Vote in the poll, explain your reasons in the thread.
What poll?
And I like both, for different reasons. Just like I also like Wicked.
The one right up there. I have to type these things, you know. Patience.
I deliberately left out WICKED because there isn’t a film version yet. (Right?) Stage musicals & movie musicals are different animals, methinks; and I’m certainly not going to compare the Wicked soundtrack to either film.
Slowpoke.
No, no film version yet. I’m still in the “God, that sounds like a bad idea” camp on that. I don’t really want Hollywood getting its hands on it.
Hey! The smartass remarks take thought! Plus sometimes I get distracted by work.
Why wouldn’t WICKED make a good movie? I only know it from the soundtrack.
It’s not that Wicked wouldn’t make a good movie. It’s that I don’t trust them to make a good movie out of Wicked. There’s a subtle difference there.
1939, baby.
Although the films are comparable in the degree to which they represent the popular music of the time, the soundtrack of the ’39 version holds up a lot better, and there is no comparison when it comes to the art direction, production values, and performances.
More than seventy years later, The Wizard of Oz is still considered a timeless classic. I don’t think the odds are looking good for The Wiz to have anything approaching parity with it in the year 2049.
It’s no contest, really. The Wiz isn’t bad, in a time-capsuley kind of way, but The Wizard of Oz is a timeless classic.
Honestly, with as much as I love me some Michael Jackson (I watch the masterpiece that is Moonwalker on a regular basis ;)), I just can’t watch The Wiz. It was on BET last night and I sat watching for about 15 mins, got bored, and changed the channel. Can’t do it.
What, no love for Return to Oz?
It actually was much closer to the originals.
But I love, love love the Garland movie. I grew up on it, and the Wizard’s dialogue as he gives out the hearts and brains is perfect.
We just watched both in the last month. The Wiz would do well to edit itself down to the Wizard of Oz’s trim length.
Can I change my vote? 
I’ve been thinking about this all day and I think my equating the Wiz with tWoOz is mostly due to the music. From an actual cinematic perspective, I think tWoOz wins this one.
(I always did think the tornado tearing right down the middle of a NYC street was kind of dumb, even for a fantasy.)
I like both movies. The 1939 version is a timeless classic, and The Wiz will never match up to that, but I really liked the performances.
I haven’t seen RtO in something like twenty years. Anyway, it’s not a musical, and I think bringing it into the mix is as much apples-to-oranges as bringing Wicked would be.
I haven’t heard mention of The Wiz in years - maybe briefly after Michael Jackson’s death. It’s one of those obscure movies that, while not very good or very bad, simply disappeared. I’ll watch The Wizard of Oz any time, but I doubt I’d give The Wiz more than 15 minutes, and only then out of curiosity.
I’m a huge fan of both Michael Jackson and Diana Ross but The Wiz is one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen. Soundtrack is okay.
I just think it says a lot that a movie can be so bad that performers as amazing as Michael and Diana can’t save it.
I don’t think The Wizard of Oz is unbeatable. But it’s definitely better than The Wiz.
I think the poll says it all. The original was cinematic magic and has stood the test of time.
Both are two of my favoritest movies. I like them for different reasons. And I like one much more than the other.
I take The Wizard of Oz for what it is. A movie about a girl trying to find home (a place where everything’s familiar and everyone loves her, and she them), while making some friends along the way. Everything about the movie is great. The misfitness of pre-tornado Dorothy, the way the black-and-white world is transformed into color (I still get goose-bumps at that scene). The scary trees and the scariest witch of ALL time (that lady still gives me nightmares…she definitely had some issues). The flying monkeys and the oh-ee-oh crew. All that. I love it all.
But I like taking The Wiz to deeper levels, just 'cuz I’m like that. Let’s focus on Diana Ross’s Dorothy. Yes, she was too old to be playing a 20-something girl, but let’s just put that to the side. Judy Garland’s character was a bored teenage girl, with no one to take her problems seriously, no real friends except for Toto. She wants adventure, to run away and experience something new. But Diana Ross’s Dorothy is scared of life. Shy and quiet, dutiful to her aunt and uncle, and perfectly content to keep living without friends or a life of her own. Very much unlike Judy Garland’s Dorothy. It makes you wonder which Dorothy is in more need of a transformative experience? Hmmmm.
Now what gets them to Oz? With Judy Garland, she runs back home after the charlatan makes her feel guilty for running away, and then after arriving home and discovering that everyone is “gone”, she is swept up into the tornado. But with Diana Ross, she’s already technically “home”…it’s Toto–her only friend–who she chases into the snow blizzard that takes them both to Oz. She has to leave the cocoon to go into the land of Oz. In other words, Ross’s Dorothy must leave her comfort zone to have her transformative experience. Garland’s Dorothy must experience true loneliness to have hers.
The Tin Man and the Lion are similar enough between the two movies, at least superficially (although my father once made me laugh by pointing out that the Lion in The Wiz is wearing heels the whole time). But the Scare Crow in The Wiz and the scene with the crows, that’s some deep shit right there.
You can’t win
You can’t break even
And you can’t get out of the game
People keep sayin’
Things are gonna change
But they look just like they’re staying the same
You get in
Way over your head
And you’ve only got yourself to blame*
I mean, if those crows aren’t the lazy-ne’er-do-wells bumming on the street corner, I don’t know who they are. To me, they represent internalized oppression; they fill Scare Crow’s mind with notions of self-doubt and self-hatred. Notice that compared to the scare crow in The Wizard of Oz, Michael Jackson’s Scare Crow is smart from the very beginning. The only reason why he thinks he’s dumb is because those crows told him he was.
Sorry, but no one beats Leana Horne as the Good Witch. That’s all I got to say about that.
Now, let’s fast-forward to the Wicked Witches. The Witch in The Wizard of Oz is truly scarier, and not even comically so. “Surrender Dorothy” all written up in the air like that for the world to see…bitch didn’t have to go there. Mable King’s Evilene is more ugly than scary, and her stable of motorcycle-riding monkeys don’t compare to the flying monkeys as far as surrealness goes. But she’s running a literal sweat shop of evil. Everything bad that happens to the foursome–including the scary puppet things in the subway–stems from Evilene’s magic. The scary things in The Wiz are way scarier than the scary things in The Wizard of Oz (except for the witch herself). But that’s just my personal opinion.
Alright, so we get to the Emerald City. I love both characterizations of the Emerald City, but again, I think there’s something deep going on in The Wiz version. For instance, it is clear from the get-go that something is “off” with The Wiz (and the Emerald City) when he makes everyone essentially do a cake-walk all day long, whilst changing the “color of the day” every five minutes. AND NO ONE QUESTIONS WHY. Could this be a statement about how easy it is to transform people into sheep, just by having the right combination of smoke and mirrors, along with a big enough microphone? When I think about the terror alert color scheme, I can’t help but think about Richard Pryor announcing “The color of the day is…RED!” I also think about materialism and fadism and how people will fall for just about anything if they think it’s popular.
The Wiz and The Wizard of Oz are equally scary (even though the Lion in The Wiz cracks me up more) before you find out the truth about them.
OK, so both gangs kill their respective witches, to victorious applause. But I really like how the people oppressed by Evilene shed out of their ugly shells and become beautiful, half-naked, well-toned dancers straight out of the Dance Theater of Harlem. To get real deep, I think of emancipation and freedom from slavery–the shedding of the false identities and the shackles, the return to one’s natural form. “Brand New Day” is on my mp3 player, and I always feel a burst of happiness when it plays.
Hello world!
It’s like a different way of living now…
And thank you world
We’d always knew that we’d be free somehow
In harmony,
Let’s show the world that we’ve got liberty
It’s such a change
For us to live so independently-
Freedom, you see-
Has got our hearts singing so joyfully
Just look about,
You owe it to yourself to check it out*
I like that last line. You owe it to yourself.
Recall the yellow taxi cabs that always elude them when they try to “follow the yellow brick road.” Well, when they are finally “free”, they are finally able to ignore the dumb taxi cabs. This tells me three things: 1) it’s hard for black folks to catch a cab even in the land of Oz, 2) the taxis weren’t meant for them anyway. Because if they had simply taken a taxi, they wouldn’t have learned all the things they learn, and 3) when you’ve got your head on right, you don’t chase after false hope.
Richard Pryor’s Wiz is much more of a pathetic creature than the The Wizard of Oz, who, while exposed as a fraud, still manages to convince everyone that he’s wise by handing out certificates and trinkets, that amazingly everyone accepts gratefully and unquestioningly. That’s not realistic to me. Pryor’s Wiz is revealed to be a hapless, aimless man who admits he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing (and Dorothy cries out in grief when she realizes he just used her to be his “hit” woman by taking out Evilene…how awful of him). When the fraud is revealed and all hope is almost lost, everyone automatically turns to Dorothy to find meaning in their journey and she is able, with some thought, to tell them exactly what they need to hear. The Scare Crow is smart…after all, he was the one who had the idea to use the sprinkler system in the sweat shop to save everyone. The Lion is brave, because he saved them in that scary subway. I can’t remember what she says to Nipsey Russel, but my point is that they realize it is she, Diana Ross’s Dorothy, who is the wise, powerful one. Pryor is cast in the pathetic light that he deserves, not perpetrated as someone who still somehow manages to have all the answers with Glenda serving as back-up singer in a bubble.
What’s the take-home message for the two protagonists? In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy learns that she could have clicked her heels three times and gone home at any time. OK seriously, she learns to be grateful for the people in her life–her aunt and uncle, the field hands, everyone who loves her back in Kansas. But the thing is…why did she have to go to Oz to discover this? What, exactly, about Oz makes her come to this realization? Sure, she encounters some scariness there, but she was never alone. She has friends in Oz–who actually turn out to be similar to the people she knows “in real life”. But the pre-tornado charlatan had already made her feel guilty for running away from home, so she didn’t need another lesson about appreciating home. So the moral of the story is not very clear, IMHO, in The Wizard of Oz.
However, it is very clear in The Wiz when Leana Horna’s Glenda the Good Witch tells Dorothy:
Believe that you can go home
Believe you can float on air
Then click your heels three times
If you believe
Then you’ll be there
That’s why I want you to
Believe in yourself
Right from the start
Believe in the magic
Right there in your heart
Go ahead believe all these things
Not because I told you to
But believe in yourself
If you believe in yourself
Just believe in yourself
As I believe in you*
and then Diana Ross’s Dorothy says:
If you’re list’ning God
Please don’t make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
Tell us, should we run away
Should we try and stay
Or would it be better just to let things be?
Living here, in this brand new world
Might be a fantasy
But it taught me to love
So it’s real, real to me
And I’ve learned
That we must look inside our hearts
To find a world full of love
Like yours
Like me
Like home…*
The lesson for Diana Ross’s Dorothy is that if she believes in herself, she can do anything, including loving herself, and that no matter where she is, she will always be “home”. Ponder this message while imagining her as a composite of her Oz friends. Before the trip to Oz, she’s doesn’t really love herself (Scarecrow), she doesn’t believe she’s got enough heart to love someone besides Toto (Tin Man), and she doesn’t think she can stand up to the big bad world of rejection (Lion). All of these things explain her timidity and her unwillingness to leave her aunt and uncle’s home. Her trip through Oz has shown her that she can do all of these things and more (including killing someone, but we’ll forget that little fact).
Now perhaps Glenda in The Wizard of Oz has the same message for Judy Garland’s Dorothy, but I sure didn’t pick up on it like I did after watching The Wiz (granted, I’ve watched the latter about eleventy-billion times and the former maybe only a dozen times, but still).
I have more hope for The Wiz Dorothy than I do for The Wizard of Oz Dorothy. The former is probably going to move out of Auntie Em’s apartment–maybe even out of Harlem–and make some friends and start living “a brand new” life. Maybe she’ll bring Richard Pryor with her and the two will have a life together. The Wizard of Oz Dorothy will be a more a grateful girl who won’t be so quick to run away when she doesn’t feel appreciated, but she’s still going to be stuck in Kansas with Toto for awhile, no doubt wishing she could go back to Oz again. I guess I think The Wiz has a meatier moral than The Wizard of Oz does, one that everyone–not just teenagers–can appreciate.
And all of this is my way of explaining why I like The Wiz more than The Wizard of Oz. But both are great films.
You rock.
I agree entirely with your appraisal of the Wiz’s wonderfulness. Thank you for sharing your insightful analysis.