Guy Ritchie’s secret remake of ‘The Wizard of Oz’: “Essentially, it’s the same story”
One day in the future, film historians will cast their eye over the filmography of Guy Ritchie and wonder what the fuck was going on, such has been the director’s scattershot nature over the last decade.
Nobody who hailed him as one of British cinema’s brightest and most exciting new voices when he debuted with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch would have been able to guess that two decades later, he’d be churning out forgettable action flicks at a rapid pace.
The same goes for his old producing partner Matthew Vaughn, who similarly made his debut on a hard-boiled British crime caper before seemingly dedicating himself to tedious spy features forevermore. Ritchie, though, is in a class of his own, and maybe Swept Away is to blame.
Generously surmised by its director as “shit,” helming one of the worst movies ever made potentially inspired him to cast a much wider directorial net. RocknRolla was an immediate return to familiar ground, but after that, nobody would have pegged him for Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Aladdin, and The Fountain of Youth.
Ritchie has shown that he’s happy to dabble in fantasy and might have even slyly remade the most famous of them all. The Coen brothers happily admit they’ve spent the majority of their careers remaking The Wizard of Oz in perpetuity, but did anyone cotton on that 2005’s Revolver did the exact same thing?
Well, that might not be strictly true. Then again, seeing as science has determined it to be the single most influential motion picture that’s ever been made, it’s hard for any director who specialises in genre fare to not touch base with Victor Fleming’s classic at least once, whether intentional or not.
When asked by Ion Cinema why he’d decided to name Ray Liotta’s Revolver character Dorothy, Ritchie offered an explanation that may or may not have come with tongue planted firmly in cheek. “There was a reason he was called Dorothy,” he said. “I think it might have something to do with The Wizard of Oz. Essentially, it’s the same story as The Wizard of Oz.”
With that in mind, let’s join some incredibly tenuous dots. When Jason Statham’s Jake Green is released from prison after a seven-year stint and re-enters the criminal underworld, it’s like Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale leaving Kansas behind to enter the mysterious world of Oz for the first time.
Technically, that would make Liotta’s Dorothy Macha Revolver‘s version of the Wicked Witch of the West, seeing as he’s the antagonist, which by default makes Terrence Maynard’s French Paul a munchkin. As a result, that also transforms Andrew Howard’s Billy, Vincent Pastore’s Zach and Andre Benjamin’s Avi into the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Tin Man because they partner up with the protagonist to bring down the villain.
Is that reaching? Definitely. Is it bollocks? Maybe. Then again, it’s further proof that if anyone chooses to look hard enough, any movie can be viewed as a loose remake of The Wizard of Oz.
