Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Finally: A Gritty “Wizard of Oz” Reboot
Reboots are all the rage in Hollywood. In the past decade they’ve delivered a Gritty Batman, Gritty Snow White, Gritty Superman, and even a Gritty Hansel and Gretel. Do we really need a Gritty Toto?
What do you think? Is NBC’s “Emerald City” worth watching or should Tinseltown maybe come up with a new idea or two?
Published in Entertainment
Why does Glinda the good witch look evil? Is it so wrong to have a good character?
Acting is acting, and I’m all for having the best actors for the role (unless it’s something ridiculous where the story was written with a character of certain physical attributes, race, gender, or whatever). BUT: It looks like they’ve put a lot of minorities in this movie. If it’s because they’re great in the role, then wonderful. But if it’s because of all the people who stand up and rant every time there’s an award ceremony, it’s a problem. Hollywood can pander to groups or it can sell stories. When it does the latter, it’s at least often entertaining. When it does the former, it is never anything but obnoxious.
Oh, lord, that’s brilliant. Terrifying -we’re talking Misery and The Shining terrifying -but brilliant.
This is not a Hollywood problem. For all the joking, remix-culture is as old as storytelling. The Illiad is only one of dozens of takes on the Trojan War -even the larger Trojan Cycle is only the most popular (or the most Athenian, there’s debate) of the takes on the Trojan War. In the ancient Mediterranean, every city had its own variants on the Greek attack on Troy, what the survivors did, who they were, their relation to the rest of the Ancient Near East, whether Heracles was involved, what their relationship was to Alexander the Great…
The point is, we have always told stories using familiar characters. The problem I see with the trailer is that I don’t recognize the familiar characters.
2,000 Years ago, you didn’t have a fifty year old man telling his kids, “This new Ajax is nothing like the Ajax we had when I was a kid. Kids today, you didn’t even have to live through the plague.”
sure – but those are takes on popular stories, not remakes of specific movies. There are only so many themes to play on, but when you “reboot” very specific scenarios and/or characters, you’re generally doing it simply as a play on nostalgia. You could say that the Bourne movies are a play on the whole James Bond theme. They are, in largely the same sense that the new Bond movies are also a play on the whole James Bond theme. But when you take a franchise and try to fundamentally alter it (Star Trek, ahem!), you’re better off just making a whole new movie. The idea is that people will come out to see it because they liked the old movies. I’d prefer that new movies succeed or fail on their own merits.
Here’s a hint, Mary Sue plays Dorothy.
I think we’re in agreement. I am saying the problem with this new Oz is that it isn’t Oz -and so retelling new stories with the characters doesn’t work. Yes, it’s playing on nostalgia. But it is the playing on nostalgia without respecting the story that is the problem -not the retelling of the story itself.
We are witnessing the birth of a new genre: fairy tale noir.
Right. The reason there are so many different versions of the chivalric tales is because every troubadour who ever picked up a lute did them his way. Characters come and go. Plot twists stay twisted. Family relationships are anything but constant. Percival’s father is either King Pellinore or Alain le Gros, or somebody else. He either finds the grail, or accompanies Galahad when he does. Lamorak and Aglovale are his brothers if Pellinore is his father, but if not then not. The whole Lancelot/Guinevere to-do was nowhere to be seen until fairly late in the versions. Don’t even get me started on how many versions of the Fisher King story there are. I don’t mind modifications to well-known stories, but if you are going to make Hector de Maris a transvestite, you’d better be careful because he holds a grudge and he’s a mean drunk.
No, that was Once Upon a Time. This is NBC trying to get in on it.
Also, they are both calls back to Dark Shadows, the horror fantasy soap opera. That’s why Dorothy has to fall in love with the Scarecrow.
(in my mind it will always be called Shark Dadoes)
Ignoring ABC has been working out for me so far …
That was the original genre. Remember in Ashterolla (Cimderella) when the step-sisters cut parts of their feet off to fit into the glass slipper, but the birds notice and peck out their eyes?
And the first two pigs get eaten.
Of course, Oz is much more recent. The old fairy tales were first compiled in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth C, but were older mostly. Baum was writing in the early Twentieth C.
Wasn’t “Grimm” a nom de plume?
No, not unless it started before their father, Philip Grimm.
I remember my mind being blown a little when I read the original version of the tale. I appreciated that in the film version of Into the Woods (and, I imagine, the stage show itself) they kept those details from the original.
First of all, having Toto played by a German Shepard instead of a Cairn Terrier is just plain wrong. The rest looks like a mess and likely bomb at the box office.
You mean there were no Rock People in the Biblical version of the Noah story?
When I say cheap I mean the script have very little to due with the books.
In that case, agreed.
#bringbackthesilverslippers
They grabbed some baseball bats and went to break up a NAMBLA meeting.