*Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers*
On the agenda this time is the made for television mini-series produced by the SyFy Channel, Tin Man. Ok usually I don’t give away spoilers in my reviews but some of the things in this movie raise questions that I want to address in the review. The show came out in 2007 in three parts which aired over three nights as a six hour event. The story follows the adventure of DG as she travels to the unusual and strange land of The O.Z. (The Outer Zone). The show was advertised as a retelling and reimagining of the classic Wizard of Oz.
In truth it partially is and partially is not. Instead some of the story is actually a sort of continuation of the original Wizard of Oz. Just as Dorothy did DG meets up 3 very unusual characters. First she meets up with Glitch who is the former advisor to the Queen of the O.Z. and has had half his brain removed by Azkedellia. Glitch, as DG was, is captured by a race of small natives who call themselves the Resistance Fighters of the Eastern Guild. Then both of them meet up with Wyatt Cain who was a former law officer or a ‘Tin Man’ as they are referred to. Cain has been entombed in an ‘iron maiden’ of shorts where he has not needed to eat or drink but has been forced to watch a continual loop of his wife and son being beaten by Azkedellias’ forces for many years. Finally they all meet up with Raw who is from a race of telepathic, hairy (almost catlike) humanoids who can see the past and present called ‘viewers’. Azkedellia uses ‘viewers’ to see what is happening in her kingdom and keep tabs on anyone she wishes. Her use of the ‘viewers’ is highly painful for them and Raw has escaped from her prison abandoning others like himself because of his own fear. Our four companions must travel to Central City to see the Mystic Man who may be able to help them with each of their own problems.
Just as it was in the original story they each represent Dorothy and her three travelling companions. Their stories are slightly different but there are enough similarities that you can see where they fit the bill. I liked these characters and the twist that this new story took on them. Up to the point in the story when you meet them I was enjoying the show. Later the show started to get into some things and that’s where it started to lose me.
You learn that Azkedellia and DG are actually sisters and that Azkedellia has been, for lack of a better term, possessed by a long imprisoned witch that the girls released by accident when they were very young. I was ok with that, gave a nice little back story and explained what had happened but the story goes that that witch was originally imprisoned by ‘The Elder’. Pretty much that is all you know. This was a problem for me. Whenever I hear the introduction of some thing like ‘Elders’ into a story line, I need to know more about them. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where are they now? I learned nothing about them which was bothersome to me. For the rest of the show I was half expecting the ‘Elders’ to have some kind of impact toward the end. This was not the case.
As the story reaches its’ climax Azkedellia, with DGs’ help, is able to break away from the witchs’ thrall and redeems her self by standing against the witch hand in hand with DG. Now I don’t have a problem with redemption, in fact I think it can be a great moving point in a story and anyone can come to a point where they want to redeem themselves, however the sudden change over was too quick and sudden for me. You did see spot moments up to that point when Azekedillia had moments of regret but none that were so intense that you see an inner turmoil with her. If it had been a matter of her having regrets and thinking seriously about changing and then her plans getting squashed by the witch because she was too powerful I could buy that. It just seems like her jump back to the good was too quick. In Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Vader makes a drastic change from evil to good as well but prior to that there was real regret and emotion in his voice that made you buy his feeling. Perhaps it was because he was voiced by the great James Earl Jones but even if that is so, this failed to reach that level.
You also learn that DG is the greatest granddaughter (not sure what that means, 4th generation maybe?) of Dorothy Gale and who she is named after. So now the story is not actually a retelling but rather a continuation of sorts. I was getting a little confused. It’s not that I had a problem with it being a continuation, actually that sounds ok to me, it’s just I was expecting something more of its’ own story. That concept only partially works for me. Perhaps instead of a ‘retelling’ of the story they should have had it as ‘a new adventure in OZ’. I think that would have been more appropriate.
Now I know that special effects for movies on television have always been a little lacking but I really did not like the effects used to create creatures. They always seemed to move a bit choppy for my liking and didn’t quite seem to fit into the background. I watched it on my 50” plasma and I still kind of had a hard time telling exactly what the Papay (creatures who were once farmers and now are carnivorous predators) looked like. There were also winged monkeys in the story and those looked a bit out of place as well.
When you finally get to the end of the story, it just…….well, ends. It felt incomplete to me. Very abrupt. Although our travelers save the day and the O.Z. there doesn’t really seem like a payoff. I was definitely a little disappointed in that.
Finally, the title. Hearing the title I thought the story would revolve mostly around the character of the Tin Man as the main protagonist but that was not the case. There were several books about Oz written by L Frank Baum that had different titles referring to characters from the stories so I thought it would be more about him. DG is still the main character just like her Grandmother. There wasn’t a real reason for naming the movie after that particular character.
Even though there were many things about the movie I found disappointing, there were some things that I liked.
Although the special effects were lacking the visual effects used to create the more elaborate environments and settings were terrific. The work they did on the cities, landscapes, interiors and exteriors was beautiful. They really captured the look of the very foreign and alien settings. And while I did not particularly like the flying monkey I did like the conceptual work used to portray them.
I also enjoyed, until it started to get convoluted, the story as it was progressing. It begins with excellent story telling, which I am a fan of, weaving a tale that was interesting and often surprising. Once they started introducing things but did not following up on the back ground they lost their flow. More storytelling on the backend would have been better but you can tell that storytelling was an important element for the director NickWilling who just strayed too far from it.
Some of the twist on the original story were very inventive. Making a change here or there to fit in with more contemporary times brought the aspects of the O.Z. into a light that was easy to accept.
I also like the performances of the four main characters played by Zooey Deschannel (DG), Alan Cumming (Glitch), Neal McDonough (Wyatt Cain, AKA Tin Man) and Raoul Trujillo (Raw). They took the characters and made them their own. Not quite the same as the originals but close enough that you could easily recognize them. Kathleen Robertson also did a great job of playing Azakadellia who was very evil indeed.
Even with liking those things I still did not enjoy the movie as much as I wanted to. However, I’m glad I got a chance to see it. For me at least the beginning story telling was refreshing to see in a show that aired during primetime. In the end I can’t give it a great rating, I’m only giving it 6 out of 10. See the original. It stands the test of time.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment