Still listening to the episodes at the time of my writing this review. Fascinating podcast—it’s great to hear people analyzing my favorite movie. I’ve been learning things even I didn’t know about before!
I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because it’s a tad frustrating hearing the hosts constantly bringing up “the first movie” and analyzing Return to Oz under the misconception that this is a sequel to the 1939 musical, which it is not—it merely references the musical in order to not alienate the audience, who would primarily be familiar with that movie and may not know the books. Other than the fact that it uses the ruby slippers (which are only found in the musical), it bears little resemblance to the musical and should really not be judged or evaluated as though it were a sequel.
I also heard one host bring up the idea that the books are allegorical, which is... also wrong (the first book contains a foreword written by the author himself explaining that his books are specifically not meant to teach a lesson of any sort—something a lot of “scholars” ignore).
Again though, I’m still listening through the episodes and they may very well correct these things later on, and if that is the case I’ll change this rating to five stars, since other then those things I’ve been enjoying this podcast a lot and am glad I discovered it!
