Geeks in Cyberspace

The Tin Man, as in Sci-Fi’s three part miniseries, the last of which was on last night. Advertised as a modern ‘re-imagining’ of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the end result was actually would up being completely different, just with an excess of Oz influence. Unnecessary Oz influence, the producers tried way too hard to add Oz references, which were mostly annoyingly obvious and unnecessary. Some stuff works, like the ‘old brick road’, which actually makes sense once they reveal this is the same Oz originally visited by Dorothy Gale (the first of their royal line), but whoever decided it was a good idea to name the main character DG should just be shot. It’s not creative, it’s just awkward and silly. Other things that were just silly include Azkadellia (the bad witch who is actually DG’s sister) saying something along the lines of “The little bitch has gone to see the wizard,” and the inclusion of “Lions and tigers and bears” in a flashback scene. It just really just interrupts the flow of things. And in all reality this is not Oz 2.0, the characters are obviously inspired by the same story, but the actual story is entirely different. The end result is actually decent, if not brilliant, but at best it could be considered loosely inspired by the original Oz, which in some ways works in its favor by completely changing the playing field. If they had really tried to remake the original Oz, the end result would almost inevitably have been a disaster, whereas with Tin Man we get an entertaining, if not inspired, adventure. The characters are interesting: Glitch (scarecrow) is the queen’s former adviser who has had half his brain removed by Azkadellia, Cain (tin man) is a former central city cop who was imprisoned in a suit of armor watching a hologram of his family being tortured (the cops are called ‘tin men’ because of their tin badges), and Raw (cowardly lion) is an empathic creature. DG, the Dorothy figure, is a motorcycle riding waitress, who turns out to actually be a princess in the Outer Zone, who was sent to Kansas for her protection. And, in one of the most bizarre roles in the film, Tutor (or Toto), is a shape shifter who changes between man and dog. The story is comparatively dark, though not as much so as Return to Oz, but ends with the traditional everyone lives happily ever after. Tin Man is worth watching, but not really worth a DVD release, which I’m sure will happen sooner than later, at least not unless it was cheap.