Like most anyone over the age of 30, I grew up on a yearly diet of network showings of “The Wizard of Oz.” Loved the movie so much as a child that I read the book by L. Frank Baum when I was 11 or so. Someone who fits into such a category should instantly be wary of SciFi’s new miniseries “Tin Man,” right? Yet I’ve never viewed “Oz” as such a sacred cow that reworkings of the material are considered an outrage. If anything there’s a wealth of fantastic material that Baum created that hasn’t been adequately adapted into live action movies and/or TV. Yet as far back as the ‘70s musical “The Wiz,” the original story has been blatantly reworked into new forms. Even David Lynch took a bold, peculiar stab at it in 1990 with “Wild at Heart.” And “Tin Man” wants to have another go at it? Great, go for it – but count me as someone who’d still like to see a series of straightforward movie adaptations ala “Harry Potter” or “Narnia.” Indeed, 1985’s “Return to Oz” is probably more faithful to Baum’s vision than the classic Judy Garland film.
The producers of “Tin Man” certainly want to get on my good side by casting Zooey Deschanel (Trillian from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” movie, amongst many other credits) as the lead character, DG. And bringing guys like Alan Cumming, Neal McDonough and Richard Dreyfuss onboard certainly doesn’t hurt. But casting aside, the story needed to be a good one.
Having only seen Part One of Three thus far, the results were mostly engaging. It’d be easy to write off “Tin Man” right away as having strayed too far from the source material, but as I viewed the first installment, it slowly seduced and pulled me in. It seems that one of its biggest strengths, in fact, is exactly how far it’s strayed from the original work. “Tin Man” seems to be less fantasy and more sci-fi. Rather than being an adaptation of Baum’s novel, it’s instead a piece that takes cues and iconography from the source material to set up its own brand new universe, referred to here as the O.Z. (the Outer Zone). Turns out that DG (Dorothy Gale) is actually the sister of Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson), the O.Z.’s version of the Wicked Witch (although she seems to owe even more to “Narnia’s” White Witch). To protect DG from her sister, she was sent to live in our world under the care of a couple who were actually robots from the O.Z. As if her heritage isn’t enough of a departure, each other classic icon has been given a spin as well. McDonough’s Tin Man is actually a cop out for revenge for the killing of his family. The sequence where he’s released from an iron maiden of sorts – after having to endure years of viewing a repeated holographic depiction of the murder of his family – is chilling and effective. Cumming’s Glitch has a zipper on his head to mark the spot where valuable info was taken out (brains). Raw, the lion figure, is of a race that’s telepathic (this old school “Doctor Who” fan was reminded of the time sensitive Tharils from “Warriors’ Gate”). Dreyfuss’ drug-addled Mystic Man seemed even more of a clueless charlatan than anything out of the movies or books. The Munchkin city smacked of Endor and Ewoks. Yeah, “Tin Man” is getting its influence from material far outside of the work of L. Frank Baum.
The final half hour devolved into a lot of action and I’d need to give that section another once over before commenting. Truth be told, the first installment covered so much ground, that I can’t even begin to imagine where it’s all going if it keeps up at this pace. You know what “Tin Man’s” biggest disappointment thus far is? The winged monkeys, which just go to show that CGI can never replace little people in creepy makeup and costumes.
