In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, NBC In the UK:Acquired by 5*. Will air early 2017
Certain classics are sacrosanct. Everyone’s agreed that whatever happens, you shouldn’t remake them, reimagine them or whatever, since they will never be as good and might insult the memory of the original.
The Wizard of Oz isn’t one of those things, it seems. Long is the list of reimaginings, it being a reimagining anyway of Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, several silent movies and a Broadway musical. At the theatre, it spawned the reimagined Wicked, one of the most popular musicals of all time. At the movies, we’ve had cartoons (Journey Back to Oz, Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return), a sequel (Return to Oz) and remakes (The Wiz, Oz The Great and Powerful, The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz).
On TV, dark, gritty, sci-fi reimaginings have been the order of business – once they’ve actually got off the ground. Tim Burton gave a pilot of one a go, back in 1999, but that never even got filmed. Lost in Oz, an action show sequel in the vein of Buffy and Smallville that starred Melissa George (Dorothy replacement) and Mia Sara (new Wicked Witch), managed to get as far as a pilot in 2002, but proved too expensive for a series:
Sara would still return as a witch in the later mini-series, The Witches ofOz, in which noted author Dorothy Gale discovers that her books are actually based on repressed memories of her time in the land of Oz:
But before that Zooey Deschanel, Neal McDonough, Alan Cumming and Raoul Trujillo – aka DG, Cain The Tin Man, Glitch and Raw – entered the Outer Zone (OZ) to find the Mystic Man (Richard Dreyfuss) in inept Syfy Channel mini-series Tin Man:
Now we have possibly the most interesting and successful attempt to ‘reimagine’ The Wizard of Oz in the shape of NBC’s 10-episode limited series Emerald City. As with previous TV shows, it had false starts: originally given the green light back in 2014, it got shut down when NBC and showrunner Josh Friedman had a bit of a spat. A year later, NBC changed its mind again, gave David Schulner the showrunner post and now, three years after that first go-ahead, here it is at last.
It sees young adopted Kansas nurse Adria Arjona (Person of Interest, True Detective) caught up in a tornado and conveyed to a strange new land, filled with witches both good (Joely Richardson) and bad (Florence Kasumba), as well as a mighty Wizard (Vincent D’Onofrio) who protects the land from the Great Beast Beyond. Will the wizard help her to return to Kansas or does he have a very different agenda on his mind, given all the power struggles going on in Oz?
It’s The Wizard of Oz meets Game of Thrones, but most importantly of all, all 10 episodes are directed by Tarsem Singh (The Cell) and he’s been to Barcelona. No, that’s not a euphemism, oh friend of Dorothy.
Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the month Earth #2 Wonder Woman celebrates in honour of the two-headed god Janus.
How’s that for a niche nerd intro?
Anyway, as usual, I go away for a couple of weeks and suddenly, all the comics are released – yes, all of them – and all the news is revealed – yes, all of it – so I’m going to have to be brief with my reviews this week.
In news, as well as confirmation that both Lex Luthor and Hippolyta are going to be in Justice League, we’ve had a few new images released from both that movie and Wonder Woman:
Director Patty Jenkins has been chatting a bit about Diana’s motivation, as well as the reason for the WWI setting of Wonder Woman – something that contains a very important word that I will highlight a lot:
“My approach was to focus on telling the story of mechanised war and how that would look to a god visiting our world for the first time. I wanted the audience to understand the horrors that a war on this scale makes possible and how shocking that would be to someone who comes with a strong sense of honor and justice. She doesn’t realise yet just how senselessly dark the world can be.”
And another image has Diana getting her sword for the first time:
In the image, Wonder Woman has broken into the Amazonian armory and is stealing their fabled weapon known as “the god killer.”
That’s new. Of course, ‘the god killer’ sword did feature in the recent Tony Daniel Deathstroke run, and Diana does have a sword capable of splitting atoms, but Diana’s never owned one officially described as ‘the god killer’ before. And why would she need a ‘god killer’ during World WarI, I wonder?
Also, IIRC, the only time Diana’s ever stolen her armour and/or weapons was in… the old Justice League cartoon series. Hmm – <Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In voice>very interesting</Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In voice>.
Talking of said series, though, the new Justice League Action is still going strong, with crazy old James Woods as crazy old Lex Luthor getting the power of Zeus and a certain nu52 power couple still canon:
Meanwhile, in case you ever wanted to know how to draw Wonder Woman in the style of Lynda Carter, here’s Cat Staggs telling you how:
After the jump, let’s talk (briefly I’m afraid) about all the DC comics I spotted since the previous WWW that featured the Amazon princess: Aquaman #13, Batman ’66 meets Wonder Woman ’77 #3, Dark Knight III #7, Justice League (Rebirth) #11, Justice League v Suicide Squad #1-3, Trinity #4 and Wonder Woman (Rebirth) #13.
