7. Return to Oz
Yes, children's fantasy films are easy targets for the 'they were mad the whole time' game, mostly because they often play fast and loose with reality. Return to Oz, a deliciously off-kilter and twisted concoction, steps over this line purposefully at first, and then later accidentally, probably because its trying so hard to reference both the 1939 Wizard of Oz film and Frank L. Baum's sequels. Right off the bat, this is the only one of the Oz films that sees Dorothy sent to an asylum by Auntie Em and then receiving shock therapy (which, to be fair, Em didn't know about beforehand). Dorothy has continued to talk about Oz well beyond the point of a harmless childhood fantasy, and so her aunt and uncle are worried; she manages to escape from the institution though, running away with a girl who falls into the water. After this she and her talking hen (yes, really) are swept back to Oz, except everything is in ruins, her friends have been turned to stone, and a diabolical witch, Mombie, and the Gnome King are ruling the land. In Baum's book it was undisputed fantasy. In the Victor Fleming movie it was a dream. But here, due to trying to keep some of the same visual conceits as its predecessor, Return to Oz is something in the middle, which ends up relating to madness. Like the classic film, many characters in the real world of Kansas also appear in the fantasy world, except now it's primarily the villains who show up both places. Is it a coincidence that the Gnome King and Mombie, the usurpers of Oz, are the same performers as the asylum doctor and his nurse? Their attempt to dissuade Dorothy of her belief in Oz sees them as conquerors in her fantasia. Ozma of Oz turns out to be the little girl Dorothy escaped with, although even that is in question by the end. Does it strike anyone else as strange that a Disney movie require an epilogue where it's pointed out that the doctor was killed during the storm? The reason Return suggests Dorothy is on the road to extended mental divergence is down to the dual approaches. If Oz is a real place, why would it incorporate Dorothy's real-world experiences and headspace into its architecture and population? If it's just another dream, this one with elements that are spilling into her waking world, then Dorothy might really be in danger of losing her mind to these fantasies over time and by the end of Return she's beaten back the emissaries of logic. If this is all in her head, than Dorothy is one messed up little chica. What is the deal with those Wheelers anyway?