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Notes -
I watched The Wizard of Oz in its entirety for the first time recently, and the main body of the film being a dream sequence totally breaks it.
So the moral is that rather than running away to a fantasy world where your dog, your only friend in the world, will be by your side for everything that happens, and where you'll also make new friends, you should instead stay home, where your only friend is your dog and the local government has ordered that your dog be euthanized.
Look, the stuff about how Dorothy's friends were already smart/caring/brave and were just beset by a lack of confidence was really good. I loved that! But it's not a real moral, because those friends weren't real. Dorothy's subconscious made them up. The point of that stuff is how it informs the real world part of the story. And it doesn't, really.
And yeah, I know that the dream stuff wasn't in the book, but I think it was added to the movie during the initial screenwriting phase, not as reshoots. So it should've felt more connected.
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