Whoa, what are you doing, Jean Grey?

Spider-Man films tend to be the most popular Marvel-related films – partly, I guess, because this is a superhero just about everyone has heard of. You don't have to be a Marvel fan to go to see a Spider-Man flick. For my part, though, being a Marvel fan (or perhaps more correctly an MCU fan) is exactly the reason I saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day at my local cinema, instead of waiting for streaming. I did not want to miss out, though I have to admit Spider-Man is not my favourite superhero franchise.

This has nothing to do with the likeability of Spider-Man himself, quite the opposite. So many Spider-Man films seem intent on giving Peter Parker the worst time possible, and I find it hard to watch. (Life is no picnic for Miles Morales in the Sony Animation flicks either, but he tends not to settle for self-sacrifice so easily.) The serious bits are often well done and in line with the "with great power comes great responsibility" theme (which frankly I'm a little sick of by now), but I prefer not to have to pity the protagonist of a film to this degree. Take Spider-Man 2 from the old run of Spider-Man films directed by Sam Raimi as an example. Interesting character dynamics, superlative villain. But man, Peter's life was a mess.

Life is predictably shitty for Peter this time around as well, but there's hope towards the end. Also, the film never gets too unremittingly dark. While he's still separated from former girlfriend MJ and best friend Ned – who have forgotten his very existence because of an amnesia spell at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home – Peter is not completely isolated. He has sweet character interactions with his gun-toting reluctant buddy Frank Castle aka the Punisher (I haven't watched any of the Punisher stuff but still enjoyed his role in this film) and the severely maternal NY police chief DeWolff. They only know him as Spider-Man, though, so Peter is still pretty lonely.

We don't spend too much time with the mopey stuff, however. This was one of the most enjoyable Spider-Man flicks I've seen, if not the most enjoyable. The characters are really likeable, the plot is preposterous but fun, the pacing works and the film looks great. I'm certainly glad I went to see it on the big screen. I only have one gripe, but being me it's not a small one, as it concerns the villain.

As has been widely speculated beforehand, the red-headed girl with telepathic abilities who gives Spider-Man so much grief during the first two-thirds (or even three-fourths) of the film turns out to be – ta-daaa – this universe's version of Jean Grey, known in other reiterations as a famous member of the X-Men team and all-round good egg. In the MCU, the X-Men don't exist – yet – and this is supposed to be this particular character's origin story.

Except she is horrible. Not as in badly acted – Sadie Sink does a good job with all the teenage angst – but as in behaving despicably and then being excused because of her heart-tugging motivation. I don't have a good track record when it comes to giving a teenage girl villain a break because "she's just a kid" (hello and goodbye Karli Morgenthau), and I would have thought Mind-Control Girl would have got away too easily even if she'd turned out to be someone else. But seriously, Jean Grey? Is no-one else bothered by this?

True, I haven't read the X-Men comics, but I have watched the original X-Men animated series, its recent follow-up X-Men -97, uncanonical high-school take X-Men: Evolution and all the Fox X-Men films, so I think I have a pretty good handle on the kind of character Jean Grey is supposed to be. In essence, she's a good girl. She and Scott Summers aka Cyclops are the Snow White and Prince Charming of the X-Men team. This means they can come across as a bit of a goody-two-shoes couple, but it also means they can serve as an anchor in an often highly-strung and morally conflicted team. Script-writers seem to love an "evil Jean" storyline, which is probably why the Dark Phoenix story arc has been adapted so many times (we've also had a Jean clone who went dark). But in order for a storyline like that to make sense and have the intended impact, we have to have a sense of what a decent person Jean Grey normally is.

Young girl Jean in Spider-Man: Brand New Day may have a reason for her fury, but if she'd only told Spider-Man all about it – and she has plenty of opportunity – then he could have helped her, and he and others would have been spared plenty of misery. As it is, Jean keeps her reasons for attacking the perpetually shady Department of Damage Control to herself, and in the process invades the minds of countless New Yorkers, among them MJ. She tortures Peter emotionally, has no compunction regarding the innocents whose minds she uses in her quest, and may even cause bloodshed (what happened to the guy who was run over, or the whole portion of the town she possessed when enraged?). Finally, she mends her fences with Spidey, but never apologises or faces up to all that she's done. 

Supremely charismatic villains might get away with a shoddy redemption arc like this, because they're villains. We're not too fussed about them apologising for their crimes – villain-lovers like me like them just the way they are. But a famous heroine, whose moral judgement we'll sooner or later be asked to trust in? What kind of an origin story is this for her? 

Still, what do I know: maybe Jean was a real wild child in the comics until Professor X took care of her education. And it's not as if I like Nice Jean that much. She seems suspiciously OK with letting Wolverine trail after her like a faithful Dobbin, when someone should really tell him to cut his losses and find another girl. 

As a Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day passes with flying colours. I just wish we had got another kind of villain instead of Puzzlingly Nasty Jean (nothing wrong with Obviously Shady DoDC Guy, though).

The parent problem of Disney's Descendants films

I'm perfectly aware that I'm not the target audience for the Descendants franchise. These breezy fairy-tale-meets-high-school-rom-com flicks are aimed at young viewers, specifically teenagers – at a guess, closer to fourteen than nineteen. Nevertheless, I can't help enjoying them. 

The original premise of the films is to let the children of famous Disney villains attend the same high school as the kids of famous heroes and see what happens. For this scenario to come about, the creators had to dream up a land (Auradon) where all the heroes hung out, and The Isle of the Lost to which all the villains had been banished. It did not make a lick of sense, but it was fun and spawned a jaunty trilogy centering on the villain kid quartet Mal, Evie, Carlos and Jay and their hero-kid love interests. Mal especially, played by rising star Dove Cameron, was the heroine (sometimes anti-heroine) of this trilogy.

With the tragic death of one of the leads (Cameron Boyce who played Carlos), the franchise ground to a halt for a while. Then it started up again with what seems set to be a new, Wonderland-centred trilogy, where Red, the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, and Chloe, the daughter of Cinderella and her prince, get up to time-travel shenanigans in order to improve the present, and then have to deal with the consequences. Recently, the fifth Descendants film, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, premiered on Disney Channel and (fortunately for me) Disney Plus.

To sum up, the franchise contains fairy-tale crossovers, (non-snide) Disney references, romances, bouncy hummable tunes and ongoing riffs on the hero-villain dynamic. It's basically five films' (and counting) worth of "you and I are not so different" storylines. Of course I'll keep watching! Heck, age is just a number.

There are problems, though, when a geek like me troubles her decades-too-old brain with the logic of a franchise that's only supposed to be a fun time for high-school kids. I'm not too concerned with the sloppy world building when it comes to timelines, the way the fairy-tale federation of Auradon is run or the morally questionable choice of assembling all villains and their children in a penal colony. Having the parent generation of villains and heroes attend the same magic high school doesn't add up, but I'll let that pass. I don't question the blending of modern times with fairy-tale narratives. What bothers me are all the missing parents. Who are they? Where are they?

It started in the very first Descendants film: while the hero kids mostly had two parents (as a carry-over from the original stories), the villain kids were only introduced as the kids of Maleficent (Mal), the Evil Queen (Evie), Cruella de Vil (Carlos) and Jafar (Jay). Not a peep about who their other parents were. While we eventually (in film number three) learned that Mal's dad is Hades, the rest of the quartet's second parents remain a mystery. It wasn't just the villain spawn either. Fairy Godmother has a daughter called Jane, and Dopey has a son called Doug. Nice to know that Dopey scored, but with whom?

If it had ended there, I could have lived with it, as it's quite fun to speculate and invent head-canons regarding probable pairings. But each film introduced new young protagonists, and almost every time only one of their parents (a famous villain, mostly) was mentioned. That way, the problem has grown exponentially to a point where even a whole film exclusively dedicated to tying up loose parent threads (which we're never going to get anyway) wouldn't be enough. For crying out loud, even Smee has twins. How did that happen?

What makes me mind this quirk of the Descendants films much more than I should is, I think, all the lost storytelling opportunities. I believe someone somewhere claimed that the films were to be considered as Disney canon, but come on, they're clearly not. Which means they could have gone nuts and fan-fictioned away by pairing Disney villains up any old way, which would then enrich the possibilities when it comes to the villains' offspring. The "VKs" (villain kids) would have two sources of villain genes to worry about rather than one. There could be clandestine villain-hero hook-ups, of the romantic or scandalous kind. Who is Jane's dad – is there perhaps a reason Fairy Godmother keeps her on such a tight leash?

Surely the target audience, consisting as it does to a great extent of teenage girls, has to wonder about this too and bemoan the lost opportunities for even more Disney-related "ships"? I'm at a loss to explain this storytelling nonchalance. Maybe, considering the young audience, the creators have chosen to be a bit shy when it comes to procreative matters. We learnt in Descendants 3 that Maleficent and Hades are supposed to have been married when Mal was conceived, although they then split up. Now, I can imagine the Disney versions of Hades and Maleficent having an affair, but married? It's as if the powers that be don't want to sully their viewers' minds too much with contemplations on the possibly irregular relationships which resulted in villain kids such as Evie, Carlos, Jay and many more.

To anyone progressively minded who feels the need to snigger at this and at Maleficent's and Hades's "marriage", I have a question: Who, exactly, is Bow's mother in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power? I'm not disputing that his two dads are super cute and shippable, but someone must have carried Bow for nine months in her womb, no? Sometimes, progressive media have their own problems with the birds and the bees.

An international fan's view on the state of Doctor Who

Argh, why is it so hard to blog during my vacation? Here I sit, rested and content, with oceans of time at my disposal, but will the inspiration come to write that exposé on different kinds of villain-loving (that don't always align with mine)? Will it heck. Therefore, after much deliberation, I will have to go nerdy.

Because if it's one subject that it should be easy to have an opinion on, for a worried fan, it's the current state of Doctor Who. Even the most loyal admirers of the show have been up in arms after the Christmas special that was promised was cancelled – with Russell T Davies commenting defensively that he hadn't written anything of the script anyway, which directly contradicts previous statements from him and others – and BBC has announced that the series has been "put out to tender". 

Since the announcement, commentators have fallen over themselves to explain to us, the ignorant public, that putting a show out to tender does not mean putting it out to pasture. In fact it means the complete opposite, as the show is auctioned off, as it were, to the studio who has the best pitch for it going forward. Shows don't go through this process unless BBC expects it to run for years and years; it wouldn't make sense to invite pitches for a last hurrah. 

If BBC wanted to cancel the show, the commentators suggest, it would have done so outright. Instead, a new studio is needed anyway as Davies and his production company Bad Wolf is leaving the field, so putting the show out to tender makes perfect sense. Moreover, the cancellation of the Christmas special means the process of determining a new, shining future for the show can start sooner. Davies had frankly written himself into a corner by having Ncuti Gatwa regenerate into Billie Piper (whom we know as former Doctor companion and love interest Rose), and a future studio wouldn't want further messy lore on their hands.

All this sounds perfectly plausible as far as it goes. However, Doctor Who fans who have been in the trenches have pointed out that last time the series went off air, the BBC didn't outright cancel it either. The execs may just be trying to let a vocal fanbase down gently. For my part, I'm prepared to buy that the Beeb is acting in good faith and wants the show to continue. But as a foreign Who fan, I have two big concerns: will anyone bid for Doctor Who? And will anyone stream it?

Granted that the BBC wants to find the best studio for Doctor Who. But what good will that be if no studio wants it? The BBC has its own studio, separate from the rest of the organisation, and they've shown interest in Who. But it would look odd if they didn't, and if BBC Studios ends up producing the show, then why put it out to tender in the first place? Putting something up for auction is all very well, but the occasion turns into a disaster if no-one's buying.

The Doctor Who brand isn't strong right now. Whovians who were full of anticipation over Davies's second stint as showrunner have been struggling to defend the RTD 2 run. However much the more positive Who forums have tried to distance themselves from "toxic" fans, they've had to concede that the RTD 2 seasons of the series have overall not been very good. I'm not the only one who has gone from initial unease, to increasing bewilderment, to being close to giving up on the series altogether. To paraphrase Charlotte Brontë, whether it is right or advisable to create things like "Dot and Bubble", I do not know: I scarcely think it is.

What's potentially more dangerous for the series than griping fans – though, lest we forget, we're the ones supposed to be boosting the viewing figures – is the falling-out with Disney Plus. What with the streaming service dropping the series after two seasons and still not airing the spin-off series The War between the Land and the Sea (not that I blame them – it sounds eco-dreary), Doctor Who has been branded, in the eyes of the world, as bad business. Why would a streaming platform such as Netflix want to take on a show that's already failed on Disney Plus?

To a British viewer, this might not be a great cause for concern. YouTube channels such as Who Culture have waxed lyrical about the possibility of Doctor Who going back to its BBC roots of modest budgets and grounded stories and characterisation. But the most important thing about the Disney Plus deal was not the budget, it was the world-wide airing of the series. I don't need big-budget spectacles either, but I want to be able to actually watch the show. 

My foreign blood has been boiling while listening to burbling fantasies about how great it would be if BBC could do the series all in-house and not have to defer to those pesky international streaming services for anything. Yes, I expect it would be great for nostalgic Brits. But what about the rest of us? Do the limeys have any idea of what being an international Who fan was like, before the Disney Plus deal? 

In Sweden, Swedish television aired New Who's first series with Christopher Eccleston. For a while, some series (not the most recent ones) were briefly available on Prime. But apart from that, nothing. I had to wait for the DVDs, and meanwhile have salient plot developments spoiled for me. Some dunce spoiled the plot twist in "Amy's Choice" in a review, a move I have yet to get over. BBC itself put up a video on YouTube with the Sacha Dhawan Master reveal the day after the episode was aired in the UK. Of course, it made its way unbidden into my list of recommended videos because of the algorithm, and there was nothing I could do about it. Christmas specials were released on DVD in the spring, if one was lucky.

The RTD 2 run at least had this to recommend it: I could watch the new episodes the same day they aired if I wanted to. Granted, many of them were bad, but they were available. I don't want to have to go back to buying the DVDs once the whole series has already been aired in the UK, and unless I can be sure that a new incarnation of Doctor Who is better than RTD 2, I'm not sure the investment is actually worth my while.

Everything has its time, and everything ends. Still I cling on to the hope that out of all this upheaval, Doctor Who will rise like a phoenix and be watchable once more. But what will I call this hypothetical new version of the series? I shouldn't have blown the label New New Who on the short-lived Disney Plus era. Surely New New New Who is too much?

Hats off to Pixar: somehow, they pulled off Toy Story 5

There were many reasons why I was sceptical (much like the rest of the world) about the very idea of a Toy Story 5 film. The franchise already had two endings: it was clear both from the way Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4 ended that they were, at the time, expected to close out the story. That made Toy Story 5 an obvious cash grab from a studio spooked by the modest box office numbers of its films based on original ideas. 

What's more, I've never been sold on the original premise of the Toy Story films. Even at their peak – perhaps especially at their peak – I thought their messaging peculiar, bordering on downright harmful. What does Pixar think it's doing, guilt-tripping kids (and nostalgic adults) for abandoning their toys? When in the future the Toy Story characters enter the public domain (by a process I don't fully understand), a horror film version will not be far off. For example, the notion that toys in storage stay sentient while being packed up in the dark is creepy in the extreme.

But would you know it, the creators of Toy Story 5 made a virtue of necessity. It turned out to be a good, solid Pixar flick, better than a lot of nostalgia bait out there and a lot better than it needed to be to draw the crowds. These past months, I've watched more films on the big screen than I usually do, among them Super Mario Galaxy, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Mandalorian and Grogu. I had a good time with all three of them, not least Mandalorian and Grogu (yes, it's like a couple of episodes of the TV show squished together, but I like the TV show). They had one thing in common, though: they weren't big on plot. They were clearly "hey, don't you just want to hang out for a time in this world with these characters?" kind of films.

Toy Story 5 could have settled for the same experience, but Pixar chose to aim higher. Maybe the studio has learned something after traumatising a whole generation with the plight of toys neglected by callous youngsters. In the latest two "cash grab" instalments (let's not deny this is why they were made) the Toy Story franchise has tiptoed away from the toys' more selfish motivations (basically "play with me or I'll diiiieee") and instead focuses on their mission to make their kid happy. 

In Toy Story 4, Woody unselfishly struggled to keep Bonnie's favourite toy Forky at her side; in Toy Story 5, Bonnie's remaining toys are more worried by her lack of friends than by the possibility that she could get tired of playing with them. When she gets an iPad-like device called Lilypad, they do feel threatened ("Extinction! Not again" Rex the dinosaur laments), but mostly they're worried about its effect on Bonnie. Jessie, the clear leader of the toys now that Woody's gone away, sees it as her task to find at least one suitable friend for Bonnie, someone she can really connect with. Lilypad blithely gets Bonnie three "friends" online, but they don't seem to be doing her much good.

The whole "tech vs toys" question that's emphasised in the trailers is actually the least interesting part of the film, at least until the message is nuanced by Jessie's reluctant team-up with another girl's "old-tech" toys ("the AA team") and Lilypad's earnest desire to be of use to Bonnie. The best takeaway message-wise from the film, in my view, was its argument for how playing with actual toys stimulates children's imagination. The sequences where Bonnie's or Blaze's (the other girl's) play-time is animated in a particular, colourful manner are a delight. Toy Story 5 acknowledges that playing a simple game on a device can be fun too, though.

For long-time Toy Story viewers, it's a relief when Jessie's old trauma of being given away by her first owner, Emily, is finally overcome by a moving realisation that she did make a difference to Emily. It leads her to a conclusion I wish the Toy Story films could have articulated long ago. When faced with the possibility of Bonnie outgrowing her, post-epiphany Jessie is chill: what's important is that she was there for Bonnie "when it mattered".

It's not a perfect film by any means: what with a few new toys being added to the roster each film, the Toy Story franchise now has bit player overload. Even when the focus is on the children's happiness rather than the toys', the supposed bond between toy and kid can still come across as a little eerie. When Lilypad suspects she does Bonnie more harm than good, she flings herself in a donation box: sweet or a kamikaze move? There are a lot of subplots going on, neither Buzz nor Woody is in any way essential to the plot, and the whole thing's a bit messy, albeit in a fun way.

For my part, I enjoyed this film more than Toy Story 4, and I especially appreciated how we get to become invested in Bonnie and Blaze and root for them to become friends. It was hard to warm to Bonnie in Toy Story 4: sure, she has no obligation to Woody (he's a toy!), but forgetting about him so soon after Andy gave him to her, and after Andy was so reluctant to let him go, did come across as a bit ungrateful. Here, Bonnie is allowed to be a sweet, if insecure, kid, and you're left hoping that the association with the more confident, quirky Blaze will do her all the good in the world. Another film with Bonnie as the toys' owner would give a certain symmetry to the franchise, which could then be divided into two trilogies. I can hardly believe I'm writing this, but I'm ready for Toy Story 6.             

Wicked Witch variations part 3: Elphaba the disillusioned fangirl (Wicked the musical and films)

I believe that I've somewhere described Wicked as a good musical, but not great as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Now that I've actually read the book and reacquainted myself with the movie version, I stand by that. My heart sinks when I see YouTube videos called things like "10 disturbing facts we notice in The Wizard of Oz after seeing Wicked". Please, don't judge the charming classic movie characters by what their alter egos get up to in the musical. Wicked is decidedly not canon – but my, those songs are good.

When I watched the musical in London many years ago now, I didn't have high hopes for it, but I was bowled over when the hit tunes kept coming. Not only were the songs hummable, the lyrics were witty and – towards the end – moving too. Also, the settings were suitably colourful (a far cry from Maguire's dour take on Oz) and, most importantly, the characters were engaging. Well, some of them.

Of the good/redeemable versions of the Wicked Witch I've been discussing, I prefer the stage musical's Elphaba to both Maguire's book version and the rather too goody-two-shoesy Wicked film version. Whereas Maguire's Elphaba was a rebel from the start, and only too glad to have her poor opinion of the Wizard confirmed, the musical's Elphaba is as taken in by the Wizard's glittering reputation as everyone else (and here he actually has a glittering reputation). She may be an outsider, but she wants to belong, and the sweetly optimistic "The Wizard and I", which she sings after having found out that her magic talents might actually make her his right-hand woman in time, is very relatable if you've ever been a fangirl.

She's also impressed by the seductive trappings of Emerald City, which she visits with her by-then best friend Glinda, and at first the meeting with the Wizard goes exactly as she'd dreamed it would. When realisation dawns that he's behind the persecution of talking animals (why is never quite made clear, except with the "everyone needs a common enemy" cliché), it really costs her to give up her dreams (and her friendship with Glinda) to turn against him. It's a compelling character arc, and though it feels rushed when Elphaba turns bad for about five minutes towards the end in order to explain the Dorothy business, it's worth it as it brings us my favourite Wicked song "No Good Deed".

Musical Elphaba, then, is a success. As I mentioned in my previous post, I also like how they handled the Wizard, as someone with enough charm to almost lure Elphaba back to the dark side with his unfeigned enthusiasm over being fêted and openness about not deserving it ("Hey look who's wonderful/some corn-fed hick/who said it might be keen/to build a town of green/and a wonderful road of yellow brick"). Glinda's an enjoyable character too (when she's not annoying). But oh, the rest!

Whereas Maguire at least had the courtesy to read L. Frank Baum's book, I'm pretty sure the creators of Wicked only know the movie version of the Wizard of Oz. It's as if they saw it and said to themselves: "Hey, I wonder what the back stories of the Tinman, and the Scarecrow, and the Lion, and the flying monkeys are?" To which one could reply: "Well, if you read the book, you'd find out most of them." Instead the musical chooses its own path, ignoring not only Baum's novel but to a great extent Maguire's too. Little of what the musical claims about the beloved Oz characters clashes factually with what we're told in the movie version, but psychologically it's all wrong. As any musical producer ought to know, you shouldn't mess with the friends of Dorothy.

The films Wicked and Wicked for Good aren't different enough from the stage musical to merit a separate post. In brief, I found them far too long and padded, but visually appealing, and Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are a joy to listen to as Elphaba and Glinda (it's not always you get top-notch singing in film versions of musicals). The Chinese Whispers effect continues, though. Whereas the creators of Wicked the stage musical don't seem to have read The Wizard of Oz, the creators of the films don't seem to have much knowledge of the musical's supposed inspiration, Maguire's novel. When scenes are added in order to flesh out the story and maybe fix a plot hole or two, the plot moves further and further away from the book Wicked. 

What's more, the films forget to make Elphaba the least bit wicked, even towards the end. The fact that "No Good Deed" is actually a villain song is ignored. The shadowy Dorothy is referred to merely as a nuisance. This version of Elphaba is never that many steps away from Joan of Arc status, and it gets wearying. At least the love interests are marginally less drippy than in the stage version, and Jeff Goldblum, even when he's phoning it in, is inspired casting for the Wizard.

You may wonder why I haven't yet brought up Zelena, Once Upon A Time's version of the Wicked Witch. Actually, although I think Zelena is a fun character and I like her more than I should considering what she occasionally puts Rumple through, I don't think the Once writers dug very deeply into Oz lore when creating her. It's all very much "something something green skin flying monkeys broom cackling something". But I can definitely imagine her singing "The Wizard and I".

Wicked Witch variations part 2: Elphaba the natural-born rebel (Wicked book version)

Now I've read Wicked by Gregory Maguire, what surprises me the most is not any liberties taken with the source material (primarily Baum's The Wizard of Oz and to some extent the movie version) but how much it differs from the musical Wicked and later film versions of said musical. It's not just the tone, it's the whole thing, plot and characters included. Don't read Wicked if you're a fan of the musical and/or films and are looking to get a fleshed-out version of their story, because this is completely different. One reviewer claimed that basically only the names of their characters are the same, and well... they're not far wrong.

Is the book worth reading for its own sake, then? Yes, I'd say so, albeit hesitantly. Authors aren't normally too pleased when their writing is called "interesting", but this is just that, an interesting novel. I admire Maguire for not going down the easy route when it comes to retelling a story from the villain's point of view. He doesn't make the Wicked Witch (whom he names Elphaba, reputedly after L. Frank Baum) out to be some wronged saint. She is very difficult, and ends up behaving much worse towards Dorothy and Co. – and other characters that get on the wrong side of her – than she needs to. The Wicked Witch isn't so much exonerated as fleshed out as a character, which is (theoretically) the right way to go with these kind of stories.

Also, props to Maguire for doing his homework properly. Unlike (I strongly suspect) the makers of the Wicked musical and films, he has clearly read up on the original Oz novels instead of just watching the movie. Wicked is full of references to the land Baum created, though that's not to say his Oz is much like Baum's version (I think I can safely say as much after having read only one of the original Oz novels). When Maguire brings part of the movie version of events into his novel, it's a conscious choice rather than a result of ignorance. 

For instance, of course Elphaba has to be green-skinned, we'd hardly recognise the Wicked Witch otherwise. She is also two-eyed, for convenience's sake (though there are some oblique references to where the telescopic one-eye idea might have come from), and the Wicked Witch of the East is her sister. I can buy all that, though I don't understand why Maguire cooks up his own back story for the Flying Monkeys (or Winged Monkeys), as they already have one in Baum's The Wizard of Oz. He also keeps the conflating of the two Good Witches of the North and South into one, which is a bit hard on Glinda who (as in the movie, but not the original book) gets to be the one to gift Dorothy the contentious shoes.

To keep to the negative virtues a little longer, we are spared the musical's forced back stories to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman/Tinman, which were at odds with the original story and saddled Dorothy with the company of a bastard (the Tinman), an ingrate (the Lion) and a double agent (the Scarecrow). Though Dorothy's gang aren't very nicely portrayed in a (rather unnecessary) Prologue scene, they nevertheless keep their original back stories and functions. The Lion's story does have points in common with that of the musical version, but mercifully he doesn't believe has a "grievance to repay" towards someone who has shown him nothing but kindness. 

The love triangles from the musical/musical films are also absent, thankfully. Believe it or not, Fiyero (not a spoiled public-school brat, no) and Boq are actually likeable in the novel, and neither of them courts one girl while yearning for another. Fiyero is never involved with Glinda, and Boq leaves Nessarose (armless rather than in a wheelchair) alone.

So much for what the novel doesn't do, and the pitfalls it avoids. But what kind of story does it tell? Here's where my hesitation comes in. The story is rather oddly constructed into sections with big time jumps in between, while the intervening years' events have to be explained in exposition or flashbacks. The prose is sometimes a bit knotty, especially if you're a non-native speaker. There are questions of a philosophical nature that are, perhaps, given a little too much space at the cost of good old-fashioned storytelling. On the other hand, Maguire takes the time to let his characters talk through political and religious themes which other authors might just have served up to us as black-and-white. For instance, when Elphaba's political activism leans towards terrorism, Fiyero (by then her lover) calls her out on it.

My three main problems with the novel can be summed up as follows: the depiction of Oz, the depiction of the Wizard and, to some extent, the main character herself. Maguire's Oz never feels particularly beguiling or magical. Dorothy's probably far better off in Kansas, quite irrespective of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. As for the Wizard, of course he's the villain of this version of the story (while Dorothy, you'll be relieved to hear, comes out of it all quite well). I expected that, and indeed the original book gave us little reason to think well of him. But I think Maguire goes too far in casting him as an out-and-out tyrant who doesn't even try to be charming. 

In this instance, I feel the musical and its film versions stole a march on Maguire. Yes, I realise the dire state of Oz and the Wizard's oppression are largely his point, but it's a shame that they're so obvious. In the musical, something bad is happening in Oz and the Wizard is a crook, but it happens under the surface. On a surface level, everything is bright and enticing enough to fool visitors like Dorothy, part of the populace and for a time even Elphaba. As for the Wizard, he is given a dangerous folksy charm. That's far more intriguing than everyone knowing he's a wrong'un.

As for Elphaba, I quite liked her in the section of the novel where she goes to University with Galinda/Glinda (the name change is surprisingly even more poorly explained than in the musical and films). After a while, though, her relentless crankiness started to be wearisome. It's easier to warm to Elphaba in the musical, of whom I'll write more in a future post. Maguire's Elphaba is never disappointed with the Wizard, because she never expected anything good from him. Instead, she takes to the rebel life with gusto – she is more comfortable being against something than for something anyway.

Ultimately, though, she is interesting, as is the novel. But it's not something for girls who enthusiastically dress up as the musical Elphaba for Halloween. Be warned: this Wicked Witch is for adults only.

Wicked Witch variations part 1: The Wizard of Oz, the book and movie

So I had this ambitious idea for a blog post, where I gave an overview of the Chinese whispers that led us from a Wicked Witch of the West who was clearly villainous and not even green (as this exposé on YouTube told me: at this time in my planning I hadn't read the book yet) to the almost aggressively righteous Elphaba in the films Wicked and Wicked: For Good (based on Wicked the musical, but even more Wicked Witch-friendly). I've realised, though, that I have to split this topic into two or more parts, as there's a lot to unpack with all these different Oz versions. For one, Wicked the book, which I'm reading now, is nothing like the musical or the films – but I'll come back to that in a later blog post.

Let's start at the beginning. I didn't grow up with L. Frank Baum's Oz books, and have still only read the first one, The Wizard of Oz. Checking out the original of a much-told story is often a lot of fun, and given blog material, but still I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this children's classic. It was really charming: the characters, though not super complex, were likeable, the writing style beguiling and Oz itself properly intriguing. It's not a book that overstays its welcome, either. It made me curious about the other Oz books, although there are rather a lot of them. I'm not sure I'm curious enough to read them all.

It has to be said, though, that the original Wicked Witch version is not the most memorable one. She's a functional villain, much in the style of, say, the witch in Hansel and Gretel, but she doesn't have that much of a personality. Also, she's not so central to the plot as in the movie, as Dorothy's adventures carry on for a bit after she has defeated the witch before she can finally go home. Here are some things about the original Wicked Witch that may surprise you:

1) She's not green
2) She only has one eye
3) She's not, as far as we know, related to the Wicked Witch of the East
4) She doesn't show up demanding the magic shoes from Dorothy, or indeed show up at all during Dorothy's trek to the Emerald City. It's only when Dorothy and her companions are on their way to kill her that she makes her presence felt (though it's clear she wants those shoes too).

Already, there's something more than a little off about the Wizard's behaviour: he sends a child on an assassination mission, and has no reason to believe the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman (as the original Tinman is called) and the Cowardly Lion will be much help. On the face of it, although we have no reason to doubt the Witch's wickedness, she is at least partly acting in self-defence. Taken all in all, though, although the Wizard's case is not strong, neither is the Wicked Witch's. She is mostly a stock character and an obstacle for Dorothy and Co. to overcome.

The reason the Wicked Witch of the West has become such an iconic villain has to be all down to the movie The Wizard of Oz and how she's depicted there. (I think it's fair to stick with the term movie rather than film: movies don't come more American than The Wizard of Oz.) Margaret Hamilton's portrayal is a delight: here is a villain who relishes her wickedness in true Beagle Boy fashion. Here, we finally get the greenness too, as well as the broom and the cackling. The movie's framing device, where it's implied that Oz was all a dream and the characters Dorothy meets are versions of the people she knows in Kansas, helps to reinforce the Witch's role as a thoroughly bad lot: in the "real world", she's the termagant who wants to put Toto down (though not entirely without reason).

This so-not-in-the-book framing device serves to make the best case yet for the Wizard, too. Whereas in the book it's hard to believe him when he claims he is "a good man, though a bad wizard", it's easier in the movie. This is because his "real world" counterpart is the fortune-teller mountebank who out of kindness tricks Dorothy (who's on the run) to return home to her worried aunt. The Wizard's way of "giving" the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Lion the characteristics they unknowingly already possess is also cleverer than in the book, although the moral is the same.

And yet... probably without meaning to, the movie manages to strengthen the Wicked Witch's case to some degree. In this version of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the East is her sister, and she has a far better claim to the magic shoes than Dorothy. That Dorothy is hailed for killing the Wicked Witch of the East and readily takes credit for it (although it's hardly her doing that her house happened to fall on the luckless witch) only makes matters worse. 

Like many other heroes and heroines of children's books, Dorothy is dropped down in the middle of a conflict she has no information about, and has to have explained to her by what one can only hope are the good guys. But how good are the Munchkins really? "Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead" is a really creepy song. And the shoe-stealing Glinda (in the book another good witch – Glinda only shows up towards the end there), can she really be trusted?

These slightly-off aspects of Oz – the gleeful celebration of a woman's death, the shoe stealing, the Wizard's assassination mission (admittedly, not as unprovoked in the movie version), the fact that he's a fake – could possibly form the foundations for a revisionist retelling of the story. How well did Gregory Maguire, and later the musical and the films, manage it? That's a subject for another time. Although I have to say, nothing the musical, the films or (so far) the book has served up can really top "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too" for me.