Villains Profile: Theodora (with The Creature)

Moviefan12:  Witches can often be found as the villains or a boogeyman so to speak in fairy tales and they are used to teach children a lesson and scare them into behaving.   Now, consider for a moment, who you might think the most famous fairy tale witch is?  For many, the answer is found within L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  

However,  The Wicked Witch of the West is perhaps more remembered for how she was portrayed by Margaret Hamilton in the MGM classic.  

So many years later and she is still one of the most frightening villains in cinematic history.  Now, other actors and stories have put a new spin on this classic character such as Rebecca Mader as Zelena in  Once Upon a Time or Idina Menzel as the beloved (and my favorite version of this character), Elphaba in Wicked. Those two may be playing a character from the same source but they are completely different from one another and that brings us to the witch, that we are looking at today as we head to the land of Oz to look at Sam Raimi's Oz prequel and see how he handled this iconic character.  Joining me here is a good friend, The Creature.   





The Creature: I’ve mostly been familiar with her from Wicked and the original Oz novels. Up until recently, I never saw how Sam Raimi took on the world of Oz with the recent Disney film. It should be quite a unique change considering some of his previous work.

…Probably won’t involve the Deadites though.

Moviefan12: Yes well, let's move onto looking at the actress that brought this take on the Wicked Witch of the West to life. 






Actress

Mila Kunis 

Moviefan12: I don't begrudge the task that was laid before Mila Kunis.  As playing The Wicked Witch of the West had to be daunting.  And that's why I think when adapting Baum's work, it should be treated like adapting Shakespeare as it has been done so many times that to do the same story would get old and something new should be brought to the characters.  That is attempted here and I'll get into my grievances with that when discussing the personality of Theodora but suffice it to say,  Kunis tried her best in this role and I know that there are worst takes on this character.  

One pictured above but Kunis just feels flat in this role.


Creature: I’m a bit on the fence on the casting choice. Kunis doesn’t really seem the type of actress who would take on the role of the Wicked Witch, but sometimes amazing things can happen if you take a chance on it.




Personality


Moviefan12: And this is where my issue with this character comes in. She's just so naive and gullible in the beginning that she's willing to believe anything anyone tells her.  According to the Oz Wiki, she was originally the Good Witch of the North and that's great but doesn't really come through in the movie. Summing it up a bit more.

as a wicked witch, she becomes bitter and filled with fiery hatred. Theodora also loses her fear in her evil incarnation

Okay sure but I never buy into Theodora embracing her wickedness.  I hate doing this but let's compare it to Elphaba for a moment with this line from No Good Deed.  

Let all Oz be agreed/I'm wicked through and through   

That sells that Elphie has embraced what Oz thrust upon her and she made the choice to go along with it whereas Theodora is forced into becoming the Wicked Witch and it doesn't feel like it is sold all that well. 





The Creature: She really doesn’t seem to be very interesting. As you mentioned, she believes anything that is told to her and falls head over heels in love with Oz after just hours of meeting him and really comes off as being extremely naive. In terms of her becoming a Witch, it’s very underwhelming. She was manipulated into it by her sister and was pretty much a fool for falling for him the minute she laid eyes on him. It honestly feels less inspired than Palpatine converting Anakin to the Dark Side.



Elphaba becoming the witch in Wicked was more believable as she was more disgusted with Oz’s morals rather than just falling in love with him (then again, Wicked was a bit darker in themes than the original novels). So, unfortunately, she does fall flat in comparison to Elphie.


First Appearance


Moviefan12: I think that we have two different first appearances that we need to look at here. First as Theodora and my colleague already covered the issues there,  after a night with a man that wants to get in her pants and tricks her using a dumb tactic. She truly believes that she's found the one.

It just doesn't feel earned as you know as a viewer that Oscar doesn't truly care about Theodora and this'll lead to a larger issue when we get to her Grand Desire. To take this further, there's an uncomfortableness with how easily Oscar tosses aside Theodora and falls in love with Glinda because she looks like his ex.   To take this further, let's quote one of my favorite Disney movies.

You can't marry a man you just met

That sums up all the issues I have with her at the beginning of the movie.   Now, let's move onto her first appearance as the Wicked Witch of the West.



It starts out promising and quite scary with a shot of her green hand.  Yes, it wasn't her choice to become the Wicked Witch and I do take umbrage with that but man, this was cool.

But when she first tries to scare the Ozians as a Wicked Witch, I feel nothing.  It feels too performative and as though she's not truly evil.  It feels as though she is acting upon what she thinks a wicked witch or rather feeding into what Oscar thought witches were when he first landed in Oz. As he thought witches were hagged, ugly and covered in warts.  Which unintentional or not, Theodora is fueled by Oscar even after she turned and gave him what he expected.  She did this first because he believed this man to be a savior but now she's doing this out of pure hatred.  And that strips such an iconic character of any agency of her own.  A Wicked Witch being fueled by love or lack of love isn't a bad idea.  It just falls on the execution, you have to make the audience believe in the relationship.  And put the pain the Witch is feeling on display.  Again...

Fiyero, where are you?Already dead or bleeding?One more disasterI can add to my generous supply?

Yes, I know I'm bringing up Elphie and Wicked quite a bit here but that was another better Oz prequel and actually showed scorn and the hardships of a relationship that its Wicked Witch went through and made the audience believe in what she was saying.  But okay, let's look at her intimidation factor.  It wasn't there at all. In her first outing as the green-skinned Wicked Witch, it felt as though Raimi was directing Kunis to channel Margaret Hamilton in the MGM classic. 




There's a true sense of fear here and you can see how much the Ozians are scared of the Wicked Witch but with Theodora, well., there's nothing there.  She tries and again I don't want to blame her as this is a hard role for anyone to take on considering this is one of the most famous villains of all time but Eveline from the abhorrent movie adaption of The Wiz was scarier. 

The Creature: When she first appears in her new form as the Wicked Witch to Munchkinland, it does feel like, as you mentioned, like she’s playing it up to try and intimidate Oz, Glinda and the citizens of Oz and is clearly doing it to show spite toward Oz. While the idea of being supposedly betrayed by the man she loved could work, the film showed us that it wasn’t very convincing due to how little time they spent together and which we are supposed to think would be enough to turn her evil.

Once again with Wicked, they did a much better job at having Elphie being more sympathetic and you actually feeling pretty bad for her and what she went through rather than what they did with Theodora.

In terms of her intimidating, well….

She really did not come off as intimidating in the slightest when she’s visiting Munchkinland nor when she is trying to defeat Oz or Glinda near the climax of the movie. It’s pretty obvious that Margaret Hamilton was pretty much the top contender in being intimidating.



Grand Desire


Moviefan12: The Creature and I have been driving this home this entire point but Theodora is a woman scorned.   The Villains Wiki sums it up as...

Get revenge on Oz and help her sister Evanora in taking over the Land of Oz (all failed).

Which yeah sure, it mentions the second half is that she wants to help her sister in taking over Oz.  But that's so minor compared to what her main motivation is. She's driven by a man and this is just so frustrating.  Women scorned villains are an outdated trope but that doesn't make it bad. You have to sell the tragedy of what hurt the woman and almost making the revenge understandable.  They don't have to be sympathetic but rather understandable.  The Angelina Jolie Maleficent is not a good movie and I do have issues with the scene I'm about to bring up.

I do not always care for rape in movies and make no mistake, that is what happens in the Jolie movie.  However, the discomfort I and the audience felt when Maleficent went through this harrowing moment sells the anguish that she feels and makes the idea of her wanting revenge understandable.  

With Theodora however, she's turned because Oz left her and was tricked by her older sister that made her believe Oz didn't care about her. Which really isn't too far from the truth. 

The Creature: If her tragedy were better written and lasted longer than the spawn of a day, it could have been more effective. Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t and it was well established that Oz is mostly just attracted to her based on her looks (which also seemed to be the same case for several other women in the traveling circus in Kansas) so it was easy to see coming.



Most Evil Deed


Moviefan12: I truly cannot think of a single deed that Theodora did that could constitute as her most evil deed.  Perhaps, this comes from her being a more reactionary villain compared to actionary types.  This is something we've discussed throughout this blog.  Theodora is driven by her hatred of how Oz spurned her.  Which one would think, that could lead to something interesting in terms of evil deeds.  Perhaps the closest thing that one could come to is her attempt at killing Glinda but even then, that feels hollow.  


The Creature: I would have to agree that the most evil thing she’s done is try to kill Glinda. Aside from that, she really hasn’t done that much in comparison to Margaret Hamilton. Her heartbreak brought upon by Oz could have been something that could have given us something unique from it, but it never turns out anything noteworthy.

Demise

Moviefan12: She's basically banished by the man she thought loved her.  

 ...kill Glinda. However, as she is distracted, China Girl hands Glinda her wand, and she is able to repel the Witch. Weakened by this attack, the Witch of the West flies off, vowing to return. Oscar states that he knows her evilness wasn't her doing, and if she can ever find the good in her heart again, she will be welcomed back. The Wicked Witch of the West roars out her defiance at Oscar before flying off.

Let's look at this for a moment, it says that she flies off but in reality, she's kicked out by the man that hurt her.  And he....he has the gall to tell her that she can return when she finds the goodness in her heart.  

Seriously, dude,  you are part of the reason that Theodora became the Wicked Witch.  Just gah! You should not get a say in if and when Theodora comes back.  She should have obliterated you and no one would have mourned you if she did.  


Honestly, I feel like the movie redeemed the wrong character here.  With everything that Theodora is put through because of this man,  I feel like that things would have worked better if they had kept things the same a smidge but allow Theodora to call out Oz on how he abused her.  This is an angle that I had been ignoring until getting to this point but Theodora is a victim of abuse from people around her.  Evanora feels no love for her younger sister and hurts her to get whatever she wants.  Oz, while he doesn't ghost Theodora completely, he never explains why he did the things he did to her. 

He toyed with the emotions of an unstable young woman that was part of a broken household. So, of course, something, like dancing and spending the night under the stars would mean the world to her. So yeah, I take a little umbrage with the man that hurt her dictating what she gets to do.  Which again shows that sadly even as a villain, indirectly or not, Theodora is driven by a man.  


Which is so infuriating as witches when done right can be symbols of feminism because witches are empowering and can stand on their own.  Historically, they have power over the men and others that put them down.  Look at this pull quote from an NYT article. 

These days, though, it’s often women — Lana Del Rey and Björk among them — deploying “witch” (or related terminology) to describe themselves, not as a pejorative but as a badge of honor. They may not all recite spells or worship a moon goddess, but at a time when misogyny is rampant and women’s rights are on shaky ground, they relate to the witch as a feminist symbol. A witch, after all, is a woman with power.

Do you know why I love witches so much?  It's not because of the magic or power because they can stand out and make things better for them.  Yes, they go through hardships but witches can overcome those hardships, even when people wanna put them down. They understand the heartbreak and a loss of love.  We've hammered home everything that Elphie goes through but let's look at another Wicked Witch.  Zelena from Once Upon a Time.  She's sketchy to be sure but when push comes to shove, she shows that she's wicked and will do anything that it takes including killing the man. Hades that loved her as he was about to hurt her family. 

Sure, Zelena has been the Wicked Witch for ages when she does this whereas Theodora just became the Wicked Witch. Which takes us back to Elphie, she only becomes the Wicked Witch towards the end of that story and still has a lot of drive and agency on her own.  Theodora, not so much.  The movie thinks that she has drive and agency but she really doesn't.  Again, being driven by a man is a fine motive for revenge for a character but that is all that defines Theodora throughout this movie. And you almost want to walk up to her and tell her,  'He's controlling you!" 


The Creature: Yeah, Oz is a tool throughout this movie who only has his own self-interest in mind and, as previously mentioned, was the big reason for her becoming the Wicked Witch and to have him say that it was purely his sister’s doing alone really makes him look pretty bad. It makes him seem like he really shouldn’t be redeemed (which I don’t feel like he was).

Is Theodora a Good Villain?

Moviefan12: Short answer: no.  Long answer: She could've been.  Again, I don't wanna blame Mila Kunis but I think one of the first mistakes was the casting here.  The other mistake was the attempts on how they tried to expand the character of the Wicked Witch of the West.  Going back to Wicked,  you can make this character tragic and add a sense of pathos to her as a way of giving the audience an understanding of who she was before becoming wicked.  I mentioned that Theodora is part of a broken home, so was Elphie.  

No father is not proud of youNo sister acts ashamed

Let's look at the second line here.  Something that Elphaba and Theodora share in common is a sister that dismisses them for who they are.  Nessarose is embarrassed by her older sister and wants to be left alone, though there is a smidge of a connection there whereas Evanora feels no love for her sister and the movie doesn't explore this enough in my opinion. There are small hints but it could be expanded upon to show how tragic a character she is.  It's a little frustrating but a new spin on the Wicked Witch of the West is something that shouldn't have been botched this badly.  Like I said at the beginning when adapting the world of Baum, I think new takes are needed as they've been done so many times but sometimes those new takes strip an iconic character of what makes them so great.  I'm not saying the Theodora portrayal of the Wicked Witch erases Hamilton's Wicked Witch as that would just be foolish but rather this new take doesn't seem to understand what made this villain so scary or how to give her a proper sense of pathos.  





The Creature: I have to agree that she’s not a very good villain. The movie had the potential to make her a great reinterpretation of a classic character, but a lot of the choices that were made didn’t work out at all in the end. While it is a bit unfair to compare her to both Elphaba and Margaret Hamilton, this portrayal of the Wicked Witch is one of the three that would be the least popular. Needless to say, I don’t think this interpretation will be remembered later on in time.

Moviefan12:  I'd like to thank The Creature again for joining me on this journey to look at this take on the Wicked Witch of the West. Join me back here on Halloween as we look at when a witch can be more than one seems as I look at Meryl Streep as 

The Witch