Her name may still be Dorothy Gayle, but
she is nothing like the girl you remember from that first journey to Oz.
She’s still wearing her trademark
blue-and-white checks, but she’s traded in the farm-girl cotton for silk and
chiffon in a style somewhere between
haute couture and French hooker. Mm-hmm.
Oh, and she’s wicked now, too. Not in
title, of course, as the official wicked witch collective is still around, but
as defined by her nasty behavior. And speaking of titles, she’s given herself a
bold one: Princess Dorothy of Oz,
second only to Ozma, who for all intents and purposes is only (thanks again to
Dorothy and her usurping of all magic in the realm) a shell of a person. Really
this means Dorothy is now running the show, along with her trusty companions
who have also all changed equally for the worse.
The Tin Woodsman now commands the army –
human soldiers who’ve been mechanically and creepily modified much like himself
– and doles out punishments like flesh-melting bubbles. The Lion rules the
forest and also has a paw in penalizing those who’ve “wronged” Dorothy; when a
guard merely looks at the princess, the “criminal” is charged with a wandering
eye, which the Lion quickly flicks out with one crooked claw and swallows
whole. And the Scarecrow’s the worst of all with his Moreau-like experiments on
the citizens of Oz, as well as his draining of others’ brain fluid to inject
into his own newly acquired organ.
See? Oz is almost unrecognizable.
But this is where the heroine – Amy from
Kansas – comes in. Coincidentally (or not) a tornado also delivers her to Oz, where she can perhaps undo
the damage wreaked by her fellow Midwestern predecessor. Before she can even
acclimate to her new surroundings, she’s tasked to REMOVE the Tin Woodsman’s
heart, STEAL the Scarecrow’s brain, TAKE the Lion’s courage, and finally KILL
Dorothy herself. A tall order for a girl who was just yesterday struggling to
survive high school!
To accomplish this mission, Amy is
magically transformed by the wicked witches into Astrid the maid so that she
may infiltrate the palace. Like the other servants, she is treated like a slave
– working to the point of exhaustion and “lucky” to get a 15-minute break to
snack on stale muffin bottoms, which are actually a rare treat for workers.
So, even though Amy initially had trouble
reconciling the horror stories she was hearing with the storybook heroine she
knew, and she had NO intention of ever murdering anyone, it’s not long before
she recognizes that Dorothy has become a magic-
(and muffin top-) hoarding fascist.
And when some of Amy’s new Ozian friends fall victim to the ruby-shod tyrant,
Amy’s unwanted assignment turns into a vendetta of her own.
No comments:
Post a Comment