot harder and more impressive and likely to get you money from Oz fans. See Andrew Kolb's great Oz RPG setting book, for instance.)</blockquote>

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