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The Nicole Kidman Camp Remake of This Thriller Made a Needed Change to Its Ending
By Rachel Walkup
August 16, 2024
The Big Picture
* The original Stepford Wives is a grim reflection of Second Wave Feminism fears and loss of autonomy for women.
* Frank Oz’s 2004 remake modernizes the story with humor, happy endings, and powerful female characters.
* The remake lightens the feminist message but gives the women a happy ending, reclaiming power in a comedic way.
The story of The Stepford Wives by novelist Ira Levin received a film adaption three years after it was written in 1972. The film starred the iconic Katharine Ross (The Graduate), along with various other renowned actors, like Peter Masterson, Paula Prentiss, Nanette Newman, and Tina Louise. It was directed by English director Bryan Forbes (Séance on a Wet Afternoon, The L-Shaped Room) who didn’t stray too far from the source material. Levin’s story reflected fears about the growing popularity of Second Wave Feminism. Women were becoming more financially independent, marital rape was finally outlawed, and the Supreme Court implemented Roe v. Wade. The original Stepford Wives was a dystopian horror story for feminists and a dreamy fantasy for male chauvinists.
In contrast, Frank Oz’s 2004 remake starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick modernizes the story for the present and changes key factors that completely shift the tone from the original’s bleak, hopeless ending. Oz’s version is humorous and light, it changes the dynamics between Joanna and Walter, and most importantly, it gives Joanna and the women of Stepford the happy ending they deserve. While the remake breezes over some pressing themes about women’s rights from the original, Oz finds ways to modernize the feminist themes with hilarious, entertaining spins. He completely transforms the story from dystopian to campy and is wildly influential.
The Original ‘Stepford Wives’ Is a Bleak Dystopian Thriller
The 1975 film starts cheery but quickly becomes unnerving. Joanna (Katherine Ross), her husband Walter (Peter Masterson), and their two children move out of the city to a picture-perfect Connecticut suburb called Stepford. Joanna befriends her neighbor Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), and together, they start noticing strange things about the other women who live there. The wives emulate the “ideal” nuclear family role straight out of a 1950s Housewife Guide with their entire lives revolving around cooking, cleaning, and tending to their husband’s needs. It turns out that the husbands are colluding against their wives, and each “Stepford Wife” has been killed and replaced by the robot versions of themselves. Although Joanna attempts to save herself, she is betrayed by Walter and suffers the same fate as the other wives.
The 1975 version approaches Stepford as grim and hopeless. It essentially sucks up all the pushback against feminism and spits it out into a suburb called Stepford. It manifests the illusion of the “good old days” when the average woman was financially dependent on her husband, worked as a homemaker, and was expected to be unassertive and submissive. Joanna bonds with Bobbie over common interests (they’re the only women in the town who wear pants!) but the friendship is quickly snatched from Joanna when Bobbie becomes the next victim. Although the film has qualities that put it in the horror/thriller category, it is also a tragedy. Joanna loses everything: Bobbie, Walter, her children, her love for photography, her personality, her soul, and her life. All that remains is a hollow shell mimicking her appearance.
The original Stepford Wives revolves around women losing all their autonomy and individuality, which is what makes it so terrifying. This was Levin’s intent, as his novels often featured women’s issues (he did write Rosemary’s Baby, after all). This is not a fun film, and it’s not meant to be. It’s a critique of a hypothetical society that refuses to evolve and a commentary on the malignant ways it could play out.
The 2004 ‘Stepford Wives’ Remake Is Comedic And Light
In comparison, the 2004 adaptation of The Stepford Wives is essentially a modernized, humorous version of the original — with the women coming out on top this time. Frank Oz (The Dark Crystal, Little Shop of Horrors) presented an ending that uplifted women instead of depressing them. Like the original, it does feature a star-studded cast with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Glenn Close, Faith Hill, and Roger Bart. But there are key aspects that change the mood entirely from the original. Although 1975’s Joanna has an interest in photography, her main job is taking care of her children with Walter as the primary provider. 2004’s Joanna (Kidman) is the powerhouse of the family with a booming career in reality TV and Walter (Broderick) is always in her shadow. Also, while 1975’s Joanna is interested in the Woman’s Liberation Movement, 2004’s Joanna specializes in creating reality TV shows that uplift women and humiliate men. All the sexist and societal issues raised in the original film, although still draped with satire at times, are even more exaggerated for comedic purposes in the remake.
The tone of The Stepford Wives remake is modernized not only with the career roles of Joanna and Walter flipped, but also with the introduction of a queer couple, Roger (Bart) and Jerry (David Marshall Grant). Roger’s animated personality aggravates Jerry, which leads to him deceiving Roger into becoming a Stepford Husband. Roger’s personality transforms from outgoing and flamboyant to hyper-masculinized and serious, allowing him to “fit in” with the heteronormative standards of Stepford. Oz makes this point to show that Stepford doesn’t only change the wives, but also changes “feminine” gay men so they adhere to the nuclear family culture that is the norm.
Another major shift in the remake involves Glenn Close’s character, Claire Wellington. The finale reveals that Claire is the one who invented the microchips to create the Stepford Wives, and her husband Mike is also a robot victim. After Claire walks in on Mike having an affair, she kills him and his mistress and creates the Stepford Wives program to “fix” marriages from her delusional perspective. A woman creating the Stepford Wives program throws a curveball at the original, where the men invent and implicate the program themselves. Having Claire as the mastermind could be interpreted as downplaying the original feminist message, but it can also be seen as empowering it further.
Claire is a brilliant brain surgeon and creates the program with her own engineering and experience. She allows the town to believe Mike is the program creator and presents herself as an unsuspecting, ditsy blonde when, in fact, she’s the one in charge. Although she is undoubtedly a psychotic female character (not too dissimilar to Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction), she snapped due to her disrespectful, unfaithful husband, implying her actions are a snowballing result of the societal mistreatment of women. In the original, all the male characters gladly give into the process and knowingly kill their wives for the “upgraded” version of them — even Walter. The 2004 version is more hopeful, as Walter and Joanna work together to defeat the program and return the wives to normal. Although Walter is self-conscious about Joanna’s career compared to his, he learns to support and embrace it. Also, instead of the wives being killed by their robot dopplegänger, their microchips are deactivated, and they turn back to their normal selves just in time to confront their husbands.
Does ‘The Stepford Wives’ Remake Downplay Women’s Struggles?
While The Stepford Wives remake does lighten the original film’s message, it also gives the women a happy ending. While many aspects of the remake poke fun at some of the serious issues raised in the original, it’s done so in a way that is self-aware, and more updated to the times. The remake is still a feminist film, but both approach feminist issues in different ways–one uses shock value and hopelessness, and the other uses irony and humor.
The remake reclaims power for the women through Joanna’s professional success and reveals that all of the wives were powerful career women too before being turned. They were judges, lawyers, and best-selling writers, all more significant than 1975 Joanna’s photography hobby. The women’s statuses are elevated in the remake, and inversely, their husbands are all shown as wimpy, useless nobodies. They perfectly embody the stereotypical incel, and that was absolutely Oz’s intention: to imply that men who want dumb, submissive wives with no value outside their bodies are usually weak boneheads. Olivia Wilde expanded on this idea with Don’t Worry Darling, where incel husbands created their own 1950s-themed virtual reality for their unsuspecting wives, kidnapping their minds to be trapped in the men’s manufactured reality. But, needless to say, The Stepford Wives explored it better.
The ending of The Stepford Wives remake only gets more positive. The wives revert to normal just in time to release their wrath against their husbands. Unlike the original, the husbands pay for what they did and are forced to stay in Stepford under “town” arrest, performing the errands, cooking, and cleaning duties they had imposed on their wives. In the end, both movies serve different purposes. If the audience wants to be transported back to the ’70s to understand the gender disparities at the time and why women fought so hard for equality, the original is the best option. If they want to be entertained and kick back with some wine and charcuterie while still getting a blast of feminism, the remake is the perfect fit.
