Netflix's new movie 'Over the Moon' has a direct connection to 'The Wizard of Oz' you may overlook

• Warning: There are spoilers below for Netflix's animated film "Over the Moon."
• In the film, Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) travels to the moon in a rocket.
• But did she really go to the moon?
• Director Glen Keane said he'll leave that for the audience to decide, but screenwriter Audrey Wells told him Fei Fei's adventure is real.
• Fei Fei's journey from her home to the moon is meant to parallel Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz in the classic film, "The Wizard of Oz."

Netflix's new animated movie, "Over the Moon," centers around a young girl named Fei Fei (Cathy Ang), who travels to the moon in a rocket ship to discover if Chang'e is real despite being teased for still believing in the legendary goddess, whom her mother introduced her to before she died.

By the end of the film, you may wonder if Fei Fei's journey to the moon really happened or if it was all in her head as she learned how to grieve her late mother and embrace her new life without her.

This was the exact question director Glen Keane brought up to the film's screenwriter, Audrey Wells, who died during the film's production after a battle with cancer.

"The last conversation I had with Audrey, just a few months before she passed away, was sitting in my office. I wanted to talk about the reality of the journey that Fei Fei went on," Keane told Insider.

"I talked about the dream of going to Lunaria. Did it happen?" he continued. "I referred to it as a dream and she said, 'No, it wasn't.' I said, 'Oh, OK. So she really did go, and really did meet Chang'e, and all of that really happened.'"

Keane then asked Wells if she believed Dorothy really went to the technicolor-filled world in the classic film, "The Wizard of Oz." She lit up, saying, "Well, of course. Don't you think so?"

"She just had this childlike sparkle in her eyes and I realized, 'Wow, how wonderful.' I need to keep both sides alive," Keane said. "We will do this film on a razor's edge of whether it happened, whether it was real, whether it was a dream or not, and leave it for the audience to choose."

It may not be easily noticeable initially, but the film has more in common with the 1939 film than you may have realized.

According to the film's production notes, Wells wrote it as a variation of "The Wizard of Oz," which just happens to be her favorite film. In both films, the female protagonists go on a journey with their beloved pets to find something in order to grow that they take back home with them.

Keane said one of the biggest challenges of the film was finding an equivalent to Dorothy's experience of going from Kansas, depicted in black and white, to a technicolored Oz in the 1939 movie. For him, that was animating light.

Inspired by Pink Floyd's album cover for "The Dark Side of the Moon," the entire atmosphere of Lunaria is equally vibrant and luminescent.

One of the biggest parallels you may miss between the two films is that a few characters play dual roles in "Over the Moon."

Just as Dorothy went to a dream world filled with larger-than-life personalities, some of whom resembled friends and neighbors, Fei Fei encounters other characters on the moon, who are voiced by family members.

If the three Biker Chickens felt a bit random in the film, they make more sense when you know they're voiced by the same actors (Margaret Cho, Kimiko Glenn, and Artt Butle) who play some of Fei Fei's aunts and uncles.

So, does Fei Fei really travel to the moon? If that's what you want to believe, absolutely.

"Over the Moon" is streaming on Netflix. You can read our review here.